Google pays Apple around 18 Billion every year for their search engine to be the default in the Safari browser. For perspective, that’s roughly NASA’s annual budget. Bear in mind, this isn’t some exclusivity deal. You can change the default search engine in Safari with just a little spelunking into the menu system. Like most things with Apple, the solution is simple, just not obvious.
If you’re on an iPhone:
Go to Settings.
Scroll down to Apps.
Find Safari.
You’ll see an option for Search Engine.
Tapping on it reveals a list of options with Google at the top.
Take your pick.
You’re all clear, Kid. Now let’s blow this thing and go home.
The desktop environment has fewer steps, but works much the same way; it’s neatly tucked away in settings, far from hidden, but not calling attention to itself. Like I said, simple, not obvious. As for that list of options, it may seem like slim pickings, and it kind of is. Once upon a time, it was kind of the Wild West. There was Yahoo! and Google, of course, but there was also the likes of Excite and Lycos. Those two are still technically around, but they’re very much shadows of their former selves and not selectable on Safari’s shortlist. In fact, the only search engine I know of that came on the scene with a lot of hype and died almost as quickly was Cuil (pronounced “cool”), lasting only from 2008 to 2010. As to how we came to have one big slice with many rail-thin slices that would blow away in a gentle breeze if you tried to serve them on a plate, that’s a discussion people have earned degrees investigating. So, let’s just call it (Un)Natural Selection Meets The Law of Averages and carry on.
Touching back on those thin slices, they all stand a very good chance of becoming bigger pieces of the pie with the recent backlash Google has gotten for failing to uphold their founding mantra of “don’t be evil”. There’s been too many issues to cover in great detail here, from exploiting behavioral economics to legal troubles to policy changes contrary to earlier promises. Speaking only for myself, I’ve been making moves since the start of the year to slowly but surely de-Google my life, a kind of unintentional New Year’s Resolution. I don’t plan on quitting Google entirely, mostly because of my blog here as well as my YouTube channel, Gmail, and maybe Google Drive (which I'm considering moving to an external drive). My first real step in this direction was eliminating instances wherein I use my Google account to log in to a service. That took a very long time, but was ultimately painless and now I log in to those services through other means.
My next step was choosing a new default search engine, which brings us to that list of options. Yahoo! was an outright no from me. I closed my email account there some time ago and the only real attachment I have to them is Flickr, which I almost never use, at best serving as a plan B if I decide to give up on Instagram. Bing is okay; it’s by Microsoft, a company I have very mixed feelings about, but overall it’s a perfectly competent search engine. I don’t know a lot about Ecosia, except that it’s some kind of nonprofit that plants trees. I simply don’t see a gimmick like that being sustainable, which makes me sad as it’s a very noble cause.
In the end, I chose DuckDuckGo, and I’ve been using it for a few weeks now. It is partly built on Bing and primarily emphasizes privacy. What this means is that when you search something, DuckDuckGo doesn’t keep track of where you’ve been and what you’ve searched for, and does not use this data to target ads to you or otherwise tailor your search results to consider your browsing habits. I’ve never used Google without logging in to my Google account, so I don’t know what the search experience is like for everyone else. The consensus of late is that the search results feel fundamentally broken as they push AI features that are hit or miss at best as well as giving special favor to companies that buy advertising space on the platform rather than emphasizing relevance. Few things in this world irk me more than someone saying, “Just Google it!” as it exposes their ignorance to just how Google works. Put simply, my search results are not going to look like yours because of our different browsing habits. Google tracks what you look for and tries to find results that fit, often creating a kind of echo chamber.
One of the criticisms of DuckDuckGo and to a similar extent Bing is that the search results aren’t as “good” as Google. What is meant by this is that the results are less tailored and require a little more heavy lifting on your part. This isn’t the best example, but you’ll get the idea: when I put “flip a coin” into Google, it loads an applet that flips a virtual coin. When I put “flip a coin” into DuckDuckGo, I don’t get an applet. Instead, I get a list of websites that offer random number generators with coin-flipping options, along with articles detailing the history of the coin flip as well as the mathematical probabilities of using different currencies in the flipping. In other words, it’s not flipping the coin for me, it’s directing me to where I can get help with flipping a coin as I don’t have one on me and need to decide where I’m going to go for lunch. DuckDuckGo isn’t trying to be the answer. It knows it’s a directory. Google is trying to be the answer, at least for simple things like flipping coins or telling me the current temperature in Madagascar or the results of an election. At least, they started with simple things. Now, they’re trying to get AI to deliver more concise answers to more complex questions. I once asked Google which finger types the 6 on a keyboard. The first result was an AI summary that insisted it was the ring finger on the right hand. Needless to say, this is very wrong*. I tried again with different wording, thinking maybe I confused it. The result was the same. Sometime later, when I asked the same question, it did away with the AI summary and gave me a list of websites about learning to type.
To be fair, DuckDuckGo does have some AI features and will occasionally feature a summary at the top, but this is actually a pretty rare occurrence, even when I ask a direct question rather than inputting a string of keywords. Sometimes, the AI summary will only show a blank bar with an option for me to generate the summary. Other times, it’s placed far down the list, sometime after the 5th or 6th result. The point is that DuckDuckGo isn’t trying to force it on me, and I appreciate that. It’s still interested in the technology and wants it to be better, but it knows to make it more or less “opt-in” compared to Google.
Find Safari.
You’ll see an option for Search Engine.
Tapping on it reveals a list of options with Google at the top.
Take your pick.
You’re all clear, Kid. Now let’s blow this thing and go home.
The desktop environment has fewer steps, but works much the same way; it’s neatly tucked away in settings, far from hidden, but not calling attention to itself. Like I said, simple, not obvious. As for that list of options, it may seem like slim pickings, and it kind of is. Once upon a time, it was kind of the Wild West. There was Yahoo! and Google, of course, but there was also the likes of Excite and Lycos. Those two are still technically around, but they’re very much shadows of their former selves and not selectable on Safari’s shortlist. In fact, the only search engine I know of that came on the scene with a lot of hype and died almost as quickly was Cuil (pronounced “cool”), lasting only from 2008 to 2010. As to how we came to have one big slice with many rail-thin slices that would blow away in a gentle breeze if you tried to serve them on a plate, that’s a discussion people have earned degrees investigating. So, let’s just call it (Un)Natural Selection Meets The Law of Averages and carry on.
Touching back on those thin slices, they all stand a very good chance of becoming bigger pieces of the pie with the recent backlash Google has gotten for failing to uphold their founding mantra of “don’t be evil”. There’s been too many issues to cover in great detail here, from exploiting behavioral economics to legal troubles to policy changes contrary to earlier promises. Speaking only for myself, I’ve been making moves since the start of the year to slowly but surely de-Google my life, a kind of unintentional New Year’s Resolution. I don’t plan on quitting Google entirely, mostly because of my blog here as well as my YouTube channel, Gmail, and maybe Google Drive (which I'm considering moving to an external drive). My first real step in this direction was eliminating instances wherein I use my Google account to log in to a service. That took a very long time, but was ultimately painless and now I log in to those services through other means.
My next step was choosing a new default search engine, which brings us to that list of options. Yahoo! was an outright no from me. I closed my email account there some time ago and the only real attachment I have to them is Flickr, which I almost never use, at best serving as a plan B if I decide to give up on Instagram. Bing is okay; it’s by Microsoft, a company I have very mixed feelings about, but overall it’s a perfectly competent search engine. I don’t know a lot about Ecosia, except that it’s some kind of nonprofit that plants trees. I simply don’t see a gimmick like that being sustainable, which makes me sad as it’s a very noble cause.
In the end, I chose DuckDuckGo, and I’ve been using it for a few weeks now. It is partly built on Bing and primarily emphasizes privacy. What this means is that when you search something, DuckDuckGo doesn’t keep track of where you’ve been and what you’ve searched for, and does not use this data to target ads to you or otherwise tailor your search results to consider your browsing habits. I’ve never used Google without logging in to my Google account, so I don’t know what the search experience is like for everyone else. The consensus of late is that the search results feel fundamentally broken as they push AI features that are hit or miss at best as well as giving special favor to companies that buy advertising space on the platform rather than emphasizing relevance. Few things in this world irk me more than someone saying, “Just Google it!” as it exposes their ignorance to just how Google works. Put simply, my search results are not going to look like yours because of our different browsing habits. Google tracks what you look for and tries to find results that fit, often creating a kind of echo chamber.
One of the criticisms of DuckDuckGo and to a similar extent Bing is that the search results aren’t as “good” as Google. What is meant by this is that the results are less tailored and require a little more heavy lifting on your part. This isn’t the best example, but you’ll get the idea: when I put “flip a coin” into Google, it loads an applet that flips a virtual coin. When I put “flip a coin” into DuckDuckGo, I don’t get an applet. Instead, I get a list of websites that offer random number generators with coin-flipping options, along with articles detailing the history of the coin flip as well as the mathematical probabilities of using different currencies in the flipping. In other words, it’s not flipping the coin for me, it’s directing me to where I can get help with flipping a coin as I don’t have one on me and need to decide where I’m going to go for lunch. DuckDuckGo isn’t trying to be the answer. It knows it’s a directory. Google is trying to be the answer, at least for simple things like flipping coins or telling me the current temperature in Madagascar or the results of an election. At least, they started with simple things. Now, they’re trying to get AI to deliver more concise answers to more complex questions. I once asked Google which finger types the 6 on a keyboard. The first result was an AI summary that insisted it was the ring finger on the right hand. Needless to say, this is very wrong*. I tried again with different wording, thinking maybe I confused it. The result was the same. Sometime later, when I asked the same question, it did away with the AI summary and gave me a list of websites about learning to type.
To be fair, DuckDuckGo does have some AI features and will occasionally feature a summary at the top, but this is actually a pretty rare occurrence, even when I ask a direct question rather than inputting a string of keywords. Sometimes, the AI summary will only show a blank bar with an option for me to generate the summary. Other times, it’s placed far down the list, sometime after the 5th or 6th result. The point is that DuckDuckGo isn’t trying to force it on me, and I appreciate that. It’s still interested in the technology and wants it to be better, but it knows to make it more or less “opt-in” compared to Google.
DuckDuckGo also offers itself as a full-fledged web browser. I have it on my phone, but I don't really use it for anything. It doesn't even have a Reader View like Safari, so it's not very practical right now and I don't expect new features to roll out any time soon. It's a small company with few employees that operates under a very utilitarian and minimalist philosophy. Much as I think a Reader View would be a given for a utilitarian and minimalist philosophy, I can still respect their barebones approach to what the browser offers. They also offer this subscription service that includes a VPN, identity theft protection, and a personal data removal service**. It’s about 100 a year, and while I don’t have any real need at the moment for what’s on offer, I am considering it as a way to support the cause. I like what DuckDuckGo is doing and I hope they become a substantially bigger slice of the pie.
I’ll have further entries on my UnGoogling progress, but I wanted to start it off light and simple, something that most people can do without having to make any serious commitments or disrupt any routines.
* On reflection, I think the problem was that Google was assuming I wanted to use the number pad to the right of the keyboard rather than the number row along the top. After all, if you rest your right hand on the number pad, your middle finger falls on the five, putting the 6 right under your ring finger.
** Basically, they put in requests to data brokers to remove your personal information from their records, kind of like a digital "do not call list". I'd previously tried a service called Incogni to see if it would cut down on the damned robocalls. The results have been mixed, but given the majority of these robocalls are from scam artists, I don't expect them to play nice and uphold their part of the Geneva Convention. Needless to say, if I ever find any of these scum piles in the wild or locate their call centers, I will not abide by the Convention, either.
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