Hard disagree with that, DDG searches are accurate about 90% of the time that I use it (which as a web dev is quite a lot) if they aren’t hitting Google with the same term rarely wields any better results.
Apple Maps and Fastmail.
Fastmail is paid but the 1Password and disposable email address system makes it worth it for me.
I went through a period of de-googling a couple of years ago. Swapping browser, mobile os, search engine, storage, maps, music, video purchases, voice assistant and even email service was relatively simple, there are alternatives out there which do the job just as well if not better than what Google offer.
The only exception is YouTube, yea there are individual sites that occasionally offer some of the videos I want (often with a subscription attached), there are some federated systems like NewPipe which have some videos but there is no one offering remotely the quantity or quality of what you can get on YouTube for free.
As the article states, it’s basically a monopoly at this point without a viable alternative.
Arc is weird but pretty good once you get used to it.
DuckDuckGo is good if you want a minimal browser and don’t really care about extensions
Brave is OK if you want a slightly more private version of Chrome
Honestly though, just use Firefox.
The problem was that people weren’t really interested in any of it.
The UI was cluttered and messy to look at, none of it was as polished or natural to use as iOS or Android.
Plus there was no Google Maps, no Google Docs (and Office 365 wasn’t around to replace it), even that apps that were in the store felt pretty bad quality. I had Spotify on my iPhone and it was nearly flawless, when I switched to Windows Phone it kept cutting out or crashing or disconnecting from the mobile connection, it just wasn’t fully baked.
I’ve seen a few video games and movies that I’ve gone on to look into from YouTube ads.
90% of them are total annoying bollocks though.
/r/webdev and /r/formulae are the main ones I miss.
This is how I do it.
I pay for Netflix, Prime (only really for the free shipping), Disney+, Apple TV+ and Spotify, if it’s not on any of these then I’m going to pirate it.
The whole exclusivity stuff is just rubbish, I get the reasoning but if you can’t make your content easily accessible then I just don’t want to pay for it.
YSK that YouTube Premium can be bought over a VPN for a whole lot less than the regular retail price, it’s a bit fiddly to set up but I’ve got a Nigerian based family account that costs me £1.76 a month.
I wish this was the case with Brexit…
the more traditional style of forums are still around too.
They’re very rare these days though. It’s a whole lot easier to keep all your interests in one place rather than heading off to one forum for gaming chat and another for programming chat and another for gardening chat.
Keeping it all in a single feed means your interest can be piqued at random times and you’ll be more likely to interact.
Just checking I’ve got them all?
Quick PSA: they don’t currently block VPNs, so you can sign up for an account in a cheap country (I picked Nigeria) and use a foreign currency debit card (I use Revolut) to get Premium for like £1.50 a month for my entire family.
If they close that loophole then I think I’ll be done with it, the ads make it basically unusable these days.