Would you be interested in an Apple search engine?

[Deleted member 199]

How can there be too much bacon.

Exactly.

as we all know the correct answer to “how much bacon would you like” is “yes”.

 

[B S Magnet]

Also, if you hate being advertised to, Apple buying them would probably be an improvement. DDG has to make a profit still and used ads to do that.

Three words: “uBlock Origin” and “uMatrix”. I don’t use a browser without them.

Apple already offers a bunch of internet services and people pay for those services.

Good for the people who pay for those services!

I’m not one of those people.

 

[User 189]

DDG results are from a combination of Bing and Yandex. The info boxes (eg if you search for “noodle soup” and get specialised recipe boxes or whatever) are from their own scraper but the general results are not.

They only get their results from Bing, not Yandex. The knowledge graphs are powered by Wikipedia.

 

[lizkat]

Exactly.

as we all know the correct answer to “how much bacon would you like” is “yes”.

The packaging is problematic though.

​

Apple already offers a bunch of internet services and people pay for those services. I see no reason they wouldn’t approach this the same if they did it. Maybe a basic mode for free and iCloud/Apple one sub to get more features.

But search is so integral to computer use now that to charge openly for the search tool would feel like having to pay for a MacOS like we did back in the day.

 

[Deleted member 199]

Because I want a search engine, not an advertising vehicle where I’m the product.

Three words: “uBlock Origin” and “uMatrix”. I don’t use a browser without them.

So, if a hypothetical company offered search that wasn't Ad based (e.g the Apple buys DDG idea) and instead is paid for by either subscription, or subsidised by hardware costs, or whatever, you don't want to use that because "megacorp".

When a company repackages results from a different "megacorp" and relies on ads to make a profit, you just mention an ad blocker?


It almost sounds like you just want to talk about how "big companies are bad" and "ads are bad", but aren't actually interested in any potential solution for the perceived problems of ad based business models.

 

[Deleted member 199]

But search is so integral to computer use now that to charge openly for the search tool would feel like having to pay for a MacOS like we did back in the day.

Like I said, maybe the basic usage would be free like the 5GB iCloud plan is free.

Apple has literally made a fortune selling stuff others give away or sell for much cheaper.


As I said, I don't necessarily think they're interested in buying DDG but I also don't think thats because they can't find a way to make it work.

 

[B S Magnet]

But search is so integral to computer use now that to charge openly for the search tool would feel like having to pay for a MacOS like we did back in the day.

Counterpoint:

Paying for a copy of Mac OS X gave us — the users — a better, more stable, better supported, and more open* operating system with virtually none of the tracking, telemetry, and compulsory fortress walls hard-baked into all the “free”, annualized revisions to have emerged since.

You’re getting what you (don’t) pay for when you voluntarily hand over your whole digital self to a corporate body which profits from knowing as much as they can about you, the user, and which cares as little as possible about your participation in shaping that process.

* and by “open”, I mean to say the community is better able to check and report on the security and integrity of source code in an open dialogue with the software developer(s)

So, if a hypothetical company offered search that wasn't Ad based (e.g the Apple buys DDG idea) and instead is paid for by either subscription, or subsidised by hardware costs, or whatever, you don't want to use that because "megacorp".

No. I don’t wish to use it because it isn’t a search engine so much as an advertising engine. Related: the invention of SEO was one of the most consequential and detrimental shifts away from clean, unfettered access to information for a medium which was intended to be able to deliver that information, unfettered.

Am I thrilled by DDG? Not in the slightest. Given the above shift to SEO-supercharged, monetized-driven results, a “least-worst” option is no substitute for a “best” option. At this time, we have few paths to a “best” option.

But please. Continue to share with us in this discussion your fealty to “megacorp” benevolence.

Owing to your voluntary reveal of age range last day, I also recognize how you have, at best, only the faintest memory for searching information without “megacorp” participation or searching information without the obfuscating layer of SEO being injected into the stack. Searching for information is a learned (and invaluable) skill to have, but no amount of honed skill can help when there are private “megacorp” interests and an SEO layer whose core purposes are to ward you away from what you were trying to find in the first place.

I never envisioned a Vegas strip for information search as some ideal (or even remotely viable substitute) to finding what I’m looking for on my own. And yet, here we are at a nadir for finding unmolested information at our fingertips. And you’re perfectly okay with that. That’s cool. You do you.

That model is insufficient for me. And if “least-worst” amounts to a DDG compiling results from multiple “megacorp” sources — in effect making it a modern-day StartingPoint (look it up) — then that’s what I’m stuck with as a primary search tool at this time. I’d gladly pay for a not-for-profit search engine which ignores all SEO tags if that path were available. Give me a SIRSI for the world both within and outside the academic realm.

When a company repackages results from a different "megacorp" and relies on ads to make a profit, you just mention an ad blocker?

I think what astounds me with your snark here is that you’re kosher with voluntarily letting advertisers enter your head by way of your eyeballs and ear canals, rent-free, whilst they harvest information about you in the process. Cool. Your remark is quite revealing.

It almost sounds like you just want to talk about how "big companies are bad" and "ads are bad", but aren't actually interested in any potential solution for the perceived problems of ad based business models.

It almost sounds like you just want to talk about how big companies are benevolent and kind, and ads are also good, actually, but you aren’t interested in any path which challenges and detours around the material problems of ad-based business models, premised by a neoliberal notion that capitalism (and the consumption it promotes and profits from) is immanently good for people or for this planet.

 

[Deleted member 199]

No. I don’t wish to use it because it isn’t a search engine so much as an advertising engine.

This is my entire point.

Google makes essentially all of it's money from advertising, which is largely intertwined driven by their search engine.

DDG also makes essentially all of it's money from advertising, and all they do is provide a "search engine".


You have made it patently clear you don't want to pay for a search engine, and you're not happy with advertising-funded search engines.

There's literally only two options left: a company like Apple that invests heavily in their "product ecosystem", even when some aspects of that ecosystem are not necessarily profitable (e.g. Apple Maps: it's completely free to use, it must cost them fucking millions to run, given the amount of data they've captured using their own staff/contractors, to provide a better solution).


I'm suggesting that if they were to do it, it could be completely ad-free, and it may or may not have paid tiers, like iCloud does, for additional features.

I also recognize how you have, at best, only the faintest memory for searching information without “megacorp” participation or searching information without the obfuscating layer of SEO being injected into the stack.

Bitch please. I was using dialup and altavista in the fucking 90s. I'm kind of tired of your ridiculous assumptions about other peoples' view points.

It almost sounds like you just want to talk about how big companies are benevolent and kind, and ads are also good

Please, first try re-reading what I've actually written, and then if you still come to the same conclusion, try reading it with a fucking dictionary in your hand.

Your ability to misunderstand or misconstrue what others are saying is off the fucking charts.

Good luck with whatever it is you're trying to prove, I'm done here.

 

[B S Magnet]

You have made it patently clear you don't want to pay for a search engine, and you're not happy with advertising-funded search engines.

You don’t read:

I’d gladly pay for a not-for-profit search engine which ignores all SEO tags if that path were available. Give me a SIRSI for the world both within and outside the academic realm.

SIRSI. SIRSI! You paid for that service!

There's literally only two options left: a company like Apple that invests heavily in their "product ecosystem", even when some aspects of that ecosystem are not necessarily profitable (e.g. Apple Maps: it's completely free to use, it must cost them fucking millions to run, given the amount of data they've captured using their own staff/contractors, to provide a better solution).

Whew. I love your corporate apologism. You go!

What was the second option?

And costing Apple “fucking millions” to run a service, when they have a USD$2.335 trillion market cap, is tantamount to using pocket change to pay for that ten-cent gumball from the candy machine located inside the store you own, as you avoid the need to dip into your investment account with the six-figure balance to pay for it.

I'm suggesting that if they were to do it, it could be completely ad-free, and it may or may not have paid tiers, like iCloud does, for additional features.

And, lo, you pay for it in other unsavoury ways:

Paying for a copy of Mac OS X gave us — the users — a better, more stable, better supported, and more open* operating system with virtually none of the tracking, telemetry, and compulsory fortress walls hard-baked into all the “free”, annualized revisions to have emerged since.

You’re getting what you (don’t) pay for when you voluntarily hand over your whole digital self to a corporate body which profits from knowing as much as they can about you, the user, and which cares as little as possible about your participation in shaping that process.

That isn’t a bargain I signed on for.

Bitch please. I was using dialup and altavista in the fucking 90s. I'm kind of tired of your ridiculous assumptions about other peoples' view points.

So we’ve risen to the high road of using misogynistic epithets and making this into a junk-measuring contest. I can’t compete with that, sorry!

I’m kind of tired of your own arrogance in articulating your loyalty/fealty/whatever to for-profit corporations and then getting ultra-huffy when that model of consumption is placed under peer scrutiny.

Please, first try re-reading what I've actually written, and then if you still come to the same conclusion, try reading it with a fucking dictionary in your hand.

Oh, I have. Twice. You’re pretty clear about what values matter to you. I don’t share those values.

Your ability to misunderstand or misconstrue what others are saying is off the fucking charts.

Scrutiny isn’t meant to be a joyride. It’s meant to provoke reflection. I’m sorry this doesn’t comport with your comfort zone.

Good luck with whatever it is you're trying to prove, I'm done here.

I guess that means I’m also done with you.

Have a better one.

 

[User 189]

I don't want to use a search engine that requires a subscription or costs any money. The "free" business model of search engines has worked completely fine since the 90s.

 

[lizkat]

Counterpoint:

Paying for a copy of Mac OS X gave us — the users — a better, more stable, better supported, and more open* operating system with virtually none of the tracking, telemetry, and compulsory fortress walls hard-baked into all the “free”, annualized revisions to have emerged since.

You’re getting what you (don’t) pay for when you voluntarily hand over your whole digital self to a corporate body which profits from knowing as much as they can about you, the user, and which cares as little as possible about your participation in shaping that process.

* and by “open”, I mean to say the community is better able to check and report on the security and integrity of source code in an open dialogue with the software developer(s)

I think we can't say that if we were still paying for a MacOS (or say for the apps in what used to be sold as iWork), "everything else" including tracking, analytics data collection etc would not have proceeded apace.

It's likely true that Apple would have had to invest more in adding features (or a better UI and functionality) at least for the components of the late iTunes app when they cut it up into separate apps) if we were still shelling out for it directly.

I sure would have raised hell for what now passes as the audiobooks playback piece of the Books app if I had been asked to pay $10 (or even two bucks) to buy it. As things stand, we don't know if there are even two programmers dedicated to that sorry shell of an app's maintenance. No miniplayer? They stuck the playback as a miniplayer embedded into the larger Books window for god's sake. Ludicrous that we can't shrink it down to that corner and ditch the useless rest of that big window on demand. But hey the Books app is "free" and dubiously worth two bucks just because I shelled out a grand for a phone or an MBA?

So I do take your point to some extent. I'm not sure we'd still be gettingi the polish and quality we were getting when we were buying the OS though.

Maybe Apple will start experimenting with "premium" features on some apps, if they end up going with their own search tool and charging for it.

 

[Deleted member 199]

I think we can't say that if we were still paying for a MacOS (or say for the apps in what used to be sold as iWork), "everything else" including tracking, analytics data collection etc would not have proceeded apace.

Is there something you've seen that makes you think any of the "data collection" done by Apple is used for profile building/monetisation?

Capturing crash/usage reports is not the same thing as capturing your personal details and using that data when showing you ads.

 

[lizkat]

Is there something you've seen that makes you think any of the "data collection" done by Apple is used for profile building/monetisation?

Capturing crash/usage reports is not the same thing as capturing your personal details and using that data when showing you ads.

No, I'm not saying that at all. I mean that OS development is just one piece of technological development, and that since the days of MacOS upgrades and apps like Numbers or Pages carrying a direct price tag, we have seen computing hardware, software and ancillary services spring up that either didn't even exist or that by now have exceeded some of our wildest dreams. And that it's impossible to say really, if we were still paying for a MacOS or those apps --which now accomodate that hardware and those services-- that what we'd be getting would necessarily be any better functioning or less buggy than as things are now , where the cost of that OS is figured into hardware pricing.

As a side note: Not everyone is concerned so much with monetization of data collection so much as privacy (and so possibly personal safety issues), e.g.whether that data is encrypted, who gets to see it, how long it's retained, regardless of whether it's collected as part of analytics or just as user content sloshing around the user's own devices or cloud containers. The same might well be true of a search tool whether one pays for the tool itself or not. Journalists in particular now are concerned about having been spied on by specific surveillance software, per news reports of late, but even before that, journos and others working in regions where political repression must be taken into account were always concerned about whether data on their phones or other gear was being collected without their knowledge and who would be able to access it.

 

[Deleted member 199]

No, I'm not saying that at all.

Sorry, I misunderstood - you mentioned "including tracking, analytics data collection etc would not have proceeded apace" and I thought somehow you were suggesting Apple is using data collection as an alternative to charging actual money.

 

[lizkat]

Sorry, I misunderstood - you mentioned "including tracking, analytics data collection etc would not have proceeded apace" and I thought somehow you were suggesting Apple is using data collection as an alternative to charging actual money.

Yeah, no, but in re-reading that earlier post I can see how one could take that from it. I was just thinking back to when an OS came on a disc, the net was in its infancy and "tracking" was more about serial numbers than anything else.

No one was thinking then about whether their smartphone was listening to them without being asked to do so, and what was happening to that audio, since there were no smartphones back then. We were lucky if we had a 40MB hard drive on a laptop. A Powerbook 100 cost $2500...