• finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    With Net Neutrality gone, these giant tech companies could start bidding to make ISPs make their search engine default and have the other competitors fail to load.

    • Pika@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      The stupidest thing about this whole entire thing about net neutrality.

      The entire reason the FCC was created was to prevent the committee from being governed by the government process to avoid corruption for the exact circumstances we’re seeing here

      Saying that the Supreme Court and the appeals court has any area of saying what the FCC is legally allowed to do is laughable, as the entire reason for the committee being isolated from the standard Executive Administrative branches was to prevent government overreach like they’re doing currently.

      This is 1,000% them saying hey you’re an isolated committee that we can’t touch but you’re not allowed to do the one thing that your committee is supposed to do

      Corruption all the way to the top. It’s the American way, ironically I think the slogan “drain the swamp” works for both parties, as it’s clear that the people that are in charge aren’t willing to actually uphold the commitment they’ve made to the people.

        • Pika@sh.itjust.works
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          2 days ago

          Thank you for providing a perfect example. It’s manipulative or delusional to say that the fault of the country is exclusively one party. It’s how we got in this situation in the first place. The amount of partisanship that this country has is ridiculous, especially when the go-to response for anything going wrong is well look at the other side. The US as a whole needs to do better, nobody’s going to get anywhere if it’s just the blame game. Both sides can be at fault, blame is not unilaterally one way nor is it equal levels. I’m not downplaying either sides position, but I’m not going to ignore what’s happening in the country.

          Being said I’m not engaging further in this, I don’t want it to devolve into a political thread as its not the purpose of this, I was just making a one off comment on the irony of it all.

  • FundMECFS@slrpnk.net
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    3 days ago

    Kind of fucked up but tbf Google does similarly shady stuff.

    Please just use duckduckgo (or SearX).

    • Gregor@gregtech.eu
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      3 days ago

      I host my own SearXNG instance, which miiiight be a bit of a bad idea because the anonymity of the crowd disappears but hosting your own services is way too cool to ignore. It’s at search.gregtech.eu in case anyone wants to use it.

      • nef@slrpnk.net
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        2 days ago

        This is nothing like GregTech! Where’s the tedious microcrafting to enjoy before every search?

      • FundMECFS@slrpnk.net
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        3 days ago

        Hahha GregSearX I love it!

        I’ve used searX in the past and found it was decent but personally I am going to stick with duckduckgo because it just works better for my needs (especially since I’m on mobile).

      • kratoz29@lemm.ee
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        3 days ago

        What I don’t like about SearXNG (aside of no favicons/icons I think) is that it doesn’t show the content of what I am looking for in the browser desktop tabs, if I search for “Linux” in the tab it is only shown “SearXNG” instead of what I am searching for… That definitely kills my browsing habits… I hope I am being clear (can’t post a screenshot right now), also unsure if it was the same with mobile browsers.

        • hedgehog@ttrpg.network
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          3 days ago

          You can control that with a setting. In Settings - Privacy, turn on “Query in the page’s title.”

          My instance has a magnifying glass as the favicon.

          • kratoz29@lemm.ee
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            3 days ago

            Thank you, I didn’t even know it was possible.

            I am gonna try it later, happy spying /j

            • Gregor@gregtech.eu
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              2 days ago

              There we go, I have the favicons set up. Sorry for the intermittent downtime, I was doing some configuration.

          • kratoz29@lemm.ee
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            2 days ago

            Thanks for the heads up, always a good thing being proved wrong when asking for features :p

      • FundMECFS@slrpnk.net
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        3 days ago

        And Searx is the same. And startpage is just google.

        But the point is they don’t track.

        • Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz
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          3 days ago

          DDG was letting Bing track users. They may have stopped now that they got in trouble for it.

            • Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz
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              3 days ago

              Yeah that would be it:

              Previously, we were limited in how we could apply our 3rd-Party Tracker Loading Protection on Microsoft tracking scripts due to a policy requirement related to our use of Bing as a source for our private search results

              I couldn’t remember the details exactly, but basically up until then they were allowing Microsoft tracking despite all their advertising claiming they wouldn’t track users.

    • Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz
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      3 days ago

      I feel like Microsoft is way more shameless about their shady stuff. They’ve been messing around with impersonating google/chrome for awhile now, they recently had that thing where they would copy all your open chrome tabs, and then when you started your computer it would open edge with all your chrome tabs to trick people into using edge instead.

      • vinyl@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        They aren’t afraid of people complaining about them, they are afraid of the government, and they fulfill a hefty amount of contracts for the gov

    • vinyl@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      I would use anything else before DDG, the primary function of it which is searching, generally feels sucky

  • Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz
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    3 days ago

    Microsoft does so many scammy things when it comes to trying to prevent people from using Chrome/Google. Even though Edge/Bing hasn’t caught on, I really think them abusing windows dominate OS position this way should be enough for an antitrust lawsuit.

    • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Not just Google. There was a performance “bug” in Windows Defender a while back that specifically harmed Firefox. It had been reported but Microsoft took 5+ years to fix, and Mozilla did the bulk of the sleuthing and proposing fixes themselves.

      Now, whether MS were intentionally crippling a competitor’s browser in the beginning when the bug surfaced (which coincidentally was around the time Edge was relaunched as a chromium browser), there’s no way to know.

      But after a certain point, a software company with a market cap in the trillions loses any benefit of doubt I’d give them in scenarios like this where it benefits them not to find a solution. And 5 years is far beyond that point.

      Unfortunately for Firefox, they didn’t really have the money for a lawsuit against a juggernaut like Microsoft.

      • Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz
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        3 days ago

        I was installing chrome on a work computer, and windows defender was automatically flagging the chrome installer (official, directly from google) as malware and deleting it automatically as soon as it was downloaded. It wasn’t blacklisted for very long, I was able to download it without issues the next day, but I always have wondered if that was something they were testing out on purpose or not.

  • Breve@pawb.social
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    3 days ago

    User: “Can we get Google?”

    Microsoft: “But we already have Google at home!”

    The Google at home: [reskinned Bing page]

  • ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    This is a genius move to keep you from Google search

    Seems more like a genius move to get slapped with another antitrust-like lawsuit.

    • Feelfold@lemm.ee
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      3 days ago

      Corps don’t give a fuck about an antitrust law suit. In the US, the party that pays the most to jerk off CEOs just got put in charge. Even if it was the other party, who only pays slightly less, the most extreme fines are a slap on the wrist. Hell, come Jam 20th it’ll probably a tax write off.

      Until the EU levies fines that would kneecap these companies out of business, there is no incentive to change the behavior.

    • sandwichsaregood@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      I mean the original lawsuit was for aggressively bundling Internet Explorer and kneecapping other browsers. Which sure sounds a lot like a minor variation on what they’ve been doing with Edge and Bing for a while now, without consequences. Antitrust enforcement is not something I have a lot of confidence in for the foreseeable future.

  • LiveLM@lemmy.zip
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    2 days ago

    And just when I thought their endless begging couldn’t get any more pathetic.
    Soon enough they’ll tell you a puppy dies every time you launch a non-edge browser

    • _cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 days ago

      If you’re going to use one of the two, it’s a lot better to be using Bing than Google. At least you stand a chance of finding what you’re looking for with Bing.

  • seven_phone@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    This is a search engine showing open evidence of skewing results away from true for their own motivations. Slightly comic when it is Microsoft doing it to Google but if they do this so blatantly how else are they more subtly redirecting our searches towards biased or even false results that benefit them and misinform the user.

  • BangCrash@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    The single thing Google did right when they first came out was a clean UI with a search bar on an uncluttered page.

    At the time the competitors had search pages cluttered with ads and news. It was so bad you couldn’t think.

    If Microsoft makes their search nice to look at them it’s going to get many more users

  • Mwa@lemm.ee
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    3 days ago

    Besides Privacy DDG is wayy better then Google And Bing + It has a better search quality.

    • toynbee@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      I prefer DDG to either as well, but in terms of search quality … Don’t they use Bing search results?

      • Mwa@lemm.ee
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        2 days ago

        Yes they use Bing but i think they did some adjustments to improve the search quality (Correct me if am wrong)

      • twei@discuss.tchncs.de
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        2 days ago

        Make sure you have regional results enabled if you’re not from the US, results get way better (just make sure the little toggle right below the search bar is on)

      • Mwa@lemm.ee
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        2 days ago

        It shows less results but i find it to be better personally.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      I don’t think there’s a difference in search quality, but I do really like the bangs and the client-side settings (can completely disable the AI noise, enable dark mode, etc all w/o needing an account).

    • Scrollone@feddit.it
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      2 days ago

      I think Kagi is way better, but unluckily it’s a paid product. Most of the people will never pay for a search engine.

  • jaxiiruff@lemmy.zip
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    3 days ago

    Microsoft is a pathetic little husk of a company, what a corny and predatory practice that not even google cares to do if you search other search engines.