The analogy is good, but there is this: I don't really use OSM—tho Google Maps has introduced some UX problems that I'm disliking—but DDG is better than Google with many things for me. The bangs...
The analogy is good, but there is this:
Similarly, there are plenty of tech vegans who will claim that OpenStreetMap is a great replacement for Google Maps, or that DuckDuckGo provides better search results than Google. But if they’re being honest with themselves, they’ll admit that they’re more motivated by principle than quality or convenience.
I don't really use OSM—tho Google Maps has introduced some UX problems that I'm disliking—but DDG is better than Google with many things for me. The bangs are a great feature, search queries are as good or similar for most searches. Where DDG is worst is localised searches: something that pertains to some place outside the anglosphere, the results are worse. Tho in most cases they are still decent enough. I am not fanatically attached to DDG, but I find I only go to Google a couple times a week, on average.
I check out Google whenever I have a hard time searching for something in DDG, and I've always gotten similar or worse results so far; Google also seems to like giving me a bunch of unrelated...
I check out Google whenever I have a hard time searching for something in DDG, and I've always gotten similar or worse results so far; Google also seems to like giving me a bunch of unrelated stuff when it can't find anything. I'm not saying that DDG has on-par or better results than Google overall, just saying that it seems to be for my use-case and not to generalize.
Also, other than the bangs, DDG also has a lot of other great features, like "is tildes.net down", "shorten tildes.net", "duckduckgo cheatsheet" (which brings up another feature: keyboard shortcuts), "tldr ls", themes, etc.
I'd never known about the cheatsheet before and I've been using it for years now. I personally very rarely use google as I find the same as you it's no better than ddg for my usecase apart from...
I'd never known about the cheatsheet before and I've been using it for years now. I personally very rarely use google as I find the same as you it's no better than ddg for my usecase apart from the occasional localised thing.
I use mostly searx. It gives me better results, but i think it uses google search itself. DDG i use because of !bangs. They are awesome! OSM is good for the sole purpose of driving to an address....
I use mostly searx. It gives me better results, but i think it uses google search itself. DDG i use because of !bangs. They are awesome!
OSM is good for the sole purpose of driving to an address. The problem is lack of points of interest. When using Google Maps, i search for places and it will show a lot of data. If it's open, phone number, pictures, traffic, etc. This is the nature of google: collecting data. So OSM will never be as good.
Since major apps use Google maps (uber and others), it's impossible to compete. It's always being updated with new data.
I was google free all these years. Now i moved to another city and i don't have or want a car. I ended up needing to install google apps on my phone to get access to Uber and carpooling apps. Without it i would be spending so much money. I didn't make a google account nor i use the play store (i use aurora store), but installing a minimal gapps package was mandatory.
I would love for those apps to adopt OSM like Strava did, but unfortunately it's out of my hands.
I've been thinking about this, and it's actually pretty hard to say how much the quoted part is true for me. I truly believe that some "vegan" alternatives are better than the hamburger-variety of...
I've been thinking about this, and it's actually pretty hard to say how much the quoted part is true for me.
I truly believe that some "vegan" alternatives are better than the hamburger-variety of software. But would I have invested in trying and learning them, if they weren't ethically speaking better? I think the answer may be "no", but at this point it's hard to say. In any case I definitely prefer free software, even if all the alternatives are not better than proprietary ones. Though they often tend to be. So again, it's hard to say.
The analogy is good, but there is this:
I don't really use OSM—tho Google Maps has introduced some UX problems that I'm disliking—but DDG is better than Google with many things for me. The bangs are a great feature, search queries are as good or similar for most searches. Where DDG is worst is localised searches: something that pertains to some place outside the anglosphere, the results are worse. Tho in most cases they are still decent enough. I am not fanatically attached to DDG, but I find I only go to Google a couple times a week, on average.
I check out Google whenever I have a hard time searching for something in DDG, and I've always gotten similar or worse results so far; Google also seems to like giving me a bunch of unrelated stuff when it can't find anything. I'm not saying that DDG has on-par or better results than Google overall, just saying that it seems to be for my use-case and not to generalize.
Also, other than the bangs, DDG also has a lot of other great features, like "is tildes.net down", "shorten tildes.net", "duckduckgo cheatsheet" (which brings up another feature: keyboard shortcuts), "tldr ls", themes, etc.
I'd never known about the cheatsheet before and I've been using it for years now. I personally very rarely use google as I find the same as you it's no better than ddg for my usecase apart from the occasional localised thing.
I use mostly searx. It gives me better results, but i think it uses google search itself. DDG i use because of !bangs. They are awesome!
OSM is good for the sole purpose of driving to an address. The problem is lack of points of interest. When using Google Maps, i search for places and it will show a lot of data. If it's open, phone number, pictures, traffic, etc. This is the nature of google: collecting data. So OSM will never be as good.
Since major apps use Google maps (uber and others), it's impossible to compete. It's always being updated with new data.
I was google free all these years. Now i moved to another city and i don't have or want a car. I ended up needing to install google apps on my phone to get access to Uber and carpooling apps. Without it i would be spending so much money. I didn't make a google account nor i use the play store (i use aurora store), but installing a minimal gapps package was mandatory.
I would love for those apps to adopt OSM like Strava did, but unfortunately it's out of my hands.
I've been thinking about this, and it's actually pretty hard to say how much the quoted part is true for me.
I truly believe that some "vegan" alternatives are better than the hamburger-variety of software. But would I have invested in trying and learning them, if they weren't ethically speaking better? I think the answer may be "no", but at this point it's hard to say. In any case I definitely prefer free software, even if all the alternatives are not better than proprietary ones. Though they often tend to be. So again, it's hard to say.