DuckDuckGo, Google, and the Search Engine Pond
Dissenter and the Browser Pool
What a mess. You want a browser and a search engine which does not invalidate your freedom by collecting and selling your online activity information? You want to cut out unwanted ads and pop-ups? You want a search engine which does not try to control your mind by not listing sites they don't approve? I am not sure there is any ideal solution to that. Everybody says the solution is not Google Chrome and Google Search, which, though they paved the way in the field, are now highly suspect because of the way they treat their users, collecting information, fiddling with the sites they reveal in Search, excluding political sites they don't agree with!!! That is inexcusable. They want to control what you think and meanwhile collect your personal information to sell to their clients, those who buy their ads and probably others. Yes, somebody has to pay for the service, but is this the best way?
There are pioneers in a fresh bouquet of browsers and search engines. I will not mention all of them. I think perhaps the best new browser is Dissenter. It is owned by Gab, the alternative to Facebook which is much more "liberal" in the old-fashioned sense of "liberal" in allowing free speech (aside from obvious violence and hatefulness). I have used the Dissenter browser, along with Google, for a couple weeks and it seems excellent in many ways. It claims that it has blocked 4,451 ads and trackers since I started using it. Some say that for that reason it is faster, but I can't say it is definitely faster than Google but at least it doesn't seem any slower. The only problem I have had with it is on YouTube, where it would not play some of my "liked" videos. I then went to Google Chrome and there I could watch those videos. Then back to Dissenter and they were not watchable. Something wrong there. But other than that I had no problems.
Will Dissenter actually block anyone or any corporation from tracking your online activity? I do not know; they claim so. How would I ascertain this or prove it? For now I give them the benefit of the doubt.
The search engine in Dissenter is DuckDuckGo. I was very suspicious of this. Is not Google the best, the pioneer, the perfect search engine? Maybe not! Here is a very revealing, honest, well-researched dissertation on search engines, including Google Yahoo, Bing, and DuckDuckGo.
Now the crucial personal test: I tried typing Cosmic Connection and Cosmic Piper in all these engines, to see if they would direct people to my blog on the first page of results. Only DuckDuckGo did so!!! It was the winner in the Cosmic Piper Search Engine Sweepstakes! (The prize is my recommendation.) However, I found that if I typed "Cosmic Piper blog" or "Cosmic Connection blog" into Google, Yahoo, and Bing, they did return results with my blog on the first page. "Blog" here is the magic word (to exclude bagpipers, poets, other musicians, and for all I know tattoo artists, as well as Carl Sagan who was a biased anti-astrologer). Glad to know that, so I can direct people how to find the blog when they ask me. Life is good.
So though I have tried other browsers over the years and abandoned them, this time I say, Try Dissenter and see if it works for you . And the DuckDuckGo search engine probably will give you less politically biased results than Google, in most instances. To hear about that, try the link I posted above.
However you browse, do it cheerily!
H H H / C P
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