Degoogling

Like so many others I feel it is time to wean myself off my dependency on Google for search. It may come as a no surprise to anyone how relying on a single source for information opens you up to significantly biased view of the world and is inherently dangerous to do unconsciously. Although my field of work does not strictly require me to present an unbiased view of matters, recent policy and privacy changes for Google products have made me realise how, on an unconscious level, I immediately turn to Google search when I need to look something up and how that can impact my online experience in seemingly unrelated systems.


Cold Turkey
So I thought my best course of action was to completely remove Google search as my default go-to search provider. To begin with I chose to try out Bing (as it is the only search provider that offers a similar range of products I use from Google, i.e. search and maps). I am still disappointed that I couldn't use Office365 for free for personal use (I'd even settle for ads) but it seems that suite is solely meant for business users (big mistake I think).

So first I had to identify where my searches were originating from. I identified the following three areas in descending order of importance:

1. My keyboard launcher, Launchy
   This is by far the most common way that I perform search on my computers. Fast and efficient but has contributed to this mental association that search == google as I need to type in the first letter of the provider I want and then press tab to enter my search term.
   
    
2. Browser's address bar
   As I am a heavy user of Google's Chrome browser it has become almost natural to just start typing what I want into the address bar and then either press enter to search directly or pick from the drop down list. This is such a natural thing to do that I do it in any browser I use.
   
   
   
   
    
3. Browser's search provider box
   After I stopped using Firefox as much as I used to I've stopped using the search provider box as much. But I still occasionally press Ctrl+K and start typing when I find myself using Firefox now and again. Neither IE or Chrome have this box anymore.
   
    
4. Navigating to the search providers website to perform search
   This I almost never do on my main computers but occasionally do when using my phone to search for things. It is slow and annoying

How Easy Is It?
The single biggest difficulty I see is to change my own behaviour and the association I've made with Google and search, it will be hardest for item 1 as I need to stop typing "g <tab> <search term>" and rather type

"b <tab> <search term>"

Not so hard it seems. But I soon realised how instinctive that "g" had become. Most of the time I had already typed it and pressed <tab> before I realised. So that is going to be a challenge to change. Item 4 is so painful to do anyway that I don't see it as a problem at all (although it would be more of an issue if I used the search button on my Android phone more).

The rest is just a matter of configuring the technology to do what I want it to it seems.

Imagine my surprise when the simplest tool to configure to use Bing by far was Google Chrome and the biggest disappointment and betrayer was my old friend Mozilla Firefox.


Google Chrome 18
Simple. Clicking the spanner/wrench icon in the upper right hand side of the browser window, choosing Settings and simply choosing "Bing" from the dropdown list under Search on the Basics tab.

Voilà, now all my searches through Chrome are directed to the Bing website.

Total clicks: 3
Annoyances: None


Microsoft Internet Explorer 9
Strictly speaking then no configuration is needed out of the box for this browser as it comes with Bing already configured as default. However that is also the only search provider it comes with by default. To install any other is more painful that I would have wanted.

IE'sCog Icon

But to choose a different provider it is necessary to click the cog icon in the upper right hand corner of the browser window

Choose Internet Options, clicking the Settings button in the Search section on the first tab. That opens the Add-ons window which allows you to choose a different search provider. I use the term "allows" in a very generous way as it is near to impossible to see at a glance how to use anything else than Bing. But it is there near the bottom left corner disguised as one of those hard to see links.

It annoyed me that they made it this hard to choose as it is obvious that this was a deliberate UI design choice of theirs, one that probably went through a lot of disccusion, refinement etc before being approved and implemented.

Total clicks: 9
Annoyances: Had to close and re-open the Add-on window for the new search provider to appear in the list and manually close all those windows I had opened. Choosing the provider requires you to open an additional browser window to select (plus an extra window opens to confirm settings for the provider after selecting it).

Edit: 
After digging around a little more my curiosity got the better of me and I clicked the little magnifying glass  icon that is present on the far right in the IE address bar. While this gives you convenient access to your browser history and favourites, I discovered that it also lists your search providers and gives you a quicker way to install a new one (step that completely bypasses all the windows mentioned in the previous method). Much much better and actually more clear what provider you're using than it is in Chrome.

The IE magnifying glass (kudos to whoever added the downward
pointing triangle as I would otherwise never have clicked it)

Lists all the provider you have installed and allows easy admin

Total clicks: 6 (2 if you already have the provider installed)
Annoyances: None apart from the aforementioned annoyance having to open a separate website to choose the provider.


Mozilla Firefox 10

"Et tu, Brute?" - Julius Caesar, on seeing his friend among the assassins.

Many know by now that Google made a large contribution (pay off?) to be and stay the default search provider for the Mozilla Firefox browser. The figures from their recent December 2011 deal are estimated to be around $1 billion dollars just to stay the default search provider for the next three years. That sure is one valuable instance of a textbox control.

However it seems rather straight forward to change the default providers, Firefox even comes installed with a choice of a few search engines as alternatives to Google. Simply clicking on the icon in the search providers box gives easy access to choose a different one

That is until you attempt to search directly from the address box!

After choosing Bing search I could not understand why all my address box searches still sent my search query to Google. There was nothing in the configuration section of the browser that hinted that the two boxes did not use the same setting and why one was using Bing as I requested but the address box refused to do as I asked.

It wasn't until I dove under the covers and opened up about:config (which is an advanced configuration system for the browser and not recommended for the layman user). There I discovered quite the jungle of configuration settings related to search in the browser. The one that interested me the most I highlighted in the screenshot below

Sneaky bastards!

Firefox still retains Google as the default search engine even though I've clearly chosen to use Bing as my search provider. Luckily it is relatively simple to change by double clicking on the browser.search.defaultenginename row and type in "Bing". Sorted, now address bar searching will use Bing as default. Bada <pun>! Still I feel this kind of behaviour is deliberately misleading and under-handed.

Total clicks: 2
Annoyances: Does not change provider for address bar search, only for advanced users to discover and change.

Edit: Apparently Microsoft made a deal with Mozilla to produce a special Firefox with Bing browser.

Opera 11
I admit that I don't use the Opera browser on my computers all that much (almost never). However Opera is the only browser I use on my Android phone and it is simply brilliant there. But on desktop systems there are just to many alternatives that are better and sadly they have copied so many things from Firefox (or vice versa) that it just seems redundant to use when I already don't want to use Firefox.

Opera however suffers from a similar problem as Firefox, namely the disconnect between the search provider chosen in the provider box and the one that is used in its main address box. In addition Opera adds on yet another layer of confusion by adding the third search variant on their Speed Dial startup page.

These three boxes can all be set to different search providers. Confused?

Setting the default search engine to use is also not very straight forward as it should be. Same as with Firefox changing the search provider in the search provider box at the top right has no effect on either the address bar (still points to Google) or the Speed Dial box. You need to click the Opera button in the top left corner, choosing Settings and Preferences. Choose the third tab Search in that window and you are presented with a list of all configured search providers for the browser.

Editing the Bing Search Provider in Opera

To set the default search engine you need to double click the entry you want to set (Bing in this case) and click the "Details" button. Then tick the "Use as default search engine". Here you can also control the rather confusing Speed Dial search, reasons why you would want that different from your default one escape me.

Total clicks: 7
Annoyances: Obscurity and the disconnect between address bar and default search provider. Also the Speed Dial page is just plain confusing. But at least you don't have to dive under the hood to change these settings.


Conclusion
The technology can be changed easy enough (if you know where to look). But changing the learned behaviour is going to be harder, but I will give Bing an exclusive try for the next month.

This difficulty with Google in Firefox especially knowing how much Google is paying them for the install defaults feels like a sad regression back to the late 1990s when Microsoft was throwing its weight around in a similar manner bullying itself in a position to dominate the same market. I thought that showed clearly that all that got them was a lot of bad blood and eventually the involvement of US and European authorities when it became obvious to even the non-techies as they were clearly abusing their dominant market position to stifle competitors.

Perhaps moves such as these are the early indicators that the great cosine wave of technology firm's path to success has reached its maxima and has slowly but surely started its inevitable fall from grace. But I guess that might be better saved to a later post.

Bing Linking and Internet Anonymity

This last Wednesday (22. Feb) the people behind the Bing search engine announced a rather big feature, Bing Linked Pages. This feature integrates your Facebook profile to the Bing search experience in a much more visible way than before.

Although "likes" made by friends have been used in the past by Bing to influence the search results you're served, Linked Pages might be far more jarring due to how much more in-your-face the "we know who you are" factor is than before.

Forever Archived
I like the general idea to give people a little more control over their digital identity than they currently have. It is a bit crazy that in an age where nothing about our life will be forgotten ever again and whatever stupid photo, silly comment or posted text will forever more be indexed and available within milliseconds as a part of our digital persona, that we cannot have even the slightest control over any of it.

So the much hyped Web 2.0 today pretty much boils down to you either posting something as your official digital persona and then be ready to face the consequences of that perhaps 20 years down the line or opt for complete anonymity. Why do we need these absolutes? I like neither.

I think it is every ones basic right as the fallible ever-evolving humans we are to have the right to change our minds, form different opinions or change our behaviour patterns. Think this is what is basically happening when we grow up, become adults, go on a diet etc. The fact that we still have to lug around with us (and this applies more to the younger >25y generation than me) our entire history for anyone to recall or browse through is in short frightening.

Linked Pages could have been so much more
But back to Bing, so that is why my first reaction to the Bing Linked Pages was an overall positive one. The idea is great. But it seems that the realisation is however not. Below are a few things that bother me about this particular implementation:

1. Requiring Friend Status To See a Person's Linked Pages: In all seriousness do you really need yet another profile in addition to your Facebook one? This new Linked Pages feature is apparently only visible when the person searching is logged into Facebook on Bing and is currently registered as a friend of the person they're searching for.
   
   This sounds to me just a duplication of the existing profile system in Facebook which is already quite extensive and most people put quite a bit of thought into these days. If you're searching for your Facebook friend's name on a search engine it is fairly likely that you do not want information already available to you in Facebook.
    
2. Facebook Timeline Integration: Bing's choice of Facebook Connect as a sign-in ID makes a lot of sense (rather than requiring you to sign up for a LiveID). The FC user-base is huge and the process can be completed in under three clicks. However the decision to make it necessary to allow the Linked Pages feature app to post to your timeline is beyond me.
   
   Why does this otherwise great way to make sure that people find relevant information about you when you are "binged" (is that a verb yet?) have to have any ping-back communication or linkage with your Facebook profile? Remove this silly posting restriction, it makes no sense that Bing needs to post anything to your Facebook (optional is fine).
   
   To be fair: you can delete individual postings from your timeline after the fact. But it quickly becomes annoying as other friends of yours start linking pages to you. Which brings me to...
    
3. Allowing Friends to Link Pages to You: Now this makes absolutely no sense to allow. Why would anyone want anyone other than themselves to control or influence their outward online persona? This single point completely defeats the purpose of the whole Linked Pages feature as we're back into the land of uncertainties where you're hopelessly dependent on outside factors to direct this aspect of yourself.
   
   Facebook already has a way for your friends to post to your timeline on Facebook why would you want to essentially create the same thing again on Bing? I think very few of us on Facebook have a completely separate accounts and rather opt for controlling friends access to information through groups or simply just let everyone see everything. Which brings me to...
     
4. Not Every Friend on Facebook is Your Friend: aka not every friend on Facebook can be trusted. The fact is that if you're anything like me you have people on Facebook from all walks of life and for a variety of different reasons. Real-life friends, family, extended family, old school buddies, current and former work mates and bosses, current and former partners of friends, people you've met travelling, in the pub, on a boat, in a plane, you name it.
   
   You would not necessarily want to trust them all with your search result profile. Especially since it is becoming increasingly common that peoples' names get binged/googled by prospective employers, when applying for mortgages or loans, applying for adoption and countless other reasons.
5. Unhelpful, Borderline Arrogance Towards Users: While you might want to allow your friends to post to your already locked off Facebook wall, you might not want them to influence your public search results without supervision. Perhaps it is just me but I like to joke around with some of my friends and different groups of people have different kinds of humor. Some of the jokes are very much in-jokes, which quite often surface as Facebook wall posts, comments and likes.
   
   But as everyone that is allowed to post on your wall can use the Bing Linked Pages to link you to a page you might see how this could become a little bit problematic when dealing with your joker friends (as well as them dealing with yourself).
   
   Providing ridiculous suggestions such as the one below, should never ever ever ever be a part of the Bing team's response. When playing the role of the underdog, this kind of borderline "take-it-or-leave-it" attitude is not acceptable. Bing should humbly want their users to adopt their technology. You're asking people to give their time into something collaborative which will provide Bing with heaps of valuable information. Treat it as you would a present not like this:
   

   If a friend keeps linking you to pages that you don’t want associated with you, you can't prevent the friend from doing it again as long as they're a friend, but you can unfriend them, and then remove the links.

I Want Bing To Succeed
Don't get me wrong, I am rooting for the Bing group to become wildly successful and for the Bing search engine to provide a viable alternative to the Googlelith. Partly because Bing is the underdog in the competition. But also and more importantly because a lot of us don't realise the wool that has been pulled over our eyes with regard to the so called "features" and "freebies" that the G offers us (the hypocrisy is not lost on me, me writing this on Blogger, don't worry).

But as real life is fast clashing with the naive Google idealism of doing no evil more of the general public will hopefully catch on that they're only getting these so called freebies because they are indeed Google's livestock being raised and sold.

But Bing, you have to do more than just match G, make search different!

... maybe I should jot down some ideas (stay tuned)