I've been hearing a surprising amount about Duck Duck Go the past week or so. I don't know if it has to do with the end of year/beginning of year and tech, but it hasn't just been on Steemit. This has been one of the better write ups about why people should be making the switch off of Google to anything else, and why DDG is the best alternative.
What's sad is that ages ago, which actually isn't that long ago, there were a lot of search engines, like you mentioned. It used to be that we'd cross-check through a few of them to see who had what information, rather than just trust that just one place had all of the information. It's so weird now to think that there's entire generations who don't realise that this isn't how things always were, and that it's not necessarily a good thing.
Thanks for the reminder. I'm in the process of trying to find something other than Chrome (again)/Google because of crashes that plays nicely with all sites (which has me going through a few of your posts).
It is very nice to see you find your way here. You should definitely seek alternatives to Chrome, since using Chrome is like letting the Devil inside your house. Chrome is snooping on your activities by default. If you are interested in securing your home network I suggest you take small incremental steps in improving the software you use. In part 2 I mention startpage as another convenient alternative to Google. As a browser I suggest Firefox enhanced with the Ghostery add-on, which I describe here. If you want to go full Pro-mode I suggest switching to Ubuntu OS and using the Brave Browser. Brave Browser is the new kid on the block - with a crypto system and tracker removal by default.
The Mozilla Foundation and the FSF are great places to check out free and open alternatives to commercial software, as well as further post of mine since this is the topic I will focus on mostly. :)
It'd take a bit to switch over to Ubuntu ATM; I have been considering having a dual set up (some sort of Linux and Windows load out) for a bit, but I've been putting it off till I get around to finally upgrading my hard drives.
What's unfortunate is that Chrome originally didn't have as much tracking shite as it does now. At the moment, I have five add-ons (Ghostery one of them) to keep tracking as mitigated as possible. I had switched back to Chrome sometime last year (or possibly late the year before) because Firefox had derped out during an update and was taking a weird amount of system resources, and it was starting to just slow down my whole system. It was super frustrating because I really didn't want to do Chrome again. I even tried Vivaldi for a bit, but it was just so new, there wasn't a lot going for it just yet.
Go with Brave browser if you want to be the hippest dude on the block. (It blocks all the nasty by default so it's mighty fast). Firefox was acting up for me too, but now that Quantum's out it's a charm. You sure you're on the newest Firefox? Kudos for using Vivaldi. By the way Opera has built-in free VPN. I'm sorry but Chrome was never "good" - it has a wide open backdoor included in your installation. It's like handing your data over to Google on a silver plate.
I use dual-boot, it's great. It's not that difficult to setup actually, there are some nice tutorials online ;^)
The installation of Firefox I had issues with was in like 2016, and it was up-to-date at the time. I'd tried Vivalidi since it was an offshoot of Opera, for that exact reason - at that time, I didn't have my own full VPN (now I do).
I'm looking at Brave's site though. They've got some pretty interesting information - especially for the mobile version. While bandwidth isn't a huge issue for me because I'm largely homebound and on wi-fi, anything to make downloading faster is appealing - and having something cutting down on data does that.
Thanks!