What made Google special in the past was having principles and walking the talk.
Those days when Altavista wanted to force people into watching noisy pop up advertisements with annoying colors before you could search anything, and this small company decided to just display text.
The days when everybody was onto portals to make the web enclosed inside gatekeepers hand and Google brought freedom.
Those days are over. Just the other day I had them trying to change my name in gmail and complete the information I gave them when gmail was invite only like my birthday or a picture of me.
When I refused I had them INSULTING ME!! Something alike "it seems you are so alone". Wow, if you don't use their "social private web", or any other social site you are alone, even if you have a blog with thousands of people visiting, and real friends you can talk, kiss or hug.
As I say until people get sick of hearing it, google had:
1) principles and respect for its users,
2) great mathematical chops, and
3) clean UI.
1) is gone, and everybody has 2) and 3) now. Other than a moral center Google has never offered me anything that I couldn't get somewhere else. At least then, before alternate providers were driven out of business.
Right now, I have DDG as my moral search engine. Hopefully, one day, there will be a place for moral email or social.
I downloaded the new Firefox and made DuckDuckGo my default search engine in it, and it's actually working great. I figure I'll keep chrome going as well, but I'm starting the weaning process. The new Firefox is much better than the one out a couple years ago. Actually, it's very good. The google+ nagging freaked me out, as well as the fact that I somehow have thought it's been ok for them to scan.
>What made Google special in the past was having principles and walking the talk.
Principles? BS. What made Google special in the past was it started as an underdog (back in the day) and wanted to get people to get to using it (not just for search, but for several products it unveilled, to expand their fall-back options).
After it got people by the balls with Search, Gmail and Android, it's "so long, suckers".
Those days when Altavista wanted to force people into watching noisy pop up advertisements with annoying colors before you could search anything, and this small company decided to just display text.
The days when everybody was onto portals to make the web enclosed inside gatekeepers hand and Google brought freedom.
Those days are over. Just the other day I had them trying to change my name in gmail and complete the information I gave them when gmail was invite only like my birthday or a picture of me.
When I refused I had them INSULTING ME!! Something alike "it seems you are so alone". Wow, if you don't use their "social private web", or any other social site you are alone, even if you have a blog with thousands of people visiting, and real friends you can talk, kiss or hug.
I am looking for Google alternatives right now.