Category: Internet

[sc:internet-category ]A few weeks ago the rumors around Opera Software being purchased by Facebook started to make the round.  Here’s why I think it would be a bad thing.

Opera has had a long history of being small and fast and a very standards based browser.  Facebook is known for being a bloated waste of time 😉

Opera has had the opportunity to create an independent browser, pretty much every other browser is tied tightly to some other agenda:

• Internet Explorer, while better then it once was, is still there to promote Microsoft’s agenda.
• Chrome is there to promote Google’s agenda.
• Safari is there to promote Apple’s agenda.
• Firefox, while not directly tied to anyone, is financially tied to Google in a big way, most of their funding comes from Google.

Firefox’s agenda is perhaps the best, they are not overtly promoting someone else’s agenda, but you have to wonder what would happen if Google asked them to make a change and threaten to pull the advertising deal.  Hasn’t happened yet and I don’t think it is likely, but you never know…

So really, all that’s left is Opera, which has always fought above its weight class when it comes to browser standards and innovation.

If Facebook did buy it, wouldn’t they look to make Opera yet another deliver platform for Facebook more than anything else?  Is Opera Mini/Mobile the defining asset they would want out of the deal to help them gain in mobile adverstising?

If so would they drop the desktop browser altogether?

There’s pretty much no scenario I can think of that Facebook’s purchase of Opera is good for end users, they all suck pretty badly.

So if your reading Mark, just leave Opera alone, you don’t really need them and with your share price down, perhaps you would be better to spend your time fixing that.

[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.