Scroogle unplugged for good this time Scroogle - a not-for-profit search engine that offered users something of a pro-privacy antidote to Google - has been killed off by its creator. Daniel Brandt called it quits after his servers were repeatedly targeted by DDoS attacks on Scroogle. As we reported last week, the website was out of action and displaying a message …
Sorry to see it go
Do your own work. If you crib from others without their permission, don't whine when they put a stop to it.
Google crib from everybody [me included] without permission.
Nobody complains because they want to be found in a search.
AC for that reason
It would be good if there were a range of sizeable alternatives. There are problems when companies get too big - your greatest strength is your biggest weakness.
People went off Microsoft, it's happening to Apple, and Tesco and now Google, Facebook's next
- see what Obama is doing with Facebook
Obama, Facebook and the power of friendship: the 2012 data election
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/17/obama-digital-data-machine-facebook-election
This is really really creepy!
There aren't many very big companies that were around 100 years ago that are still going today
[remember what Rupe paid for Myspace and what he sold it for?]
"Alright, Mr. President, after months data harvesting, we've devised some surefire tactics to ensure your re-election. First up is wardrobe. The suit has to go. We've found that bloggers who wear low-cut shirts or no shirts at all in their user photos get the most friends, so we recommend doing the same. Perhaps a beach appearance in a mankini right before elections might help boost voter confidence as well."
If you dig into the more search tools bit on the left with Google you can enable 'Verbatim' search which at least makes it search for the term you entered rather than what it thinks you want.
However I discovered that too late - I've already switched to DDG for 90% of my search needs. And once I've worked out all the ! syntax I'd imagine I'll hardly go to the big G at all.
Google have taken their eye off the ball. They are so busy fannying around with other projects that basic search has fallen by the wayside. I didn't realise how important the "+" was in getting good results from them, but since they removed that feature I find myself having to look to other search engines for technical help in my day to day work.
But then, as the majority of their searches are people typing "facebook" to go to facebook, I guess I'm just not the target market anymore....
I agree, I know what I'm looking for - I saw it yesterday. I enter the search terms and I get total and utter CARP back from google. I hate the search before I've finished typing too , I sometimes use the scraper http://givemebackmygoogle.com/ which automates the affiliates deletion
e.g. it would have this effect http://www.google.com/search?q=SEARCH ITEM -inurl:(kelkoo bizrate pixmania dealtime pricerunner dooyoo pricegrabber pricewatch resellerratings ebay shopbot comparestoreprices ciao unbeatable shopping opinions nextag buy bestwebbuys) [pipes '|' removed from between items in the brackets to avoid columnar comments overshoot]
for completeness, we have to mention the amazing http://elgoog.rb-hosting.de/index.cgi At first , this looks like a joke! however it has occasionally allowed otherwise forbidden "search" from within those authoritarian democidal regimes where the ownership of a mirror is still allowed.
It's all too easy to knock up a semi-anonymous Google proxy:
http://www.jaruzel.com/projects/anonymous-google/
It's no where near as good as DuckDuckGo, and was written to prove a point (or for when I'm searching for something I REALLY don't want Google to tell Doubleclick all about).
Happy to share the source code for those that contact me.
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