Wow, USB-C and DDG in the same year? Look at Apple trying to stay relevant 😉
Apple considered switching to DuckDuckGo from Google for Safari - Bloomberg News
Submitted 1 year ago by bathalumang_peppa@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
tsonfeir@lemm.ee 1 year ago
MrGeekman@lemmy.world 1 year ago
They didn’t switch to USB-C out of the goodness of their hearts. They switched because the EU passed a new law that requires that new smartphones have USB-C ports.
Chozo@kbin.social 1 year ago
And they actively fought against it for as long as they could, tooth and nail.
circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org 1 year ago
Apple will never do anything for any other reasons besides: regulation and profit. They try and foster this image of humanitarianism and ethics, but meanwhile they build everything in sweatshops and make their own “standards” so that their loyal customers can only use the functions they need by purchasing additional dongles.
I’m happy that they were forced into an actual standard, but I’ve already heard at least two apple users IRL claiming that USB-C is inferior for [insert random reasoning here]. Apple has cultivated the idea that they are above standards for a long time and it will take a long time to break.
Pregnenolone@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Ah yes, the second largest company in the world “trying to stay relevant”
who8mydamnoreos@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Im not really brand loyal to a gizmo company but the way android users are so insecure makes me never want to get them.
MBM@lemmings.world 1 year ago
whofearsthenight@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Of all of the things that I vastly prefer since moving to Lemmy from reddit, anything related to Apple is not one of them. I’m actually surprised because talking about anything Apple on reddit was always a circlejerk pitchfork parade, but Lemmy still seems to outdo. The “trying to stay relevant comment” is honestly hilarious. Sure, the richest company with more than 50% of the smartphone market, that basically feeds design to the rest of the industry is trying to stay relevant.
And another thing worth addressing, It’s probably 50/50 whether the EU is forcing them to USB-C, or just providing cover for them to move to USB-C. Modern Apple (after 1997) rarely has used proprietary standards for cables/connectors, and when they have it’s pretty obviously because there isn’t a better option, or more likely, there isn’t an option that is suited to their purpose*. Apple is/was largely the reason we’re even talking about USB, being one of the first to really adopt it. Then the dock connector for iPods, which is probably the most major example of them using a proprietary connector. If you read that link (just wiki) you’ll see that the dock connector did things that no other standard connector did at the time, and it did it in a form factor that would work with iPods. Fast forward 10 years and Apple eats shit in the press for changing to Lightning, which pre-dated USB-C and has obvious advantages over one of the worst computer connectors in modern history - micro-USB**. Apple contributed significantly to the USB-C spec, which includes many of the advantages that Lightning had first, built off of the work they did with Intel in creating another standard, Thunderbolt.
And then on to today, where Apple is “forced” to use USB-C. Again, in 2016, Apple moved all of their high end laptops to exclusively USB-C, for which they would again be pilloried. People are still pissed those laptops dropped USB-A and MagSafe in favor of trying to drive adoption of USB-C and a one-connector-rules-them-all world. They also moved their Pro iPads over to C in 2018. Basically, Apple started moving its high-end, less price conscious customers to C long before legislation was a gleam in anyone’s eye. Their cheaper products (base model iPads) and mass-consumer products (iPhones) they moved much slower on, and even then there were a slate of “Apple keeps changing connectors all of the time!” (twice in 20 years) outrage-bait articles.
Yes, Apple was “forced” to use the connector they created the first design references for (Lightning/Thunderbolt, and to a lesser extend Mini-DisplayPort) and then helped design, then moved to before most, in a bid to stay “relevant” in a field they already dominate.
* Also worth noting that Apple was a main driver of adoption of USB-A, and took heat when they converted iMacs to it over PS/2, far before most PC vendors did.
** This alone, the amount of negative press they garnered, meant that there was likely no way Apple was going to move iPhones off of Lightning for 10 years.
Radicalized@lemmy.one 1 year ago
I really really don’t think Apple needs to do much to stay relevant.
Zimmy@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Surprised to see so many plugging kagi in this thread. A subscription to search the internet seems crazy to me. Is it that good?
darreninthenet@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
This article is a pretty good summary of why, by Google’s own words, an ad driven search experience will be rubbish:
pluralistic.net/2023/10/03/not-feeling-lucky/#fun…
Not only does Kagi produce great search results, as good as “old Google” IMO, its business model means the above cannot (or at least, shouldn’t) happen. If it ever changed its model to include ads etc it would collapse so fast.
So for me, unlike the other poster, I’d recommend it to everyone who’s finding the existing search engines are rubbish and full of useless Etsy and SEO etc links.
ciaocibai@lemmy.nz 1 year ago
Pinterest links are the worst. I just don’t want that shit and images of random crap isn’t what I’m after.
JasSmith@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
It’s like Google back in 2010. You find stuff you are looking for without pages and pages of ads, spam, and clickbait.
If you hit a domain which is obviously spam, you can block it forever. If you find a domain you really like, you can promote it for future results.
It’s clear that Google’s motivation is no longer to offer good results. It’s to maximise the time you’re on the site, and the number of ads and spam sites you click. Their goal is now, literally, to feed you bad results.
wolo@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 year ago
Every good result they serve you could have been an ad, so they’re incentivised to replace as many with ads as possible.
SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 year ago
Paying for a service ensures your incentives (mostly) align. Kagi’s incentive is to make a good search that makes you want to pay for it, google’s incentives are to gather your data to either sell or use themselves, and show you as many ads as possible.
liam_galt@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 year ago
I thought it sounded pretty silly, too. I gave the free trial a shot and for technical searches it was the best I had seen by far. Being able to lower certain sites and raise other sites makes it much easier to filter through shitty results like blog posts and stuff. I pay for it now and it’s worth it to me just for the time savings on technical searches. It definitely is still pretty far behind for things like local business info and stuff, but as a general purpose search engine it’s been extremely good for me.
aidan@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Or the most annoying thing, trying to research a topic with one word matching that of a recent news event. So you only ever see news sites.
snowe@programming.dev 1 year ago
I tried the trial for two days before I bought in and completely gave up google. Kagi is absolutely amazing and well worth the money, not just because there’s no ads or selling of your data, but because the search results are miles better than any alternative now. I have over 50k searches in my google history and at one point in my career I would average around a hundred searches a day. I know what I need from a search engine and Kagi absolutely gives it to me.
ripcord@kbin.social 1 year ago
Yeah, I scoffed at the idea of paying. And paying $10/mo. Then I used it. And I keep using it. A lot. And now0 looks like I'm going to be paying for it for a while.
glad_cat@lemmy.sdf.org 1 year ago
I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone because it’s really expensive, but for me it’s great, and I save at least one hour a day at work since I don’t waste my time filtering the results from DDG or Google.
It’s subjective of course but I’m happy about it so far.
lloram239@feddit.de 1 year ago
My experience doesn’t go past the free trial, but yes, it is very good. It’s basically Google-level search quality, but without the removal of features and dropping quality that Google itself experiences in the last few years.
That said, it’s still just a regular old search engine. If you used Google 10 years ago, you have a pretty good idea what this feels like. It doesn’t really do anything new or revolutionary. It’s not a “wow, this is amazing” experience, it’s just a “well, this actually works” kind of thing.
Not something I’d pay $10/month for, but if you want to move away from Google without it feeling like a downgrade, it’s currently the only real alternative. Bing, DDG (which is just Bing with window dressing), Yandex, BraveSearch are all still quite a bit worse than Google.
tun@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Recently I get good result with Ecosia.
Paradox@lemdro.id 1 year ago
Yeah, it’s very good. Not having results full of shit like geeksforgeeks or Pinterest is nice, but possible with browser extensions. Being able to influence the rank of different sites, to either bubble up or down in your results is one of the secret killer features
someguy3@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I’ve been trying to use DDG but honestly it sucks. I can’t imagine Apple switching to it, it would just make things worse for users, who commonly can’t figure out how to switch defaults. I think it’s just a negotiating point.
art@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Google search has been fundamentally broken for at least two years. When the protests started on Reddit 90% of Google’s search results we’re broken.
Fedizen@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I found this too. After the reddit fiasco, I found DDG to have no downside.
brewery@feddit.uk 1 year ago
What difficulties are you finding with it and are you switching from Google? The results are as custom as Google given they haven’t scraped your life history so wondering if that’s it? I’ve been using DDG without any issues. About once every 6 months I struggle to find something so try the Google bang but have never found better results. In fact, I was shocked last time how crap the Google results were, just full of AI generated crap and SEO based crap.
To be honest, DDG is also struggling with that now as it’s based on Bing. I have been trying a public searxg but not found it very good so far.
someguy3@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Results suck, can’t find anything. Really don’t think it’s related to my browsing history.
dantheclamman@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I love DDG and use it as my default, but there’s no doubt that its index is shallower and its semantic matching can’t compare to Google’s. I’m a biogeochemist and spend a lot of time coding in R. Google is just better at surfacing rare science articles/blogs and stackoverflow pages where my query doesn’t match exactly, but it is a relevant result. I use DDG for my personal searching and Google for professional searching
steltek@lemm.ee 1 year ago
That didn’t stop them from plowing ahead with Apple Maps, even though its debut was total garbage.
Polar@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Debut and still is garbage.
There’s a reason why Apple users have both installed.
Does Apple Maps even have reviews?
Misconduct@startrek.website 1 year ago
I primarily use it. What sucks about it? It isn’t as flashy without those little quick answers that Google throws together, but those are garbage a lot of the time anyway imo. Otherwise, I don’t really have any issues finding what I need that I can think of
supercriticalcheese@feddit.it 1 year ago
You are not going to get a more constructive criticism from OP.
I use mainly ddg but I have occasionally needed to switch to Google, but it’s happening less and less.
But then again with Google you need to frequently add keywords such as discussions or Reddit to find something that in the word’s of OP doesn’t suck balls.
Tschuuuls@feddit.de 1 year ago
Only thing I miss is Google shopping sometimes. That actually is really useful when you need a super obscure part that’s not available on ebay or Amazon and just sold on three random websites. Google shopping will show them and let you compare prices perfectly.
SnowdenHeroOfOurTime@unilem.org 1 year ago
I have been trying to use it for years but it just literally has a lot of issues with pretty normal search queries that worked perfectly on Google 15 years ago.
I want it to be good. But it’s not.
someguy3@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I find the results suck donkey balls.
3v1n0@feddit.it 1 year ago
Don’t agree.
I switched from Google quite recently, as I knew it was hard…
But now I’m mostly not using
!gunless for fewcache:searches or when I want use few features (sport results, without going to specific websites).You’ve to use some search syntax items more as
+but otherwise it’s quite good and clear to read.
mightygalahad@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Doesn’t Google pay billions to Apple for the top spot? Why would they want to lose that stream of free cash?
utopiah@lemmy.world 1 year ago
If the goodwill they garner from that makes APPL go up because it matches the privacy expectation they are branding themselves with, they might be making even more money anyway.
Da_Boom@iusearchlinux.fyi 1 year ago
I mean, it makes sense, DDG already use apple maps for their maps platform.
plantedworld@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I started using duck duck go a few months ago and have felt like my search results are a lot more useful since.
The maps function on it sucks though
Mr_Rosewater@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I’ve been using it this way for years. I don’t use google products at all now and don’t miss it.
tiredofsametab@kbin.social 1 year ago
I've been using duckduckgo for the last month and change and I'm not really a fan. Especially for things here in Japan, it can give really wonky results (today I was looking for the closest post office and searched '<cityname> post office'. It gave me a website to get directions, but no indication of where it might be nor, y'know, even the post office's website). Google has gotten continually worse for me, but this was, in most cases, just barely as good or worse.
Scotty_Trees@lemmy.world [bot] 1 year ago
On Safari (iOS), Apple makes it easy to switch. Settings > Safari > Search Engine and select which one you want. I’ve been using DDG not quite a year and at first the change felt a lil jarring, but knowing I’m contributing less to Google’s ad revenue and their long list of privacy violations, I’m comfortable now sticking with DDG. Change isn’t always easy, convenient, or comfortable, but it can be done with just the tiniest bit of effort.
uglyduckling81@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Duck duck go needs a lot of work to replace Google search.
I’ve used it for years but often I still get the shits and just bring Google up after duck duck go fails to find what I’m looking for.
autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] 1 year ago
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Oct 4 (Reuters) - Apple (AAPL.O) held talks with DuckDuckGo to replace Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O) Google as the default search engine for the private mode on Apple’s Safari browser, the Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the discussions.
The details of the talks are expected to be released later this week, according to the report, after Judge Amit Mehta, overseeing a federal antitrust suit against Google, ruled on Wednesday that he would unseal the testimony of DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg and Apple executive John Giannandrea.
Apple, DuckDuckGo and Google did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Last month, the U.S. Department of Justice in a landmark U.S. trial argued Google, which has some 90% of the search market, illegally paid $10 billion annually to smartphone makers such as Apple and wireless carriers like AT&T (T.N) and others to be the default in search on their devices in order to stay on top.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella testified on Monday, saying that tech giants were competing for vast troves of content needed to train artificial intelligence, and complained Google was locking up content with expensive and exclusive deals with publishers.
He added that Microsoft had sought to make its Bing search engine the default on Apple smartphones but was rebuffed.
The original article contains 241 words, the summary contains 214 words. Saved 11%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Nihilore@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I tried to switch to DDG as my default search on iOS but my adblocker doesn’t block ads on it but it does on google, so I switched back
Countmacula@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Is ddg any good?
I feel like Bing would just be better at this point.
arin@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Did DDG move away from consolidating results from Google and other engines?
nix@merv.news 1 year ago
Surprised they dont buy kagi tbh
irotsoma@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Duck duck go is crap these days, probably since it uses Bing. All I ever get are “7 best ways to…” click bait, probably AI generated “articles”.
1984@lemmy.today 1 year ago
They should make a deal with Kagi if they had any brains.
Harry_h0udini@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
Vote for Brave search.
Smokeydope@lemmy.world 1 year ago
This is a copy/pasted message I wrote up on another thread. As long as there are people in the comments shilling kagi, I will shill my prefered engines. At least my suggestions will bring awareness to free as in freedom projects.
SearX/SearXNG is a free and open source, highly customizable, and self-hostable meta search engine. SearX instances act as a middle man, they query other search engines for you, stripping all their spyware ad crap and never having your connection touch their servers. Of course you have to trust the SearX instance host with your query information, but again if you are that paranoid just self host.
I personally also trust some foss loving sysadmin that host social services for free out of alturism, who also accepts hosting donations, with my info over Google/Alphabet any day.
Heres a list of all public searx instances, I personally prefer to use paulgo.io All SearX instances are configured different to index different engines. If one doesn’t seem to give good results try a few others.
Did I mention it has bangs like duckduckgo? If you really need google like for maps and buisness info just use !!g in the query
search.marginalia.nu is a completely novel search engine written and hosted by one dude that aims to prioritize indexing lighter websites little to no javascript as these tend to be personal websites and homepages that have poor SEO and the big search engines won’t index well. If you remember the internet of the early 2000s and want a nostalgia trip this ones for you
Finally, YaCy is another completely novel search engine that uses p2p technology to power a big webcrawler which prioritizes indexes based off user queries and feedback. Everyone can download yacy and devote a bit of their computing power to help out a collective search engine. Companies can also download yacy and use it to index their private intranets. They have a public instance available through a web portal. Its not a great search engine for what most people want, which is quick and relevant information within the first few clicks. But it is an interesting use of technology and what a true honest-to-god community-operated search engine would look like untainted by SEO scores.
I hope this has been informative to those who believe theres only a few options to pick from, I hate to be the ‘bhut achthually’ guy but know these options are so unknown to most people.
TwoGems@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Thank you! So I can use Google but stop it from doing the CAPCHA shit repeatedly because it detects my VPN? It’s abuse of the user and I’m tired of it.
Smokeydope@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Yup! Enjoy :)
dependencyInjection@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
I rage quit Google search the other day over that damn captcha
ShittyRedditWasBetter@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Abuse of the user 🤣
Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg 1 year ago
I don’t mind you suggesting these, they’re cool projects, but the “coMmEnTs sHiLLinG kAgI” and “mAke UsE of tHat 10$ beTteR thAn KaGi” stuff is so unnecessary. I mean just… why?
Smokeydope@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I have a bad habit of mixing personal bias into things when I get into a passionate writing fit and it sometimes comes off as pretentious dickery. I never set out to attack kagi users themselves even if I can now see now it did come across and those comments were unneeded. I was being a pretentious jerk with those comments and apologize to all you kagi users for my assholery.
Its fustrating as a FOSS nerd to see so many people shill yet another subscription based service feeding money into another souless company that makes promises of protecting your data and not selling it to ad companies now but has no gaurentee of holding those promises over time. That’s how the subscription services get you once they have you, slowly changing promises and creeping in their money making bs but slowly enough to not be too jarring. Maybe I’m just disillusioned with things after being burned so many times. Best of luck to you though I hope it continues to be a valuable service to those willing to pay for it.
2xsaiko@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year ago
I use Kagi right now but search.marginalia.nu and YaCy seem really cool. Hell, I might package YaCy and write a module for it for NixOS :^)
clearedtoland@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I’m trying Kagi now but I’m having mixed feelings. Search results are mixed at best for some pretty commonplace topics (e.g. Starfield quests or breaking news).
Also, the search limit (for the trial and basic plans) stresses me and I find myself second guessing whether I really need to search for something. I like it but I haven’t come across a “wow!” moment that makes me want to abandon DDG, despite the transparency and privacy-focus.
sebinspace@lemmy.world 1 year ago
uuuuusing it
doktorseven@lemmy.world 1 year ago
When you need a scalable service for tons of users, federated isn’t going to cut it. This is why Apple wants DDG. Point the bajillion crApple lusers at one of your public instances and watch it crash and burn overnight. DDG has tons of servers and the infrastructure to hold up while a ton of people search why their luxury device is slowing down every time Apple releases a new one.
dm_me_your_feet@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Lol Federation is the definition of scalable. Everyone serves their local users -> a miniscule amount of global traffic, everything but auth always stays local.
Universities have been doing it since the beginning of the internet. Email is the biggest exampley but there are others: eduGAIN and eduroam are the most notable ones coming out of the academic community.
catapult7724@lemmy.sdfeu.org 1 year ago
Thank you! I’m intrigued by Kagi but it’s a lot of money. I’ve tried SearXNG before it wasn’t great for me, I’ll try it again.
Smokeydope@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I hope you find more success with it this time. Like I said not all SearXNG instances are equal paulgo.io was the first to really click with me and give useful results. Some SearXNG instances won’t query google or most other engines making their usefulness rather limited. Also the more popular an instance becomes the more likely it will be rate-limited by search engines which isn’t the fault of the instance but can be an annoyance for sure. Not perfect solution by any means but I think SearX would be a great fit for lots of people here who just want google results without all the spyware ad bs
Moderator@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
My issue with SearXNG is that I cannot natively use it on mobile (iOS). Might be a small issue for most but I need to be able to type into my browser’s search bar and it utilize that search engine. Open browser > navigate to search homepage > enter query is a lot slower, especially if I am out and about and need information quickly.
If there is some way to configure this I’d love to hear about it, but Safari on iOS limits you to a handful of search engines. I use DDG today.
Smokeydope@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I did a quick search and found instructions to what I think you are asking for hopefully this helps.
AProfessional@lemmy.world 1 year ago
xSearch on the AppStore lets you use any search engine with Safari.
Smokeydope@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Hey just to update I heard XSearch works if that other thing didn’t work out
LucidNightmare@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Saved. Thank you for your time and thoroughness!
Deebster@programming.dev 1 year ago
Shilling means that you’re claiming people (like me) who’ve been recommending Kagi are in fact secretly paid to do covert advertising.
Are you using that word wrong, or do you actually believe that we’re all liars?
sir_reginald@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I don’t know what the fuck is going on with Kagi on Lemmy. They must be using bots or paying people for promoting them. I just don’t get how people can trust them so much when they haven’t released the code for anything, they require you to be logged in which makes the user uniquely identifiable and therefore could easily correlate your searches to your identity (even if they claim not to, it’s just a “trust me, bro”)
ryannathans@aussie.zone 1 year ago
What is a kagi
pearsche@lemdro.id 1 year ago
i have tried these alternate search engines and I have to always come back to google. A friend I trust a lot swears that kagi is the best search engine, and so do other people I know, so it must have some merit.
ChucklesMcGee@infosec.pub 1 year ago
thank you, great post
yoz@aussie.zone 1 year ago
Thanks Yacy looks promising
Smokeydope@lemmy.world 1 year ago
You’re welcome updated the comment with proper links