WTF - Safari changed my default search engine to Yahoo.

[mrlynn]

silvarios wrote:
[quote=mrlynn]
I found DuckDuckGo annoying for some reason. But I rather like ixquick.

My problem with DDG, which is my default search engine on many of my devices, is its inability sometimes to rank what I'm looking for ahead of stuff that seems to completely fail my search terms. So I have to scroll down a bit to find the thing Google will put up near the top (even when not logged into Google). Not that google search is perfect, it isn't.

Even still, DDG is good enough most of the time, so I haven't switched back, but I'll give your suggestion some testing.
One caveat re ixquick: Just went back to it (been using Bing mostly, to avoid Google), and discovered it was coming up with websites that threw up malware pages that you couldn't get out of: "Your Mac is infected with . . . " stuff, like you see on PCs. This rarely happens with Bing. Guess I'll go back.

/Mr Lynn

[silvarios]

rjmacs wrote:
[quote=silvarios]
[quote=rjmacs]
Without question, Google is a better search engine (it's the best search engine out there). However, there's a price to be paid in privacy. When I can't find what I'm looking for in DDG, or ranking is really important, I'll use Google. But it creeps me out a little every time I do.

If you don't log into Google when using it, do you find the search engine works about the same? That's the key. If so, you could avoid most of the privacy implications.
Does your IP change every time you search Google? They're capturing your data one way or another, and they are anything but transparent about how they use IP data for data mining.
Don't know, but if Google thinks data mining three users or more and then lumping together their searches works, more power to them. I don't give a flip about My Little Pony, but if Google thinks it will sway my purchasing because my daughter incessantly watches such videos on YouTube, I actually feel bad for the advertisers shelling out money.



P.s. I believe you can opt out of Google targeted ads and you can actually wipe data (allegedly if the user facing tools are actually telling the truth about data deletion) from many of Google's tools. Most people never even explore those settings of course.

[silvarios]

mrlynn wrote:
[quote=silvarios]
[quote=mrlynn]
I found DuckDuckGo annoying for some reason. But I rather like ixquick.

My problem with DDG, which is my default search engine on many of my devices, is its inability sometimes to rank what I'm looking for ahead of stuff that seems to completely fail my search terms. So I have to scroll down a bit to find the thing Google will put up near the top (even when not logged into Google). Not that google search is perfect, it isn't.

Even still, DDG is good enough most of the time, so I haven't switched back, but I'll give your suggestion some testing.
One caveat re ixquick: Just went back to it (been using Bing mostly, to avoid Google), and discovered it was coming up with websites that threw up malware pages that you couldn't get out of: "Your Mac is infected with . . . " stuff, like you see on PCs. This rarely happens with Bing. Guess I'll go back.

/Mr Lynn
Funny story. Bing on my Fire Phone took me to such a link, but I think PCWorld was the problem because the problem doesn't reoccur since I blocked ads on PCWorld. Who knows, right? I just figured PCWorld's ad servers got hit with crapware or maybe someone hacked their site directly, but blocking ads, and disabling trackers (aka using Firefox mobile instead of the Silk browser preinstalled on the Fire Phone) and everything is just peachy now.

Were you visiting sites run by the same company as PCWorld or more likely, using the same ad servers?