ADVANCEDPROJECTS
126 MAY2020|COMPUTERSHOPPER|ISSUE387
that the service is free to use while covering the costs of running
servers and updating algorithms. But while you can argue that
displaying ad links, shopping results and promoting articles from
certain websites might be an honest attempt to displayarange of
relevant results, companies paytobeamong the links promotedat
the topofresults pages.
The question therefore remains: are these companies promoted
because theypay,because they’re trusted, or because they’re trusted
and theypay?Even the latter case is problematic: should charities and
highly trusted organisations have to paytobepromoted? Are we
comfortable with such amercenary attitude? Each search company
has its own policies to address those issues.
The ultimatecombination of trust and moneyishow much of our
search history, online behaviour and personal data is captured and
used by thesearch companies. Cookies and other trackers can build
an accuratepicture of who you are,what you do,how youlive your
life, and (perhaps the most keenly felt aspect of this issue) which
products and services you might want to buy.Some search engines
value online privacy so highly theydoabsolutely no tracking. As well as
looking at how to find information quicker,therefore,we’ll also cover
alternatives to Google that value your privacy.
ALTERNATIVE SEARCHENGINES
Search engines are general-purpose tools, thedefault option or the
start of more complicated searches. There are many alternatives to
Google,and each uses its own methods (algorithms) to deliver the
results it believes you want. While you would assume we would have
moved beyond accuracy and speed by now–that all mainstream
search engines would surface the same information in similarly
accessible ways –you’d be wrong. We asked the major search
engines ‘when is easter’, deliberately leaving off the current year.
The results were surprising.
⬆Don’t assume that one search engine is like another –Google and Bing
showed the answer to the question ‘when is easter’immediately,while we’re
not even sure that Ask understood the question
Ecosia
Bing
Google
DuckDuckGo
