> This * million. The only thing I can reliably trust google is that when I type a search query, results will be meaningful.

Even that is pretty dicey these days. Search for `keyword1 keyword2 obscure_but_important_keyword3` and `obscure_but_important_keyword3` will just get dropped from your query.

Yes! wtf is it with this these days? double quotes in google search used to have meaning... now you just get spammed with completely irrelevant crap and only a few instances of results with that word hidden after the first 20. It's like they are trying to hide from you that there are only a few _real_ hits.

Repeat `keyword3` to increase it's weight: `keyword1 keyword2 keyword3 keyword3`

Quotes make keyword3 a requirement

You can work around this by putting the dropped keyword into double quotes.

Except double-quotes work only as suggestion, they haven't been enforcing a verbatim search for quite a while now (AFAIR there is/was a "verbatim" switch hidden somewhere in Search Tools).

I use !gvb on duckduckgo to search on google with verbatim turned on. It's the only way to make it work more-or-less properly for me.

> You can work around this by putting the dropped keyword into double quotes.

Often. It seems sometimes I get selected for an A/B test where they just ignore parts of my query even if I use doublequotes and verbatim option.

Also this becoming standard means Google have taken a(nother) step backwards since 2009.

Which might be a good thing in the long run. It means competition has even better chances. :-)

DuckDuckGo has improved a lot for me the past year. I used to retry my query on Google when the results were not enough but I don't need to as often now.

Same for me. I've had DDG as the default search engine for a while now. Initially mostly for the instant results and bang shortcuts, but these days I find myself using !g very very rarely.

Same here as well. And I've been finding DDG to even given better results increasingly often, at least on the sample of searches that I've used multiple engines for.

The one thing I really miss is insta-results for things like 'population of USA'. On the other hand, I think Google was going a bit too far with that and started giving insta-results that at times were subjective, or even simply wrong.

Time for the next step: An open source search engine.

I've been using findx.com as my default search engine lately. I still use the find on google option often though, since it's not nearly as good as DDG (There is a search on DDG option next to the Google one as well).

> The only thing I can reliably trust google is that when I type a search query, results will be meaningful.

> Regarding them keeping my data secure [...] I can’t really trust them.

Really? I trust Google more than pretty much any other company to keep my emails secure, for example. Very curious what companies you would consider trustworthy from a security standpoint, unless by security you misspoke and really meant privacy.

I trust Fastmail because I pay Fastmail to provide a secure mail service.

I also have a gmail account. Google is upfront about stating they read my email through gmail. Many times I’ve seen Google use dark UI patterns to hide their tracking and snooping. E.g. location tracking on Android or the way they ignore thr Do Not Track header.

Even though they might not sell data directly, they are insistent on gathering it for their own hidden interests.

I don’t trust Google.

I wonder what distinction you draw between privacy and security.

It's the difference between bodyguards and curtains.

Hey, if the bodyguard is tall enough and stand in front of the window, he'll also serves as a curtain!

/jk

Curtains are also a form of security. Attackers can only use your information against you if they have access to it.

What’s another phrase for privacy? “Securing your data.”

non-private data is often insecure data.

> The only thing I can reliably trust google is that when I type a search query, results will be meaningful

Even this is getting less reliable, image search at least.

Reverse image search (from what I can gather from using it) used to try and match the image to existing images it knew, then tried to tell you where it came from and what it was based on data it gathered from the page it came from.

Today it appears to use a machine learning to decide what the image is, then show similar images of the same object with the same visual appearance.

The difference to the end user is before if you searched using a still of a film it would almost always successfully identify it and provide links related to the film and the location of the still in particular.

Today if you do the same then Google will identify the picture has a woman in it using ML and return a search for the word "woman" with just random stock photos of women in similar images then the search listings will just be links to Pintrest boards containing the searched image.

I honestly don’t care about the NSA; nothing I am doing would even be remotely interesting to them. I am more concerned about my privacy being exploited by advertisers, banks, credit bureaus, political campaigns, and over-zealous local governments.

But do you trust the NSA to store all your private data forever and keep it safe from hackers, other governments and even their own employees?

You also need to assert that you will never care about the NSA. If, in the future, you decide to take up a public role of any sort, the NSA already has decades worth of dirt on you.

...assuming there is dirt to be found, I interpreted the parent as saying there would not be any dirt of interest to NSA

I would be surprised if there existed a person whom you cannot get any dirt on.

Do intelligence agencies exist to "keep us safe", or to advance the state's economic interests?

I guess one could think of that as a false dichotomy. I’m not sure you can necessarily cleanly separate these two things.

Those two things are more similar than they are different.

> I honestly don’t care about the NSA; nothing I am doing would even be remotely interesting to them.

If that's true then why are they dedicated to harvesting and processing all your data?

They're not really. They just don't care enough about the privacy of all the people that don't matter to them. It's still troubling, because there is every reason to expect that people that have done nothing wrong will have someone poke around in their data for the wrong reasons, but I don't have a problem understanding why people are prepared to disregard them - most people will be noise to the NSA. Meanwhile most people are potential revenue to a marketer.