When Google and Apple caved on the Lake Ontario naming for maps, I moved to MapQuest. I know this will not make a bit of difference to the big tech firms. But, it’s a personal response to the sycophantic march of big business to a leader for whom I have no respect.
As I opened MapQuest and played with it a bit, I realized it was just as good as the others. I particularly liked the ease with which you could toggle between alternative routes. And this got me thinking…
Inertia’s a bitch.
Over the past decade+ I simply adopted the next release or product from big tech. From browsers, to search engines, to doc editors and spreadsheets, I just started using what Google or Apple released. So, I decided to see what others had to offer, starting with browsers, search engines, and online office docs.
Browsers. I’ve used Firefox in the past. It was fine. A few I tried for the first time over the past few weeks are Brave, DuckDuckGo, and Vivaldi. What I realized is that all of these put privacy first. From built in ad blocking to easy access VPNs (premium service), protecting yourself was made easier by these browsers.
From an interface perspective, Brave is a Chrome mimic – it’s foundation is Chromium (an open source project) – the same as Chrome, but with much better privacy built in. It provides metrics on blocked ads and trackers as well as time and bandwidth saved by not letting these things load into the browser. Out of the box, Brave default graphics are nicer than Chrome, IMO. Brave does make money on advertising. But, the users aren’t tracked the way Google tracks users.
DuckDuckGo is another Chromium-based browser. Its UI is plain, similar to Chrome. Privacy, blocking your information from websites, blocking email tracking, and a host of other privacy tools come enabled out of the box. Many aren’t even offered with other browsers. Like Brave, DuckDuckGo makes money through ad partnerships (non-tracked), and premium services.
From a privacy protection perspective, Brave and DuckDuckGo are similar, with DDG just ahead.
My Favorite Browser
Vivaldi... hands down my favorite browser. It has built-in privacy protections and easy access to a VPN. It is more complex in appearance, yet intuitive for me. This may not be how everyone’s mind works, but the browser uses both sides and the top as functional areas. In addition, the built-in email client was a breeze to connect to multiple email accounts and easy to navigate between them.
After seeing how similar two of these are to Chrome, and how much more I like one of them, I see no reason to keep using Chrome. This is especially so when I factor in the privacy protections that come standard with the alternatives.
https://DuckDuckGo.com