Friday, April 13, 2012

I use Google, but should I?

Gmail is convenient. The Crabgrass blog is posted and hosted via Blogger, a Google product. Google Scholar is a fine product and Google searches seem to always return something, often much, that is useful.

But consider this, if you think you may want to use an opposition product. If you want to find out more about Duck Duck Go, you can Google it. Search it on Dogpile.

And, What is the search filter bubble - and should you care? Here. Also, here.

You have to appreciate the Duck Duck Go presentations - a Tenth District Minnesota judge could understand them and find them convincing. Note how the illustrated presentations are featured atop the Duck Duck privacy page. And while Duck Duck Go tells a good tale, I cannot vouch for it being true. Can you?

But is anything perfect? This link. Consider trying

search=download open-source software office suites

with Bing, with Duck Duck Go, and with Google. Note that Bing is the least helpful for the search, it being Microsoft's search tool and with Office being a major Microsoft cash cow search bias is expected. On that comparative search, look for a link to quickly get to a download of Libre Office. Oracle, after purchasing Sun and not wanting to maintain Open Office orphaned it to the Apache Software Foundation and it now is in the Apache incubation phase of things - but a US thing. Libre Office is a European fork of Open Office started before Oracle freed the product but while Oracle simply sat doing nothing to maintain it.

Politics of search? Answer that for yourself.