From the “Online Shopping” episode of the podcast You’re Wrong About, an exchange between Amanda Mull and host Sarah Marshall:
AM: Google is at this point like basically a utility.Oh gosh. You could use DuckDuckGo and resort to a Google service (say, Google Books) only when absolutely necessary. No one need be a prisoner of Google.
SM: I don’t know how you could live without it, honestly.
[But yes, Blogger is a Google service. What did I know?]
comments: 3
My default is the Brave browser, which blocks trackers and can get you thru the NYTimes paywall. It used to use DuckDuckGo but recently the default search became Ecco, which has 'green' servers or something.
Point is, when ads do slip thru to my screen they are pretty random. Then last week on my desktop I did some searching for BBQ grills and used Google search, now ALL the ads I see are for the grills I looked at but didn't purchase.
Private browsers and anon search engines work.
I like Brave and use DuckDuckGo as the default for all browsers.
Orion is a good browser too — it has an extension that defeats at least most paywalls. (Not available in the iOS version though, for obvious reasons.)
I use Banish, Stop the Madness, Vinegar, and Wipr in Safari, which remove just about everything. I still remember what a nightmare it was to see, say, a NYT article on a classroom computer with no blockers for the browser.
Every so often I go through a short phase of using DuckDuckGo and then I forget again.
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