Comment by lisplist
1 day ago
I switched to DDG about a year ago and it works fine for me. For some queries, Google still surfaces better results, but DDG is good enough that I don't really miss it.
The only Google service I haven't been able to replace is YouTube - no real alternative. I still use Google Maps as well, but could probably switch to Apple maps without missing much. For hiking trails, Apple Maps has often been superior. I briefly tried OpenStreetMaps years ago, but the lack of traffic data and the fact that it gave me bad directions made it untenable.
Very similar experience. As an example I had to user Naver and Kakao maps in Korea instead of Google and those apps gave me sort of another perspective that other apps can be better than G for sure. For youtube I have been fighting the addiction and eventually disabled all options around privacy and eventually reduced the use quite a bit as they do not render the feed of random videos and shorts anymore (just subs).
For hiking trails, I highly recommend https://www.comaps.app/. It's simply miles ahead of Google Maps and Apple Maps for hike and biking.
Thanks, will have to check that out! Also use Strava, so maybe I should just refer to the heatmaps
This is my experience as well.