Ka wehi ta ratou kaupapa here, ko hiahia kōrero te reo Māori ahau.
People are waking up to how bad Google has become, if posts on Mastodon are any indication.
What’s disappointing are the replies, usually saying they have switched to Duck Duck Go because it’s so much better, and others saying Kagi is the best.
I can’t be bothered arguing any more given how hostile people can get: if they want to use a Bing reskin or a meta-search that includes both good (Mojeek) and bad (Bing) search engines, then maybe I should leave them to it.
There was one tonight who went from Google, then Duck Duck Go, then Startpage, and remarked how much better things were. In other words, they went from Google to Google.
The numbers posted on this blog don’t lie. And while I’m the first to admit that Mojeek can improve on its page ranking, I am surprised more people on places like Mastodon—which has an anti-corporate bent—don’t give it a shot. It’ll only improve with a larger user base so its algorithm can learn, plus as the original search engine that does not track, with a policy in place years before Duck Duck Go, and its own index, it deserves more support.
It’s like those who head to Bluesky. I get Jack Dorsey is only on the board and it’s entirely separate from Twitter, and it has a public purpose, but in some way it’s still helping a rich dude get richer. And that’s OK if that’s your choice. But looking at the politics of so many people there, this runs counter to their beliefs.
I know, a lot of people, especially people of colour, were hounded off Mastodon, in some cases for posting about their lived experiences of racism. Meanwhile, in New Zealand, this innocent post sparked a good discussion about racism and what went down at Mastodon.nz earlier.
So maybe the fediverse only has itself to blame for not having been a more welcoming place.
Apologies, I had to use American English in the headline, but not enough of you are using milliardaire for the headline to be punchy.