[–] RedditDead2005-2015 0 points 2 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago
Well, I have to admit I get some free, useful things from Google in exchange for their data collection: GMail, Google Music, Google storage, Google Maps, and searches which allow me to get any shows and movies that I want. I can't say the same for Bing or Yahoo! Search. Google collects my data and I don't like it, but I am using them too.
[–] rwbj 0 points 2 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago
I don't think datamining itself is inherently unethical. The reason I stopped using Google stuff is when they started to try to use coercion to increase their bottom line. So for instance they removed all YouTube downloaders from their plugin store and then made it absolutely impossible to install third party plugins from anywhere except said store. That's just lame and abusive.
[–] 404_SLEEP_NOT_FOUND 1 point 2 points 3 points (+3|-1) ago (edited ago)
Maybe Chromium is an alternative to Chrome...?
edit: Downvotes for asking a question...?
[–] arrggg 0 points 7 points 7 points (+7|-0) ago
For those that do not believe what the title says, here are a few detailed explanations.
Google is not what it seems - https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/
How the CIA made Google - https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-google-e836451a959e#
Why Google made the NSA https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/why-google-made-the-nsa-2a80584c9c1#
[–] rwbj 0 points 6 points 6 points (+6|-0) ago (edited ago)
I installed Pale Moon maybe an hour ago and was actually thinking about making a post about it. It's a FireFox fork that has stripped out the bloat of FireFox along with their misguided attempt to look like Chrome, cleaned up the codebase, and overall runs vastly better and in my opinion looks better as well.
I'd heard people recommend it because of the performance issue but never really bothered because I figured it couldn't be 'that big' a difference. Oh it is. Especially if you're like me and have a habit of having some odd 70 tabs open. It's running buttery smooth and doesn't have FireFox's arbitrarily memory leaks and constant CPU spiking (why is a browser spiking my CPU up ~10% when idle?). Anyhow, yeah. It's good stuff.
edit Google alternatives: I think Google still has the clearly best search engine. You can get the best of both worlds of privacy and search performance by using https://search.disconnect.me/. It lets you pick a search engine, including google, and returns results directly from it while acting as a middle man to avoid the snooping and datamining. They have plugins available for all major browsers to search using them from your URL bar as well.
[–] Donttazemebro ago
The more we use DDG the better they'll get. The more funding they can receive and the better their service can become. I use Google when I really have to find something unique otherwise ive been content with DDG. Been using it about 2 months now.
[–] [deleted] ago (edited ago)
[–] Donttazemebro 0 points 2 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago
I've switched to ublock Orgin and have been pretty pleased. Also using it on my Android in the Firefox browser. I love the feature that allows me to use a selector to view certain objects and their coding, then can block or allow it. I had a website that would constantly crash my graphics card, I ended up using ublock to find the specific issue and kill it.
[–] [deleted] 0 points 8 points 8 points (+8|-0) ago
[–] BlubberyMuffin 0 points 9 points 9 points (+9|-0) ago
If you'd like to use Firefox without contributing to mozilla's social justice platform I suggest WaterFox or Pale Moon.
[–] [deleted] 0 points 2 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago
[–] Spar7an 0 points 2 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago
what?
[–] Esqueleto ago
Waterfox is no alternative. It is the EXACT same thing as firefox. Firefox, being open source, can have it's sourcecode downloaded by anyone. Waterfox is some 14 year old who compiled it for 64x architecture instead of 86x. There is no difference in code and waterfox is slower to get updates. Pale Moon is an entire fork of Firefox 23 (pre australis) what has been maintained apart from Mozilla for the last few years.