543
Microsoft Bing is trying to spoof Google UI when people search Google.com
(www.windowslatest.com)
this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2025
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Technology
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Kind of fucked up but tbf Google does similarly shady stuff.
Please just use duckduckgo (or SearX).
I host my own SearXNG instance, which miiiight be a bit of a bad idea because the anonymity of the crowd disappears but hosting your own services is way too cool to ignore. It's at search.gregtech.eu in case anyone wants to use it.
This is nothing like GregTech! Where's the tedious microcrafting to enjoy before every search?
I asked them about that once and they created the instance without knowing about the modpack. xd
Pretty impressed, very accurate information
Accurate indeed. Pee is stored in the balls, cum is stored in the prostate
You know your content is certainly used to train LLMs ?
Did they stutter? Everything they said is 100% accurate.
It pulls from Wikidata
How did you change the logo? I tried to do that on my instance and failed miserably. Running it through docker.
You gotta mount the image to the place where searxng accesses it, like this in docker compose:
Hahha GregSearX I love it!
I’ve used searX in the past and found it was decent but personally I am going to stick with duckduckgo because it just works better for my needs (especially since I’m on mobile).
What I don't like about SearXNG (aside of no favicons/icons I think) is that it doesn't show the content of what I am looking for in the browser desktop tabs, if I search for "Linux" in the tab it is only shown "SearXNG" instead of what I am searching for... That definitely kills my browsing habits... I hope I am being clear (can't post a screenshot right now), also unsure if it was the same with mobile browsers.
You can control that with a setting. In Settings - Privacy, turn on “Query in the page's title.”
My instance has a magnifying glass as the favicon.
Thank you, totally missed this then 😄
I can set up a favicon resolver on my instance. I'll do it today.
Thank you, I didn't even know it was possible.
I am gonna try it later, happy spying /j
There we go, I have the favicons set up. Sorry for the intermittent downtime, I was doing some configuration.
That is configurable. Settings > Privacy > Query in the page's title
Oh, so it was a privacy feature then? Neat!
It supports favicons now, it has to be enabled by the instance.
Thanks for the heads up, always a good thing being proved wrong when asking for features :p
So then you can track my searches?
I guess I could technically do that, but I really don't give a f what people search for on my searxng instance. Plus, Google and the likes have an incentive to use your searches for advertising and building a profile on you.
If people search for illegal content does that get you in trouble?
I mean, none of that content is on my server, and the search engines searxng indexes probably so their best to remove illegal stuff.
I really hope I don't get in trouble for anything, but I doubt I will. I have a grand Total of like 5 users.
You are in for a surprise, tomorrow you will have 7 users, you just got Lemmyed!
Lemmy hug of... life?
SearX is dead; you should use SearXNG now.
DDG is just Bing under the hood
And Searx is the same. And startpage is just google.
But the point is they don’t track.
DDG was letting Bing track users. They may have stopped now that they got in trouble for it.
Wait really?
Best I could find was this arstechnica article from 2022:
Yeah that would be it:
I couldn't remember the details exactly, but basically up until then they were allowing Microsoft tracking despite all their advertising claiming they wouldn't track users.
I feel like Microsoft is way more shameless about their shady stuff. They've been messing around with impersonating google/chrome for awhile now, they recently had that thing where they would copy all your open chrome tabs, and then when you started your computer it would open edge with all your chrome tabs to trick people into using edge instead.
They aren't afraid of people complaining about them, they are afraid of the government, and they fulfill a hefty amount of contracts for the gov
I would use anything else before DDG, the primary function of it which is searching, generally feels sucky
Why? DDG is fine for search, and the bangs make up for any issues.