Big Tech: alternatives to Google

image credit: https://www.naijaloaded.com.ng

Techspot (h/t Instapundit) has a “Complete List of Alternatives to all Google products.” Here’s the principal search engine section

With growing concerns over online privacy and securing personal data, more people than ever are considering alternatives to Google products. After all, Google’s business model essentially revolves around data collection and advertisements, both of which infringe on your privacy. More data means better (targeted) ads and more revenue. The company pulled in over $116 billion in ad revenue last year alone – and that number continues to grow.

But the word is getting out. A growing number of people are seeking alternatives to Google products that respect their privacy and data. This guide aims to be the most exhaustive resource available for documenting alternatives to Google product. So let’s get started (in no particular order or preference)...

Google search alternatives

When it comes to privacy, using Google search is not a good idea. When you use their search engine, Google is recording your IP address, search terms, user agent, and often a unique identifier, which is stored in cookies.

Here are ten alternatives to Google search:

StartPage – StartPage gives you Google search results, but without the tracking (based in the Netherlands).

Searx – A privacy-friendly and versatile metasearch engine that’s also open source.

MetaGer – An open source metasearch engine with good features, based in Germany.

SwissCows – A zero-tracking private search engine based in Switzerland, hosted on secure Swiss infrastructure.

Qwant – A private search engine based in France.

DuckDuckGo – A private search engine based in the US.

Mojeek – The only true search engine (rather than metasearch engine) that has its own crawler and index (based in the UK).

YaCy – A decentralized, open source, peer-to-peer search engine.

Givero – Based in Denmark, Givero offers more privacy than Google and combines search with charitable donations.

Ecosia – Ecosia is based in Germany and donates a part of revenues to planting trees.

Note: With the exception of Mojeek, all of the private search engines above are technically metasearch engines, since they source their results from other search engines, such as Bing and Google.

Our household is trying out Mojeek; we’ve already started using StartPage and occasionally DuckDuckGo with good results. Techspot’s entire list of alternatives is here.

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Independence Day: on strike against Big Tech

image credit; economist.com

Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia, was on Tucker Carlson this evening to propose something all Big Tech users can do to start to chip away at the out-of-control companies.

On July 4 and 5, Sanger's designated days to make your statement, you can refrain from using your Facebook or Twitter or What’s App, etc. EXCEPT to share your displeasure with Big Tech on your social media.

You can also sign the Declaration of Digital Independence here (I had to try several times to access; traffic was heavy, so just wait a few minutes and try again). Since President Trump indicated to Tucker that his administration may be looking at potential action to rein in Big Tech, perhaps a strong showing on this Declaration will give President Trump additional leverage.

I’ll have more on this topic later this week.

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The Democrat debate: fun photo

A picture is worth a thousand words. Photo via Conservative Treehouse.

From the reader comments: "Perfectly shows the clowns best selling points!"

Click to embiggen or go the link, above.

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Andrew Sullivan on the Democrats’ Immigration Bubble

 photo credit: washingtontimes.com

I run hot and cold on Andrew Sullivan, but his analysis of U.S. immigration, refugee status, and asylum is worth the read. The full article is here. This extract is via Instapundit:

Take the tragic tale of Oscar Ramirez and his young daughter Valeria, the father and daughter captured in death in that heartbreaking photograph. Ramirez’s widow explained to the Washington Post why her husband wanted to move to America: He wanted “a better future for their girl.” This is an admirable goal, but it is classic economic immigration, and it would appear, based on what we know, that it has absolutely nothing to do with asylum. Here again is the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services definition: “Refugee status or asylum may be granted to people who have been persecuted or fear they will be persecuted on account of race, religion, nationality, and/or membership in a particular social group or political opinion.”

But somehow the courts have decided that you qualify for asylum if there is simply widespread crime or violence where you live, and Ramirez was also going to use that argument as well. A government need not persecute you; you just have to experience an unsafe environment that your government is failing to suppress. This so expands the idea of asylum, in my view, as to render it meaningless.

Courts have also expanded asylum to include domestic violence, determining that women in abusive relationships are a “particular social group” and thereby qualify. In other words, every woman on the planet who has experienced domestic abuse can now come to America and claim asylum. Also everyone on the planet who doesn’t live in a stable, orderly, low-crime society. Literally billions of human beings now have the right to asylum in America. . . .

This is in a new century when the U.S. is trying to absorb the largest wave of new immigrants in our entire history, and when the percentage of the population that is foreign-born is also near a historic peak. It is also a time when mass immigration from the developing world has destabilized liberal democracies across the West, is bringing illiberal, anti-immigration regimes to power across Europe, and was the single biggest reason why Donald Trump is president.

I’m told that, as a legal immigrant, I’m shutting the door behind me now that I’ve finally made it to citizenship. I’m not. I favor solid continuing legal immigration, but also a reduction in numbers and a new focus on skills in an economy where unskilled labor is increasingly a path to nowhere. It is not strange that legal immigrants — who have often spent years and thousands of dollars to play by the rules — might be opposed to others’ jumping the line. It is not strange that a hefty proportion of Latino legal immigrants oppose illegal immigration — they are often the most directly affected by new, illegal competition, which drives down their wages. . . .

When I’m told only white racists favor restrictionism, I note how the Mexican people are more opposed to illegal immigration than Americans: In a new poll, 61.5 percent of Mexicans oppose the entry of undocumented migrants, period; 44 percent believe that Mexico should remove any undocumented alien immediately. Are Mexicans now white supremacists too? That hostility to illegal immigration may even explain why Trump’s threat to put tariffs on Mexico if it didn’t crack down may well have worked. Since Trump’s bluster, the numbers have measurably declined — and the crackdown is popular in Mexico. I can also note that most countries outside Western Europe have strict immigration control and feel no need to apologize for it. Are the Japanese and Chinese “white supremacists”? Please. Do they want to sustain their own culture and national identity? Sure. Is that now the equivalent of the KKK?

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Project Veritas is fighting back

Ben Garrison cartoon via Project Veritas

Project Veritas Sends Google Letters to Congress:

Project Veritas sent a letter to several Members of Congress informing them about Project Veritas’ investigation of Google that raises some concerns regarding Google’s possible improper intervention in Federal elections which may violate laws like the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA).

The letter is a follow up to Project Veritas’ latest investigative report which includes undercover video of Google officials, leaked internal Google documents and emails, and statements provided by a Google insider.

We sent versions of the letter to several members of Congress.

The full report with text of the letter is here.

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Unwatchable debates : Part 2

photo credit: inquirer.com

Stephen Green, a/k/a Mr. Vodkapundit, will be live drunk-blogging Round Two of the debates this evening. He watches so you don’t have to. Here’s the link.

He activated his live drunk-blog about 8:50 pm last night, so he’ll probably be going live at about the same time this evening.

For Powerline blogger Paul Mirengoff’s wrap-up of last night’s extravaganza, click here.

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Unwatchable debates

Everyone knows that the two debates between Democrat presidential candidates are this evening and tomorrow evening, both at 9pm. There are some voters who expect the proceedings to be pretty amusing and plan to tune in. But the idea of turning on the television to actually watch these two events does not sound like much fun to me.

Fortunately, there’s an alternative. Stephen Green, a/k/a Mr. Vodkapundit, will be live drunk-blogging at PJ Media. Here’s the link https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/.

UPDATE 8:50 pm: A better direct link is here.  It automatically refreshes, so stay at the top of the blog.

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