The final push to start using Firefox over Chrome on Android might finally be thanks to the enormous selection of add-ons (Firefox’s version of extensions) coming out next month. Chrome doesn’t offer native support for extensions in its mobile app. Also, better security.
You’re jumping from duckduckgo? Where to & why? I ask as a fellow DDG user.
I think they meant the DDG android browser.
Oh, gotcha. Yeah, honestly mixing my browser & search engine has a bad smell to it, whether it’s google, Microsoft or DDG providing them. I don’t want to give anyone that level of end-to-end control.
yeah you’re right. The DDG Android browser has been my default up until now
Personally I quit using ddg. Duckduckgo uses Microsoft’s Bing API I jumped atleast two years ago from ddg. They seem to be buddy buddy with Microsoft, they have a history for it. Oh and remember when ddg use to talk about filter bubbles, well now they support filter bubbles.
I think this is because they have so much more users now then they did back then so now they are forgeting small parts of their original purpose. While keeping the one big one, privacy. We’l see how long ddg protects that without getting caught doing more shady stuff with Microsoft. Yes I said more, they were caught before allowing ads on Microsoft website in the ddg android browser once before.
Yes, I remember hearing something about this.
I wonder if there’s a way to federate a search engine. I wonder what that would even look like. Federating indices/results but allowing users to search from whatever instance they want? Maybe?
Maybe that’s an okay use case for federation or maybe not, but clearly we need to move away from centralised search engines because they always get corrupted by greed.
This exists already, it’s called Searxng. The instances don’t federate with each other necessarily but rather with actual search engines. But each instance of searxng is hosted by a different person. and so you might notice different resaults on one server vs the next. https://searx.space/
I understand your concern, this is actually why I dropped Ecosia (because they got closer to Microsoft)
It’s worth mentioning that DDG has since distanced themselves from Microsoft after the blow back, so while Ecosia got closer, DDG (AFAIK from the documentation I read) no longer has any partnerships in place. I don’t get paid either way, so it doesn’t matter to me but just FYI
https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/05/duckduckgo-microsoft-tracking-scripts/
https://spreadprivacy.com/more-privacy-and-transparency/
They do have a good overall ui, but the trust in them is less then it was before. Even if they did stop doing partnerships with Microsoft they also stopped keeping their users out of the filter bubble, meaning they filter search resualts out, while before they use to claim they didn’t do that.
They do have a good overall ui, but the trust in them is less then it was before. Even if they did stop doing partnerships with Microsoft they also stopped keeping their users out of the filter bubble, meaning they filter search resualts out, while before they use to claim they didn’t do that.