[sc:internet-category ]With Google changing it’s privacy policy recently I took the opportunity to take a hard look at how I use Google services and what other options might be available to me.

First off, you have to remember that Google doesn’t consider end users their customers, instead its advertising buyers are their customers and so that drives a lot of what Google does.  If they can better identify your preferences to advertisers by combining more of you private information that you give them then that’s exactly what they’re going to do.

I’ve used Google as my default search engine for quite a while, however I never created a Google account for my searching and even now that I have one for the Ad’s here on JumbleCat, I don’t login to it while searching with Google.

I don’t use Docs, + or other services from Google so my privacy footprint inside of Google is pretty small in comparison to many others I’m sure.

However even this I believe is too much, searching should NOT be personal, searching needs to be impartial and I no longer believe Google delivers this.

The options to replace my searching boiled down to two options:

• Bing
• Duck Duck Go

While Bing has made major strides over the last few years and I do believe it is at least as good as Google, they too try to personalize searches.

Duck Duck Go is, on the other hand, specifically created to NOT invade your privacy and return NON personalized results.

Their link database isn’t as big as Bing or Google, but so far I’ve found it returns pretty good results and when they don’t have enough results they provide an easy way to use the other search providers.

All of the major browsers can be setup to use Duck Duck Go as a search provider and so there’s no functionality lost or having to switch between search engines just because you are using a different browser.

Overall I’m quite happy using Duck Duck Go.

[sc:internet-category ]Microsoft recently released the Bing Desktop application, it has two notable features:

• A search bar on the desktop
• A wallpaper of the day

By default the search bar is placed in the middle of the desktop and has only one other option of being place at the top of the screen.

The middle of the desktop isn’t really all that useful for me as there are usually several windows covering it up.  I could use the show desktop option, but that seems kind of a round about way to get to it.  So instead I’ve pinned it to the top of the screen.

This option had me concerned as I often use remote desktop connections and I though the Bing bar might get in the way of the RDP controls.  However, Microsoft has obviously thought of this and when pinned to the top of the screen the Bing bar only drops down a very small amount until you click on it to bring it the rest of the way down.

This ensures the RDP controls work as expected but you still have access to the Bing search bar when you need it.

The Bing Desktop app even pays attention to your default browser, so if you have Opera set as the default browser, entering a query in to the Bing search bar will bring up Opera.

I don’t actually use Bing all that much, but the wallpaper of the day feature is kind of cool.  The Bing image of the day is always a nice image and the Bing search bar updates the wallpaper to it each day.

The Bing Desktop application is kind of a cool little tool, I’d recommend it, especially if you use Bing as your primary search engine.