Right, like I will ever trust proprietary software vendors to make good judgment calls.

As for searx, it can be used without google as one of the feeds.

So i prefer practical ethics. Meaning , that in a community with certain objectives if alternatives do exist and have been weighted and there is a consensus that choiceA promotes those objectives then the community should encourage by various means that choice .

So in that path of practical ethics in IT space , i think that there are alternatives to google . I try to use searx instances and in my kid's pc runs only Devuan + netsurf with wikipedia as search engine. Ofcourse i am not sure as to how much a metasearch that uses google search can be valued as an alternative or as a facelift. Anyway even more i value the fediverse alternatives.

But speaking of google.. i think the surface is way to more slippery that we can imagine .

Many libre-land organizations and projects have been funded by it. Even FSF has dipped it's fingers in the sponsor's honey pot. And then.. if we start that discussion i think it unavoidable to discuss the donation's ethics . And my opinion is that on that issue the surface has been more than slippery.

So slippery that a couple of years ago almost all know libre-land organizations that had been practising happy sponsor hunting from google, microsoft , redhat etc were willing to hump on on the RMS lynch bandwagon  in a witch-hunt that acted also as a much needed distraction of the funding scandals from eipstein that had shaken from the ground the MIT!..  So ethic wise the libreland's most prominent organizations seems to me in such a bad shape that they are in danger to be tagged as a Grace Field House in the Promised Neverland manga..

How else to call organizations that under a freesoftware flag promote google hacker initiation events. (now this is getting also political!!..because the power that google has amassed makes it eventually a political entity..and politics are too much heated those days...).Or how else to call organizations that under a libreland flag call has github as sponsor , lay roses for programmers to use that forge and then we realize that the AI agenda needed fresh ideas to feed upon..

As to the hardware i think projects like MNT reform show the way forward and open risc architectures seem a good alternative too.

And last but by far not least.. we should discuss also the gaming ethics. Empires,fortunes and mega-egos  have being build on gaming , and even nvidia that promotes itself in the well-oiled hype engines as futuristic AI -cloud company , a solid argument could be made that the kid's parent's purse have being the humble (but ethicwise questionable) fuel of those mega-ambitions.  I think gaming is the elephant in the closet that nobody dares to touch and surely that closet has monsters in various forms.

@quickfur honestly, don't think Google has better search results than DuckDuckgo. Maybe the meta search engine searx, it might, I don't know.

The more time passes, the more I wonder if they haven't made it worse. I hear they filter search results based on their own motives and they block access to older pages after a certain point. Not sure how many search engines do that, but duckduckgo, has always had similar if not better results.

You can do what you please of course, but like golinux said, they are a destructive evil corporation that doesn't need to be fed. I lost some faith in humanity when I saw 70% of the world uses Google as their search engine.

Like the world isn't feeding their data towers enough... and by doing so, hurting the environment and I think every time that is done, people's brains over time deteriorate due to the climate. 

But yeah, on a positive note, very entertaining gibberish I will say.

@golinux (again) Btw, when I said 2nd comment, I meant on the link you mentioned, ie, soren's comment.

I do admit that Ratpoison is good software.  So we can agree on that. Someone needs to be using it. Just not me.  Here's something we can agree on.  I take JWM, and you take Ratpoison.

The day we all agree will be a boring day

I dunno, it depends on what we agree on.  If the day comes when we all agree on using ratpoison, ...

Just don't expect me to agree with everything, that's all

The day we all agree will be a boring day

Anyone who purposely chooses to use ratpoison has my utmost respect.

I am in agreement that It doesn't bother me which search engine some one uses. But it doesn't hurt to discuss it.  Who is forcing anyone? I guess we can't discuss the pros, cons, or preferences of a search engine because someone is going to relate discussion to being forced.

Personally, it doesn't bother me which search engine someone else may use. I don't force mine on them, so please don't force yours on me.

Exactly!!!  Choice is what's it's about.  The reason I came to Devuan was because I did not want somebody else to be making decisions for me.  If I'd wanted that, I could've just gone to Ubuntu or Windows instead.

In the same vein, you may have your reasons why you will not use google, I have my reasons why I do.  Please allow me to make my own decisions and don't force your views on me, just as I don't force my views on you.