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| Do you think search result is being manipulated? |
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| No |
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| Total Votes : 56 |
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zah21
n00b
Joined: 15 Jan 2021
Posts: 27
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 Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2021 3:25 am Post subject: Search engine |
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I've began to notice trends within the last few years that searching for stuff on Google is not what it used to be. Before, you could find a more diverse range of results but now it's more limited to a few selected or well known sites. I'm not sure when this started to happen but now it is the default state. In other words, the internet is more tightly regulated and its more about what they want you to know or see.
A search engine plays an important role on the internet as it helps you to find the stuff that is relevant to you. I remember back in the day when I used to troubleshoot issues on Linux sites such as Gentoo, Ubuntu and other forums used to appear now all I get is Archlinux forums (sometimes) and other lesser known sites. I feel like Google has become so strong and powerful that it doesn't need to answer to anyone and no ones watching what really runs underneath all of that. It reminds me of Thanos from the Marvel movie Avengers 
People barely know forums like Gentoo exist on the internet. What people don't know, they probably won't care about and in a way that controls access.
Anyway, recently I've switched from Google to Bing and I find that much better / less restrictive in some ways. What do you guys use? I'd like to know as well.
Thanks. |
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The Doctor
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Joined: 27 Jul 2010
Posts: 2678
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| Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2021 3:46 am Post subject: |
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Google is well known for manipulation and they don't even deny it anymore. There is a lot coverage on this. Bing isn't better.
I use duckduckgo. Its not perfect by any means but I trust it more than Google or Bing.
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figueroa
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Joined: 14 Aug 2005
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Location: Edge of marsh USA
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| Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2021 4:45 am Post subject: |
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Problems with searches might be the user poor use of keywords. I often get Gentoo forum posts in my search results. Arch and Ubunu forums as well as many generic Linux forums are also well represented.
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psycho
Guru
Joined: 22 Jun 2007
Posts: 542
Location: New Zealand
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| Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2021 6:44 am Post subject: |
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It's not really a matter of opinion: Google's search results *are* manipulated...this is well documented. There's a concept of "search bubble" that refers to the user-specific bubble of palatable information that Google eventually dishes up to individuals: two people with different political/religious/etc. views will be served up different (mis)information by Google, potentially never seeing the world outside their little preference-tuned bubbles.
Google has nothing but profit as the goal of its search engine algorithms. If it makes more money by dishing people up what they want to see and addicting them to endless click-fests through whatever garbage makes them feel better than other people, that's exactly how it will continue to tune its algorithms: and of course, famously, it's also tracking all of that and selling its knowledge of your interests and other behaviours to marketing companies. I remember discovering Google back when it was just starting out and other engines (AltaVista, Yahoo etc.) dominated, and I thought it was wonderful: instead of raw, literal hits (that were just starting to be manipulated at the other end by primitive SEO...fake keywords in HTML headers and so on), Google tracked the links that people actually chose to follow and manipulated its results accordingly, pushing the most useful and relevant stuff to the top. For researchers it was almost as good as coffee. If only we'd known then what a monster it was going to become, we could have raced to compete with a distributed, FOSS alternative that selected its algorithms based simply on what was likely to provide the best information to the most people. Now that Google has all the infrastructure (including a global network of Android phones, and of course Facebook and Gmail and YouTube and so on, pouring vast amounts of data on its users' every movement and activity into Google's databases) and can throw billions at anything it likes, it will be hard to displace.
Still, it has physical premises in the US so it's subject to US law: as its impact on history continues to increase, US lawmakers may simply force it to open up its engine and be accountable for accuracy rather than clickability. Or, maybe it will reform itself internally, repositioning itself Bill-Gates-like as benevolent and more interested in doing good than making money. For now at least, its results are heavily manipulated: that often means they're exactly the results we want, so I'm not denying that it's a very good search engine from that perspective. But, McDonalds produces very good food from that perspective: the product is designed for maximum feelings of satisfaction, not to be good for the customer in any other way. |
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figueroa
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| Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2021 8:56 am Post subject: |
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So, don't use Google. DuckDuckGo for me.
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Andy Figueroa
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389292
Guru
Joined: 26 Mar 2019
Posts: 504
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| Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2021 10:38 am Post subject: |
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I don't use Google, for like 3 years already. The last straw was the result I got with the entire screen dedicated to ads. Two ad links at the top, then huge map with addresses 50% of the screen, and then a strip of thumbnails from youtube the rest of the screen. I don't get it, if I wanted an address I would search on maps, if I want video I can search on youtube. Google search is such garbage, don't know why people are still using it.
Last edited by 389292 on Sat Nov 06, 2021 9:57 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Goverp
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Joined: 07 Mar 2007
Posts: 2179
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| Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2021 11:01 am Post subject: |
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What do you mean by "manipulated", and what would an "unmanipulated" search result look like?
All search results are the product of some algorithm, and that algorithm manipulates a list of sites into one it believes is most useful, according to some criteria. There's no magic "unmanipulated" list. Google's algorithm used to be based on some weighted count of the number of sites linking to each search result, but everyone started manipulating the web to "optimize" the search results. So IIUC Google use AI and lots of "stuff" to try to (a) provide the most useful and relevant answer while (b) making revenue for Google. And as they're providing the result for free, what else do you expect?
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NeddySeagoon
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| Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2021 11:07 am Post subject: |
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I've given up using Google directly because of the profiling.
Its become invasive to the point of being useless unless you log in. If you do log in, it tracks and profiles you better because it wants a lot more information.
I've switched to startpage.com, which is anonymised google and occasionally DDG.
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pjp
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| Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2021 5:12 pm Post subject: |
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I stopped using Google search at least 10 years ago. At the time, some were claiming DDG results weren't as good, so I occasionally used both on some searches, but I didn't see a noticeable difference. Before I switched, I perceived Google's results to have degraded significantly, so maybe that made it easier for others to compete. I tried Bing briefly around then too and it was pretty bad. I haven't used either since.
Occasionally some website will have a search feature that uses Google, but I just close those as soon as I notice it. I ought to try blocking the domain.
There are some other options I never remember well enough to give a fair chance. searx comes to mind, but I don't know which one I might have used. I thought there was a single instance.
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figueroa
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Joined: 14 Aug 2005
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Location: Edge of marsh USA
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| Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2021 5:56 pm Post subject: |
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Browser privacy settings seem to make a difference, plus Privacy Badger plugin. Also, I have over 60,000 lines in my /etc/hosts file pointing at 0.0.0.0 which I keep up-to-date. I share my script for getting and mangling the hosts that are in my /etc/hosts file in the following thread:
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8417556-highlight-.html#8417556
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psycho
Guru
Joined: 22 Jun 2007
Posts: 542
Location: New Zealand
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| Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2021 10:00 pm Post subject: |
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| Goverp wrote: | | What do you mean by "manipulated", and what would an "unmanipulated" search result look like? |
An unmanipulated search result is exactly what you get when you use a tool like find or locate: the algorithm simply takes your search terms and applies them to the search scope without saying "OK, there are a whole bunch of files matching that expression here...but I'm sure the searcher is a moron who didn't mean to type what s/he typed, so I'm not going to report those...instead, I'm going to output all these other files over here...and it helps that their authors paid me to highlight them too". We wouldn't put up with it if our shell search tools worked this way, but we've become so used to it with Internet searches that some people have forgotten unmanipulated search is actually a thing.
Admittedly it came with its own problems...the manipulation is why Google rose to dominance, because if there were 1,000 sites claiming to offer something and one of them actually provided it, a raw search returned all of them and you had to trawl through them manually...whereas Google (to our delight in the early days) would use its manipulations to serve up the best site first. We also benefit a lot from Google's efforts to thwart deliberate SEO: for every company or individual out there trying to manipulate the manipulations to their advantage, Google does attempt to counter-manipulate their manipulations of Google's manipulations (!). Without that activity we'd be at the mercy of millions of selfish individuals and greedy companies throwing everything they could at raw search to manipulate it (from their end) to get us clicking on their links...however...without Google something would have evolved organically to deal with that (FOSS is regulated by voluntary communities like Gentoo, and search could have been similarly regulated by user-developed algorithms for broadcasting the good links and filtering out the bad ones).
| Goverp wrote: | | Google use AI and lots of "stuff" to try to (a) provide the most useful and relevant answer while (b) making revenue for Google. And as they're providing the result for free, what else do you expect? |
If we had that attitude to FOSS ("hey, folks are providing this stuff for free: why should we expect it to work for us, rather than for them?") we'd be sitting here not worrying about it while upstream developers sold our information to the highest bidders, etc. What else do I expect? When it's now arguably the main source of information for human beings worldwide (people Google rather than going to the library and searching for stuff in books), and given that information or misinformation is the difference between a peaceful prosperous community and a violent fanatical brainwashed community, I expect them to say "OK, maybe a trillion dollars is enough...maybe we can get by on that...the hundreds of billions were a bit tight, but now that selling up and splitting the money equally would give every single Google employee over 8 billion dollars each, maybe we can stop tuning our algorithms to maximise our profits, and start tuning them to maximise the benefits to our search users".
People of my generation grew up in a world that wasn't shaped by the Internet so at some deep level many of them still imagine the world is like that: rationally they know it isn't, but emotionally they still feel as though the world out there is too fixed and stable to be tossed around by the twitching of fingers on a keyboard. Google are basically a bunch of guys (mostly) who grew up typing BASIC games into their home computers from magazines: I think it just hasn't sunk in for them yet that their code decides what people see globally when they search for answers about "Covid vaccine safety" or "Trump justice policy" or "Islam peaceful or violent" or whatever. They're steering the course of history but still imagine they're just a tech start-up and it's no big deal to use profit for themselves as the basis of what they're doing. When it actually dawns on them how important their code is now, I think they'll open it up. If they don't, they'll eventually be displaced by a FOSS alternative. Google's huge, impressive-looking data centres are not running this show. They're only able to do so because millions of FOSS servers using FOSS protocols choose to point people at those data centres and feed the results back to them: if the developers of that FOSS software decided to collaborate with data scientists and code a distributed search system into the Net and push Google out of it, Google's trillion dollar value could go straight down the toilet. |
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szatox
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Joined: 27 Aug 2013
Posts: 3430
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| Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2021 10:32 pm Post subject: |
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I mostly use duckduckgo and yandex
Would be nice to find yet another option though. |
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Anon-E-moose
Watchman
Joined: 23 May 2008
Posts: 6147
Location: Dallas area
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| Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2021 10:52 pm Post subject: |
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I probably use google (not signed in) and DDG. Sometimes one provides me better hits, sometimes the other.
If I'm looking for equipment, say computer part, I'll usually use google as they put the ads first 
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The Doctor
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Posts: 2678
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| Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2021 12:07 am Post subject: |
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The manipulation certainly can cut both ways. I had a friend search "c string" in the front row of a CS class. He promptly closed his laptop when google provided the most popular answer with an image search.
The visible problem is that google is highly political. For example, YouTube added the banner "robust safeguards ensure the integrity of US elections" and started flat out banning anyone who questioned if it was the case. The reality is that if you look into it there are claims based on statistics and sworn affidavits saying this isn't the case. These claims have also never been addressed in a court or similar forum. There are also reputable doctors from places like Stanford who question the COVID-19 responses. Again, a banning offence on YouTube and suppressed by google search. The information is out there and a lot of very credible people and information exist but Google won't serve it up.
And don't kid yourself. Google knows exactly what they are doing. They are not a small startup committed to doing the right thing anymore. If a FOSS alternative exists lets build/use it already.
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Apologies if I take a while to respond. I'm currently working on the dematerialization circuit for my blue box. |
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figueroa
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Location: Edge of marsh USA
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| Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2021 3:00 am Post subject: |
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Manipulated as doing the best thing to make them money and/or sell me something.
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hp pavilion hpe h8-1260t/2AB5; spinning rust x3
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pa4wdh
l33t
Joined: 16 Dec 2005
Posts: 882
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| Posted: Sat Nov 06, 2021 11:37 am Post subject: |
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Yes yhey are manipulated, by various things:
1) The web sites they index (Search Engine Optimization - Manipulate search engines to get a higher ranking)
2) Those who buy ads from them (They give money to be higher ranked for certain keywords)
3) Your search bubble (Historical data they collected from you to give results you might like, and sometimes prevents you from finding new stuff)
I personally never used anything from google, i never liked the company. For search engines i started with yahoo, later i switched to ixquick (which later became startpage.com) and now duckduckgo.
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GFCCAE6xF
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Joined: 06 Aug 2012
Posts: 295
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| Posted: Sat Nov 06, 2021 3:04 pm Post subject: Re: Search engine |
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| zah21 wrote: | | I've switched from Google to Bing |
I started using Bing quite a while ago, I mainly use Windows and it was the default for Edge (Which I do like) - before this I used DuckDuckGo but that started having weird results and I noticed myself more and more using !g for it to take me to Google.
Anyway at the start of the year I had to start a new NVQ for work and doing research occasionally I couldn't quite find what I wanted in Bing so would go to google and copy/paste in my search and the results were almost always way worse and often spammed me with loads of "articles" which were stubs to research/studies that quite frankly didn't mean much to what I wanted.
Bing has always been better than Google for image searching (especially pornographic - we're all adults here!) but I've noticed over time that has gotten toned down a fair bit but still better. Yandex by far has the best image (and reverse image) search.
Brave search seems to be not too bad, I'm not interested in their browser but I did compare results vs google and bing it was kinda in-between the two.
The point about forums I think is quite universal, there are a lot of spam websites out now that just copy/paste the same shit for each other and fill results - I quite often have to add "forum" or "reddit" to a search query to get to posts from real people having real conversations which is really important for researching things for work (farming) or hobbies like cycling and motorcycle/tractor mechanics. |
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Tony0945
Watchman
Joined: 25 Jul 2006
Posts: 5127
Location: Illinois, USA
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| Posted: Sat Nov 06, 2021 4:58 pm Post subject: |
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| Bing is Microsoft. Substituting Microsoft for Google is like asking if you prefer cyanide to arsenic. |
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eccerr0r
Watchman
Joined: 01 Jul 2004
Posts: 9824
Location: almost Mile High in the USA
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| Posted: Sat Nov 06, 2021 7:07 pm Post subject: |
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of course it's being manipulated - and so called "SEO" is the #1 manipulator.
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pjp
Administrator
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| Posted: Sat Nov 06, 2021 7:16 pm Post subject: |
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| Tony0945 wrote: | | Bing is Microsoft. Substituting Microsoft for Google is like asking if you prefer cyanide to arsenic. |
I wonder when being trendy first became a thing.
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CaptainBlood
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| Posted: Sat Nov 06, 2021 7:22 pm Post subject: |
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| NeddySeagoon wrote: | I've given up using Google directly because of the profiling.
Its become invasive to the point of being useless unless you log in. If you do log in, it tracks and profiles you better because it wants a lot more information.
I've switched to startpage.com, which is anonymised google and occasionally DDG. |
+1
Thks 4 ur attention, interest & support.
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Fitzcarraldo
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szatox
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Joined: 27 Aug 2013
Posts: 3430
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| Posted: Sun Nov 07, 2021 1:22 am Post subject: |
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Wow, that's a pretty case of necrophilia
Anyway, since this topic has been revived, what search engines do you use?
I tend to go with yandex.com, or sometimes duckduckgo.com (which I think is anonymized bing). We could use a bit more variety here, so.. Anything good out there?
I've heard brave has it's own search now too.
ps: tried baidu as well, but couldn't make it past their captcha. Apparently, I'm a robot. |
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eccerr0r
Watchman
Joined: 01 Jul 2004
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Location: almost Mile High in the USA
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| Posted: Sun Nov 07, 2021 1:29 am Post subject: |
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ddg and startpage, randomly...
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figueroa
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Location: Edge of marsh USA
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| Posted: Sun Nov 07, 2021 3:12 am Post subject: |
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DuckDuckGo, but I'm not married to the usage. I'm happy with the results I get.
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Andy Figueroa
hp pavilion hpe h8-1260t/2AB5; spinning rust x3
i7-2600 @ 3.40GHz; 16 gb; Radeon HD 7570
amd64/23.0/split-usr/desktop (stable), OpenRC, -systemd -pulseaudio -uefi |
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