Newsletter Archives

• Perplexity is 10 times better than Google

  Posted on November 11, 2024 at 02:45 CST by B. Livingston • Comment in the Forums

  

  ISSUE 21.46 • 2024-11-11

  PUBLIC DEFENDER

  

  By Brian Livingston

  The chatbot wars are well underway, and one result is that I find myself using the new Perplexity search engine 99% of the time, falling back on Google only to look up a street address or some trivial factoid.

  Google has served up its now-familiar list of 10 links for years. Perplexity also points you to several websites and videos. But its result pages begin with a well-written summary of what you’d learn if you actually visited all those links and vids.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.46.0, 2024-11-11).
  This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

  Public Defender Google, Newsletters, Perplexity, search engines

• Why is Bing worse than Google for finding Windows info?

  Posted on November 7, 2022 at 02:44 CST by B. Livingston • Comment in the Forums

  PUBLIC DEFENDER

  

  By Brian Livingston

  Microsoft’s Bing search engine has a small but growing market share — chipping away at Google’s 90% dominance worldwide — but the Redmond software giant’s Web crawler can be surprisingly weak in showing you helpful Windows information from technology websites other than Microsoft.com.

  There are thousands of blogs and newsletters that post every possible factoid about Windows, from the fluffiest corporate press releases to obscure technical features you’ve never dreamed of.

  So what might explain the inadequacy of Redmond’s favorite search engine to deliver the Windows info users need to know?

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.45.0, 2022-11-07).

  Public Defender Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google, Newsletters, Public Defender, search engines

• Can DuckDuckGo raise enough money to give Google a scare?

  Posted on October 31, 2022 at 02:45 CDT by B. Livingston • Comment in the Forums

  

  ISSUE 19.44 • 2022-10-31

  PUBLIC DEFENDER

  

  By Brian Livingston

  People in a small but dedicated movement known as “degoogling” strive to avoid being tracked by the Google search giant. That’s a challenge, because Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc., also compiles data on you through YouTube, the Play Store, and many other subsidiaries.

  A major alternative is a privacy-focused search engine with the weird name of DuckDuckGo. (Founder Gabriel Weinberg, soon to become a father, chose the moniker in 2008 after the children’s game Duck, Duck, Goose.) DDG, as the search engine is sometimes known, promises not to save searches you enter nor retain any information about you.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.44.0, 2022-10-31).
  This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

  Public Defender Newsletters, Privacy, search engines

• The Chredge “new tab” page won’t let you hide the Search box, or choose a search provider other than Bing, for the foreseeable future

  Posted on February 18, 2020 at 13:57 CST by woody • Comment in the Forums

  Just saw this tweet from Rafael Rivera:

  Edge team still has no plan to let you choose your own search provider (or hide the search box completely) on the New Tab Page. The battle continues.

  He includes a screenshot from the Chredge team’s Top Feedback Summary for February 11:, which shows that these proposed feature improvements have been on the list for the past six months:

  

  And they’re still “Under review.” Sigh.

  Windows 10 Chredge, search engines