Eh...Google even 5 years ago was 10x more useful to me than they are now. No exaggeration.

Even Search has become markedly less useful, a common story around here, to the point where even nonbubbled proxied Startpage.com searches are disappointing.

Maps becomes less reliable all the time from a user perspective (in my immediate region, to cover my ass I guess).

Chromecast and YouTube, in general and in conjunction, have become...bloated, buggy, user-tracking-first embarrassments of their original versions...don't get me started on Gmail.... if you're gonna take all my info, at least be good at your services. Especially the ones I pay for.

Plus they could easily survive for decades fulfilling only the niche market who cares about privacy. They may never need to be the "big fish", which will involve compromising their users security, and therefore lose a lot of their value proposition.

Even having 1-5% of the search market is a pretty great business. Not everyone needs to be Google-scale to be a success.

Does anyone know if there's folks working to build a better mousetrap where search is a protocol that anyone could use, not a company service?

Personally I find their writing mean... I do not love the super optimistic marketing lingo, but DDG sometimes sounds too vicious in their blog. (I still use them as main search engine, but I am not sure I would like them to go mainstream)

Apple’s main business is hardware, and software that helps sell the hardware. Any revenue from data is likely a seperate, minor stream; and for it to become a significant one, likely requires significant changes in Apple’s operations. Like any other hardware company, they don’t need google’s kind of data collection to make money.

But DDG is primarily funded by search, and the search business is funded by ads, which are more valuable based on targetting quality, which is improved by... data. About the unique user, specifically. For DDG to grow while maintaining search as it’s primary business, it’s difficult to imagine them not eventually (or at least, being heavily incentivized to) approach/mimic google-style of data collection — because data collection is their money maker.

Apple is unique amongst FAANG in being non-data-reliant, from the start; they never had strong incentives to turn to it, and took the opportunity to stand against it, improving their primary business without any immediate loss (they’re hit by opportunity cost for it, but otherwise).

Oh please! Apple may not represent the same privacy clusterfuck that Google does, but that doesn't make them good. They still are absolutely abhorrent with regards to vendor lock-in and planned obsolescence.

My point is that right now, DDG too small to do any real harm to anyone. Their questionable word choice in announcements and blog posts signal to me that they're willing to take shortcuts to achieve their bottom line. If they grow big enough, these shortcuts will start actually hurting people.

>Apple proves that does not have to be the case.

Apple was part of the PRISM program.

Apple is a hardware company from the start, their strategy has been fixed long before other Internet companies figured the value of customer data.

Their narrative of being privacy enforcer aids their strategy of building closed systems.

I'm not telling Apple is deceiving its customers with the privacy narrative, but it isn't a guardian of privacy either; if it was it wouldn't have entered CHINA like other comments have pointed out.

That because Apple isn't primarily a Web or services company.

Any company who's business revolves around online ads will be tempted to invade your privacy.

See: http://peakads.org

Make no mistake, Apple is a multi-national megacorp just like Google and Microsoft, and is heavily influenced by shareholder sentiment. When push comes to shove, they will bow to political pressure, as exemplified by Tim Cook's praise for China's conference promoting "cyber-sovereignty" as "a digital economy for openness", and their ceding of China iCloud keys to China servers.

Apple does business in China. So not a good case for privacy.

> Apple proves that does not have to be the case.

By handing over all iCloud data of Chinese users to the Chinese government?

You surely must be jesting!

I don't pay attention to renewable energy marketing, but I don't think they attack Exxon as much as DDG attacks Google.

I think a closer analogy is health food companies advertising that misrepresents the benefits of organic foods.

Yeah, but in this analogy your favorite renewable energy company just announced one of their products is now produced by Chevron. Which is not Exxon and therefore, ostensibly, a huge win for renewables.

> The premium market will pay to not deal with this nonsense.

And thus stand out for targeting purposes regardless.

The tag line was actually « Don’t be evil ». It was never an official motto afaik.

“Certainly”? I doubt the deservedness of that certainty.

DDG satisfies most of my searches on the first go, and I’ve never had success with !g after a failed DDG query.

Furthermore, the Google results has a cluttered design with sparse information, so it takes much longer to figure out that I haven’t found what I’m looking for.

I’d say Google is the one failing to compete on search quality. At one point they did, but now Google’s consumer products compete on brand awareness and price, which they can only do because of their conquests in the advertising industry. Most people are not Google’s customer, they are part of Google’s enterprise product: the attention of people whose data profiles meet various requirements.

True

Of course not. Whose credit card statement includes a listing of the individual items you purchased at a store during a particular transaction?