This is a highly concerning allegation, and it does explain some interesting results I’ve noticed lately. I’ve wondered why, especially when searching for products, an expected result isn’t there unless I invoke it by name. I’d chalked it up to their competition having more mindshare and thus a higher page rank score. Now I’m not so sure.
Worse, it somewhat supports claims that the far-right has been making, although those claims still completely miss the mark.
What annoys me most is that you’ll get that product carousel at the top of sponsored products that aren’t what you want, then 3 or 4 results of sponsored links, then maybe you get the actual thing in the 5th real result.
It’s a really bad search experience.
That’s my experience of it too, and yet the Google users I know refuse to try anything else because they insist every other search engine gives useless results while Google gets it right. Perhaps it depends what kinds of things you tend to search for, but I usually do better with Duck Duck Go, and sometimes even with Bing. People’s love for Google search at this point has to be based in how it used to be, not how it is today.
I’ve thought the same thing, and I’ve concluded there must be a significant percentage of people who use search engines in a completely different way than I do. Like my dad saying to his tablet, “Ok google, play [song from the 1960s].” If people think this is what a search engine is supposed to do, then I imagine a search engine that actually behaves like a search engine would be pretty disappointing.
I think this is it. Google has done an incredible job of making sure you can accomplish a huge amount with very little friction… so long as you do it with their products and give them your data. If that fits your goal, there’s no denying that going all-in on Google is going to work well for you.
If all you want is a place to enter text and get a page of links, not so much.
I can’t say I don’t use Google as I own an unrooted pixel on the Fi network but I’ve done what I’m able to lessen the information given to them by stopping the use of the search engine, browser and sandboxing any Google pages in my FF browser. It started bothering me how much I was relying on one company for nearly everything online.
My next phone will likely be rooted and running a different OS.
Pixel is still one of the best options overall despite other Google enshittification. There are plenty of ways to move away from Google defaults without changing the OS. If that’s not enough, you’d still benefit from their software support. Third party OSes like LineageOS and Graphene can use Google’s updated sources and binary blobs for driving the hardware during the same 5-7 year support lifespan. As a result those OSes should be able to run securely on a Pixel at least till the end of its official support span.
I’m pretty reliant on a couple of big providers I find. Usually Amazon is my first search stop then Google. I find I need to disable my ad blockers to be able to use the sponsored links. I often am searching for a solution product not a specific item so I’m curious about the options. Then I narrow down into specific items which Google does a pretty good job of I find for me.
I was an early Google adopter so I’ve been using Google for a lot of things over the years.
I often use search within Google Maps to find locations hours, reviews on a experience, and a location or business’ website.
I’ve recently switched to Duck Duck Go and FF and I find it might be a familiarity to the types of localized results I miss as I’m still pretty plugged into the Google eco system and duck duck go doesn’t seem to hit the mark as closely for me.
I’m on android and how I protect myself in this phones environment is:
VPN - Mullvad is my go to
App Cloner - Obfuscate and scramble my GPS, Wifi, Phone Model, Google Analytics ID, and MAC address on isolated apps.
Brave Browser- Set to delete cookies, history, ect when it closes
Last Pass - So the above is easier to regain access to accounts
rooting cripples your security and there is little benefit to it.
There’s a lot of benefit to it, and if you don’t install all the crap you find on the internet you’ll be fine.
well sure, for customisation sake there is plenty benefit. the security concerns are more plentiful, however
How does rooting “cripple” security? You still need to give Superuser permission to apps on an individual basis. So long as you only give Superuser permission to widely-used open-source apps, what’s the “crippling” change?
Or do you mean having an unlocked bootloader, which gives anyone with physical access to your device tools to unlock your phone? That’s related, but different, from rooting. And you can lock your bootloader and keep root access, so they aren’t interchangeable.
you can’t lock your bootloader and retain access for one. that’s an easy way to brick your device. it cripples security because in order to gain this access you are patching in the sudo binary (which doesn’t normally exist on Android and is therefore not designed to be securely used) and a bunch of selinux policies that give extremely vague permissions systemwide. data exfiltration is made a much simpler task when a user has rooted their device.
it is also increasing attack surface. you now have to trust that this per app permission model is actually functioning correctly and isn’t exploitable.
edit: it is worth noting that having root access on a desktop Linux system is horribly insecure as well, though. I completely remove sudo on my systems (although considering one can just invoke
su -corsu - rootthat doesn’t help too much in actuality)edit: it is worth noting that having root access on a desktop Linux system is horribly insecure as well, though. I completely remove sudo on my systems (although considering one can just invoke su -c or su - root that doesn’t help too much in actuality)
You have just proven you never or very rarely use a computer. How do you even update the system without sudo or an alternative to it?
Without root permissions you basically can’t manage your system anymore.su -is actually the traditional way of getting superuser permissions on a Linux device—enter your root password, and it gives you a root shell that can perform all administration tasks. I’ve never even hadsudoinstalled on my systems, because it doesn’t improve security for my specific use case. (How relevant is this to the various Android-device-related points? Not at all, really.)
Wired has removed the story because it “does not meet [their] editorial standards”.
It’s time to go monopoly busting!
Who uses google besides my grandma tho?
