bquinlan

Fledditors are all over the map in terms of interests, temperaments, and manners. I think the majority of us are trying to fit it and contribute, but even that can be disruptive when there are this many newcomers. I deeply appreciate how patient and friendly the folks who were already here have been toward this sudden invasion.

Everything you do with Google Search is tied back to you as an individual, stored, and analyzed. They know what you searched for, how that fit into your search history, how long you looked at various parts of the results, which ones you clicked on, and what you did after that. That data is then used by Google to target you with very specific advertising. It is also sold to other entities that want to target you for marketing, demographics, and sometimes less wholesome things.

DuckDuckGo does not retain any information about your searches.

Google is definitely a better search engine, but 19 times out of 20 I can get what I want from DuckDuckGo just as easily. And on the rare occasions when I can’t, I resort to Google. That gives Google a lot less to work with and causes me very little inconvenience. Everything involves tradeoffs, but that is not a painful one.

The law requires the board and the top executives of any corporation to behave like sociopaths with regard to the business. They have a legal responsibility to their shareholders to maximize profits. That supersedes any responsibilities to their employees, their customers, or the general public.

In 1916 Henry Ford reduced Ford’s dividend payments to shareholders so he could increase the salaries of his employees. Some shareholders successfully sued him for it and won. He was forced to eliminate the raises and pay the higher dividends.

And we have been stuck with the inhumane results of that court decision ever since. Corporations aren’t bad by accident. They are bad by design. They are legally required to be bad. It isn’t surprising that the people who are often the most successful at making sociopathic decisions are themselves sociopaths.

Yes. I’ve been using it since the old OpenOffice days. It works well, it’s easy to learn, it’s well supported, and it’s free.