Technology – Just thoughts

It’s always worth reviewing which search engine you should use, as it is the browser of choice to “surf the web”. The reasons you might wish to consider which search engine you might wish to use are greater privacy, enhanced security, minimise adverts being displayed, or to get more meaningful pages being displayed, but first we’ll look at the web browser you might want to use.

First things first. If you’re using Internet Explorer you must seriously consider moving to Edge as Microsoft are removing support for Internet Explorer and one day you’ll find it just doesn’t work. If you’re using the initial release of Edge you should also upgrade to the latest version. It’s faster, more stable and uses the same code base (which is the open source Chromium) as some of the other browsers I’ll talk about later.

The next thing to remember is that Google is not a Browser. If you have a Google app on your smart device, it’s just Google’s “convenient” way of getting you to use their search engine and capture lots of useful marketing data from you! Google’s browser is called Chrome, and it uses the same code base as Edge (as mentioned above) – others include Brave, Opera and Vivaldi.

Chrome is by far the most popular browser accounting for more than 80% of the internet browser traffic, it has a wide range of useful extensions, and if you can be bothered to create a Google account and navigate through the preference screens, you can make it reasonably private – but you may wish to install the AdBlock Plus extension – an advert blocker, to stop intrusive adverts appearing on your web pages. [Another way of doing this is to look for Reader View, created for users with visual disability originally, which simplifies the view of a page on your browser screen.

But why use Chrome when you can use another browser which has built-in privacy. I’m talking about Brave. You can deploy many of Chrome’s extensions in Brave and virtually everything you see looks like Chrome, but without tying you to Google. I seriously recommend you look at Brave.

If not Brave, why not Microsoft Edge. The complete re-write of Edge using Chromium and with the support of Microsoft behind it makes this an excellent choice for those who use a lot of Microsoft applications (eg Office 365 which you can run in the browser, just as you can run the Google apps in Chrome) and is growing fast in popularity even if it’s Preferences menus are a bit tricky to work your way through.

If you’re an Apple user, I suggest you look no further than Safari, although all of the others can run on MacOS. It’s optimised for the Apple platform and integrates well with the other apps in the Mac/iPhone/iPad ecosystem.

That leaves two “outliers”. Firefox was one of the first browsers growing out the original work done on Netscape, it’s open source and has a huge and committed user-base. I have nothing to say against it, and nothing much to say for it either. It’s a good solid internet browser.

A couple of references to follow this up then …

The best web browsers for 2022 – ranks them under various categories.

The top ten internet browsers for 2022 – reviews the pluses and minuses of various browsers.

So we turn to Search Engines. You want to find something out on the internet – you just google it, don’t you? Well you can, but there are other choices as well, and this is where privacy concerns might suggest you might want to look at an alternative.

I’ll be upfront. I’ve been using DuckDuckGo (often in combination with Brave) for a couple of years now. I value the fact that my activity on the internet isn’t tracked and the results that are returned are not slanted towards my prior search history, and most importantly my activities are not farmed off to marketing agencies.

There’s nothing wrong with Google Search – it’s the most popular on the internet, but that’s by default rather than choice. The results are presented well, but there is a slant towards promoted results and results based on previous searches. You can change your search preferences a bit, deploy an ad blocker (see above), but why should you haver to!

DuckDuckGo is now presented as an alternative search engine in most, if not all, browsers and exists as an app on smart devices as well. Give a try! It’s my default search engine on my Apple devices.

The only real alternative to Google Search and DuckDuckGo is Microsoft’s Bing. The service has its origins in Microsoft’s previous search engines: MSN Search, Windows Live Search and later Live Search. Bing is now the code base for Yahoo’s search facility as it is for Ecosia – an ethical green alternative. Ecosia importantly doesn’t use any third-party tracking tools, meaning that any search made on the service won’t be seen by any party other than Ecosia. Furthermore, any search made on Ecosia becomes anonymized after one week. In contrast, Google and Bing will hold onto bits of search data (such as the device or date), even after deleting browser history and cookies.

That’s about it, some references then …

The ten best internet search engines of 2022 – a review, like the one above that highlights strengths and weaknesses of the various search engines.

I doubt whether this is the only post with this title being written this week.

I have to admit that my usage of twitter has shrunk to just the casual glance at Notifications, and certainly not the eyes-glued on the twitter-stream that it used to be.

Ah! Those were the days. When I used to tweet about my journey on the bus to all and sundry during the early days when I was the self-appointed social media evangelist (or maybe it was even a role I’d been asked to lead on at Cardiff University). As an early adopter of twitter in 2007 I just thought it was wonderful. It complemented the blogposts I wrote, and advised folk of the existence of yet more pearls of wisdom that I felt it necessary to promulgate. I was chatting to an extended circle of friends, family and colleagues who I wasn’t likely to see that day, week, month, or even year. It kept me in touch with like-minded folk. I was also able to laugh with Stephen Fry, and a few others who I didn’t know, but whose views I respected. All was well in the twitterverse.

Things of course changed over time, and I won’t detail those changes, and of course we arrive at the state of play we have today. Quel domage. Things will never be the same again for twitter. I will probably still post notifications of blogposts – perhaps even this one – on my profile, but it will be done with a heavy heart.

Others have written that this could mark the end of twitter, and even the beginning of the end for open public discourse. I’m not going to get into that discussion, but I am going to reflect on the journey of social media and ponder aloud whether there is a way ahead for respectful open discussion on the internet.

Let’s start with Facebook. {Must we, everyone who might read this will know how much I dislike Meta and all it’s done to the pre-advert, pre-tracking, original Fb, then Instagram, and then later still WhatsApp} All that was good about the concept was lost in the need to monetise the platform. And its our fault! If we didn’t want/need to get something for nothing, if we didn’t put a value on software or the service that was being provided, it was inevitable that Fb would go down the path it went. The rest is history. Bye, bye Facebook – for me at least.

Then there was Google+. Great idea; great concept; but again Google was unable to monetise what became a closed social community. Google had been able to get marketing information from its other services – Gmail, Photos, Maps, etc etc, but Google+ wasn’t bringing in any revenue. It had to go, erstwhile under the excuse of security holes that were too difficult/expensive to fix. A lame excuse imho.

I’ve dealt with my worries about WhatsApp previously. Suffice to say that I still don’t trust Meta, and so my stance on using the application is unchanged. I lurk (as I do on Facebook and Instagram by the way), but I don’t contribute and I always Log Out when I’ve finished lurking!

And so we arrive at Social Media 2.0, or perhaps I’ll call it Simple Social Media for Simple Folk, or What you Want is What you’ll Get – remember WYSIWYG. People want segmentation, to be able to communicate with others of a like mind, in a safe, unpolluted space. Whilst in that space they don’t want to be shouted at, trolled, insulted or bullied – for that they can stay on twitter.

I’ve thrown myself into using Signal. I have many groups that I’ve either created, or am a member of. It’s easy to join, or leave, a group, and I use it as a substitute for Messaging apps as well for 1-to-1 chats. Keeping all such communication in the same place. Its an Open Source platform, and the happenings of the past week are making me think I should subscribe to it, to help ensure its survival. I evaluated some alternatives here and here – and plumped on Signal and Discord. The latter got me thinking of whether it was possible to have an open group/channel in Signal that you could join – like twitter; but I have rolled-back on that idea. I rather like the peace and quiet of Signal. If I want noise I can always go on Discord.

So that’s where I am. A bit of a rant, some reflection, and a lot of regret that an old friend is going the way of other old friends.

Perhaps the lesson to be learnt is that if something is worthwhile and important in your life – pay something to use it. Don’t expect to get anything for free without compromising something – and this most probably will be tracking what you do, security concerns and almost certainly a loss of privacy. Subscription services are not really that expensive. You pay for your mobile phone service, why balk at paying for the software that runs on it?

Also, consider using Open Source software wherever possible – the people who contribute to writing it almost universally have their hearts and minds in the right place – so help them with monetary contributions to keep them going. [Did you know that the code that forms the basis of WhatsApp came from the original Signal team.]

Category: Technology

Browsers and Search Engines – 2022

Share this:

Share this: