alt Hacker NewsIn my lists of Pros and Cons for sticking with the Google Pixel ecosystem, one of the Cons is the fact that Google definitely does not want you to have this valuable capability. If you stop looking things up, then you won't be looking at their search engine, their ads, and their recommendation algorithms. Every platform wants you to do that. It's why bookmarks in Google Chrome lack useful features like tagging. It's one of the reasons why so many vendors try to lock your data inside their walled gardens. Apple is well known for walled gardens, but for the most part, you can be sure they will let you change your default search engine without much hassle. They won't care so much if you want to use something like SearXNG to prioritize your knowledgebase first, however, the App Store, Apple Music, and Apple TV are the same story as Google - any attempts to influence the search results in your favor will be actively fought against.
Replies
Extend that to marketplaces too, all their search UIs have dark patterns forcing you to see their “recommendations” instead of being able to manipulate the results like you want.
>Apple is well known for walled gardens, but for the most part, you can be sure they will let you change your default search engine without much hassle.
Respectfully, please, this below is an absolute joke--has it changed in a decade?
Image: Apple provides easy changing for Google, Yahoo, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Ecosia. (That poor paid search engine that starts with a K has to mess around with extensions; I'm unaffiliated.)
Plus, even though I have it set to DuckDuckGo, when I ask Siri to "search {query}", it searches Google. So even the default I have set is not actually truly the all-around default. Embarrassing to have locked this down as if I didn't drop a grand on the phone.
-
Fun fact: for years now, asking Siri to "search Google Images" results in whitelabeled Bing Images (thankfully, exceptionally easy to remedy with the excellent Shortcuts: "Picture-Search" for Google, quality difference night & day unfortunately... anyway go SearXNG!, it lets you keep your soul).
Thank you for your insight and comment. I’ve witnessed this behavior but never thought to question it until now. It’s amazing how simple and devious it can be.
> Google definitely does not want you to have this valuable capability. If you stop looking things up, then you won't be looking at their search engine, their ads, and their recommendation algorithms.
Google is very interested in knowing about whatever you're interested in, and in knowing when, how often, and for how long you're interested in those things. In addition to looking at their search engine, their ads, and their recommendations, you're also feeding them more and more data about you.