POLL: Default web search engine in Elive?

When you open your web browser, which is the search engine you would like or expect to have appearing by default?

  • Google
  • DuckDuckGo
  • I want a popup asking me that when I boot elive

0 voters

We need more than 100 votations to be considered, but we have another poll in the website too

Actually there are more contenders than these 2.
All have issues and their specialities.
There's:

  1. Startpage (that uses Google)
  2. DuckduckGo (that uses Bing)
  3. Ecosia (plants trees with what they earn and uses Bing)
  4. Brave (not sure about that one, apparently an own built-in)
  5. Tor browser search engine (built-in Duckduckgo over the TOR network)

These search engines form a layer between you and the those wishing to track you...not a fool-proof protection but an extra anonymizing layer.
Of course there's always the option to use the search engines directly (Google, Bing or Yahoo) and anyone can always "enable" those in the browser settings.

The question should be:

Do we want Elive to promote Google by making it the default search engine or should we look for better (privacy minded) alternatives?

That would be a simple Yes/No thing.

2 Likes

Is not so simple, of course everybody would want more privacy (or also there's some people that preffers to have suggested results because google already makes you a profile of a X-language programmer, which loves X-music, etc, etc...), but if im (me) going to sacrifice usability for privacy i preffer usability, google imho is a good search engine, bing is not... and I didnt' know duckduckgo uses bing too :frowning: :frowning_face:

dude. microsoft is "more usable" for end users, yet we use linux as a base. why? because we hate M$

Same thing with google. Even if its more usable than DDG, WE ARE ELIVE.

Finally, startpage is a proxy to google that strips identifying information

1 Like

You don't have to if you use i.e Startpage as an intermediate for Google.

And it's actually the other way round:
You are prepared to sacrifice privacy for a perceived (not factual) usability.....you've been hooked, line and sinker.
In general ease of use combined with "no cost" is a privacy trap, there's a heavy cost in the long term.

2 Likes

Exactly. Why did Google make the omnibar? Probably to make people rely on google, not even knowing what a URL is (no joke some people I know don't know).

Or maybe I'm going on one of my conspiracy tangetnts again. :sweat_smile:

1 Like

Quite a lot of (even well educated) people don't know that. I found out when telling them to type a specific URL into the top bar of their browser. :shocked:

We all know google is using our info to target us for publicity.
:sob:
But google does return really better results than any other search engine ....
you can use tor proxies to stay anonymous if you are really affraid of google and ABC.
But it will slow your browser ... Nothing is really free it seems ...

1 Like

Not if you use Startpage.

Well FOSS is as close as it gets. :wink:

The (meta)data Google sells does very much more than that ..... if it were only for publicity targeting it'd be relatively benign.
Tech behemoths like Google have more power and gather more data than any government (including China) can. Slowly but surely they are creating a public acceptance that they will be the sole warden of our digital personality.

Alas this stewardship is not out of the goodness of their hearts but a way to mine people as a resource .... it's slavery in every sense.
There will be a moment where they know, store and sell more about you and your habits than you know about yourself and there will NOT be a way to even check or correct that.

After the Climate crisis, the Privacy crisis will be the next big fight .... both originate in a neo-liberal capitalism that allows a small group of powerfull people to exploit any resource available to them, regardless of the consequences.

Getting of my soapbox now. :sniff:

2 Likes

As to the results and interface, let's put it this way (a picture says more than a thousand words):

  1. Startpage:

  2. Google:

  3. DuckduckGo:

  4. Ecosia:

And
5. Bing:

In all cases I've used an adblocker and disabled cross site scripting i.e all are different tabs on the same Browser (FF) instance.

Personally, I very much like the clean and simple interface that Startpage offers. Especially the lack of click-bait.

And then tthere are the non-English search engines:
1.Yandex

and

  1. Baidu (where I don't have Chinese fonts installed)

This is a good breakdown. I voted for Google because of its efficacy, but Startpage is more in-tune with my ethic, so to speak. The choice made here will inevitably say something about how people perceive Elive - so this bears some thinking. Ultimately, of course, people will be free to pick whatever they want...

The comparison clearly shows that this perceived efficacy is actually almost non-existant in the case of an "Elive" search.
A perception doubtlessly fueled by Google itself, aided by clever usage of cookies, cross-scripting and tracking. :magick:

Indeed, it would be great if first-timers opened up Chromium (our default) for a test run and find it pre-configured with an ad-blocker, privacy enhanced, snappy and Elive themed(like for FF).
Remember this one?

It would greatly enhance the feeling of being welcome and taken care of by a well thought out OS with the users interests at heart.

About startpage: since it uses the google results instead of bing-crap (like all the other options) I think startpage is the only one that could be a candidate

That's not conspiracy, is basic "marketing" strategies, just like any enterprise on this monetary-based world is promoted / pushed to do :slight_smile:

Don't compare apples with bananas, the OS is the full system your computer, the way and how you use it, the search engine is just an external service connected to a specific application on your operating system, it has no relation to your OS choice.

MS is shit in every sense and every thing that touches becomes rotten poop, their monopol is dangerous, everybody knows how bad is that and keyra can confirm this :slight_smile: , and no, hating is not a good reason, I use linux because gives me thousands times more possibilities than M$hit, about tools, about customization, about resources, about fast way of work, about automation... only radical people would use linux instead of MS just because they hate MS but they probably don't even need a computer after all, i'm talking about the choice of the OS as a better alternative, usability, and possibilities, using linux (or let's say Elive) as the OS in your computer instead of MS is an entire difference in what your computer is, how you use it and what you can do with it. But in that sentence you are saying that we should not use google because we use elive, and this has no relation with the OS but is a personal choice, is the same as debating about using a different internet provider because the X company sucks, yes you use it with your computer but is an external service, just like the google search or other one, and the important is to let the user be able to select which one to use, some wants privacy-free ones or others like me prefer google due to its quality results, reliability etc, i'm also happy with this "profile tracking" system because the results are improved in the topics that im interested into (of course im talking about my own choice here).


But about the default setting, why is a so big problem if first: the user can select which one to use (just like many applications that has default settings and the user configures it), but also how needed is to change the default since:

When the browser is run in a first time, the default page (google) shows up, which is what everybody expects / used to have, in that moment, google is not tracking anything (new browser setup, new user, etc...). Since the moment that the user really uses the OS (like, installing on the HD), he setup the browser to have his user (which syncs passwords, bookmarks, settings, etc...) on that moment the default search engine / startup page changes to what the user has configured or wants to have, in all the cases the default page to "google" doesn't matter because in the first moment it doesn't tracks anything (yet), and in the second case the user switches automatically to what he has configured.

What im concerned about changing this default as said many times is that if you remove the google page, some users may feel strange / lost, remember that elive is perfectly usable for old or very-novice people, and showing them a strange / unknown page on the startup may lead to losing users, it is good to have that as an option perfectly selectable, even to promote it (not with an extra annoying popup, we have already too much), but having them as default for everybody i don't think is a good idea, since it is not what the majority wants, and also, the only people that wants that different is the ones that already knows how to change it (instead, the old or very-novice people has no idea or never though that this can be changed).

Privacy is an important and a wanted thing, of course (but maybe not for everybody), google search is only one part of the many privacy issues in the world, other things are needs to be changed too, so I think the first thing we should do to improve the privacy on Elive and let everybody enjoy it is to write a very well documented & complete howto, easy to understand, so that the user can follow a few steps to set his system fully privacy-compliant, we can even include a script tool in the OS & menus to enable privacy features on choice!, but changing this default for everybody I'm not yet convinced that is a good idea.

By other side, I think its much much dangerous the social medias by the 'mr. meta' monopoly (not only because of the monopoly but because their tracking are based in emotions, they profile you on what upsets you and what topics you will vote for), these social medias moves hate in the world, pushes political decisions very easily, and spread the world with official-fake news, I think the world should care much more about these than google, but then, how you can tell people to stop using facebook if everybody is dependent on that and have their families / friends connected from that?

it's a first start, like switching from M$ is a first start.

I don't see what's so FUCKING hard about switching to startpage. It's not even like it has different results.

This is the diatribe you always bring in, Bing is as much crap in its results as Google is. Just look at the comparisons!

Anyway, as always a picture says it all, here's another comparison. This time the first start screen:
Google:

and that compared to first-start Startpage:


Note the "hide promotional ..." here :smiley:

So actually, you are shoving your older and not so digitally gifted users under the privacy bus ..... and that for some proven untenable personal idea that Google is better and wanted.
The visuals on all search pages are fairly similar so the (faulty) UX perspective and what users expect (the same as on M$ ?) isn't valid as an argument.

Sorry mate, you're really losing it there.

It isn't about your love of Google but about how we want to make new Elive adopters feel that they've discovered something nice and new and well thought out. One of the first and most used app on any Desktop is the browser .... so show it some of love.

Only slightly off-topic: :w00t:

I think I war one of the last people who switched to google. I've used altavista and matager (only interesting for german speaking people) in a browser called 'galeon'. A lightweight browser, based on the gecko engine with a tab-management, long before Firefox.
Than Galeon died. Than the first Android phones where available. So Google knows everything about my movement ... I resigned.

Today I am using a lot of google tools, and I am very angry of the high mortal rate.https://killedbygoogle.com/ ... Lately 'Android Auto'.

On my Kali/Tails/Tor Environments I am using duckduckgo. The results may be compromized, but at least my movement data are not tracked.

I do like the option 'ask when start'. Different searchengines are usefull for different purposes. But I also think a lot of people can't decide what is good for them.
My son asked lately, if he can install opera. I wondered why. Less need ot ressourcces? Better AdBlocker? Better session management? No. Because the are lookin better ... Of course, I choose my browser, based on the look of the tabs.

This ist why I voted for DuckDuckGo. This provider is working with the focus on freedom of every user. Even if this project is slightly larger than Elive, the philosophy is the nearest.

Just my 2 cents.

Hi!

And searx.org !?

IH!

2 Likes

forgot about that one.