Alex Hall

RE: https://tldr.nettime.org/@tante/116605858023186072

I use Firefox for my main browser, Kagi for my search, Apple and Fastmail (the latter paid) for mail, an Apple phone, and LLMs that aren't Gemini. I'm pretty sure none of it matters. If it did, Chrome wouldn't be the top browser, and Google wouldn't be so popular that it's a verb. An organization I volunteer with runs on Google, as does my employer. No matter what we do, people choose the convenient, popular, and easy, and it's hard to blame them. Google may well win this.

May 20 at 4:24pmFedra
Show threadAlex Hall1d ago
That's not an indictment of anyone. If I avoided everything that goes against my beliefs, I'd probably be vegetarian, use a FairPhone, and avoid Wal-Mart and Amazon. Instead, I eat meat, I use an iPhone, and I got a grocery delivery from Wal-Mart an hour ago. Sometimes it's accessibility, sometimes it's cost, sometimes it's convenience, but we all go along with most things and pick a few stances to focus on. For most people, none of those stances include avoiding Google and LLMs.
Show threadDrew Mochak1d ago
@alexhall @tante I feel like, if google no longer serves relevant (or accurate) answers then they will feel a need to switch to something that does. Maybe that's wishful thinking though. But I don't feel like this is a huge lift.
Show threadCarter Temm1d ago
@prism @alexhall @tante Switching away from Google as a search engine was surprisingly easy for me once I set a different one as default and got past the muscle memory I had been holding onto for years. Hard to accurately represent the extent to which the quality of results has gone down in the last decade thanks to partnerships with Reddit and Quora. But no one should see comments from trolls prioritized above actual answers, no matter the cost