iOS 8 included DuckDuckGo as a default search engine option but until todays Safari 2.1 update, you needed to use a separate browser extension to have that functionality integrated (you could still manually go to the site but now, it’s fully integrated). DDG doesn’t track you the way Google Search does.
I switched to DDG awhile ago (as well as Start Page which uses Google, but presents the queries with user tracking removed) as both offered browser extensions to allow using them (Apple now just makes it even more known they are supporting privacy based initiatives via action).
Many people think that privacy on the Internet is an oxymoron. For the most part, it is. If you really don’t want to be tracked, it’s best to get off the Internet period. But there are small steps one can take to not have all of their activities logged and used to build a profile of you. This isn’t about “I’m not doing anything wrong so I have nothing to hide”.
This amount of personal information in the wrong hands, is one of the biggest issues (think identify theft). Former Google CEO and current chairman Eric Schmidt, has said some pretty creepy things in terms of his views of privacy and what Google wants to know about people.
There’s a fine line between giving up your privacy for the sake of augmented convenience, versus where that information can be misused or misinterpreted. There have been too many cases where Google has stepped over the line (like the WiFi snooping, various run ins with the Fair Trade Commission over various business practices related to privacy violations) which violates the publics trust.
It’s why I’ve been moving away from using a lot of Google services (especially the ones where personal information is at play including Gmail, Google Maps, Waze, Google+). I mentioned before that the stuff I have on Google+, was exactly stuff I wanted to put there. My use of Picasaweb Albums was something I didn’t have any problem with; though I haven’t used it in awhile either. And I’m still using Blogger.
Some folks will naturally ask why I don’t just move to Apple services completely. I’ve already highlighted that before. Apple’s forte is hardware and software integration from the consumer side of things. Their track record when it comes to web services though, hasn’t been stellar. They killed off a perfectly good web based photo gallery and gave us PhotoStream instead. And the transition from MobileMe to iCloud, left users in the lurch to find replacements for functionality that Apple was removing and not intending to replace (like hosting a web site and iDisk).
With iOS 8 and OS X 10.10, Apple is provided iCloud Photos which unlike PhotoStream (this will likely be supplanted and be used only for non iOS 8 and OS X versions below Yosemite once iCloud Photos rolls out since it becomes redundant), allows the storage of all photos in the cloud (as opposed to the device). But this still isn’t a replacement for an actual online photo gallery (where I can create actual albums with permissions that is accessible by others). There was a point where I figured they might introduce a web application to re-enable that sort of functionality, but it seems they are just going to continue using iCloud for primarily extending the functionality of an actual device as opposed to having the ability to also serve up user generated content.
I know they are pushing iCloud a lot now and they have even gone back to giving us back a cloud based disk (iCloud Drive requires OS X 10.10 Yosemite which is still in beta or ironically, a PC running Windows 7 – which means that feature is actually available now for a Windows system, and not most Macs). But I’m not yet sold on Apple’s ability to do iCloud right or having a feature set remain stable as opposed to this constant change where I can’t be sure it won’t be removed in the future. Furthermore (as noted above), iCloud doesn’t have those services which allows offering up user generated content (again, no online photo gallery, no journal/blogging system). Thus my main usage of iCloud has been primarily e-mail and using its syncing abilities.
But going back to the main topic of this post, Apple is putting their weight behind privacy initiatives and also poking Google with this addition of a search engine that doesn’t track users the way Google Search does.
