June 30, 2016 at 14:37Double zen: two searches in one without tracking and sms
Once a month, a report about my activity in a Google account falls into my mail - a curious reading, because sometimes I myself can forget that I google at one time or another - but Google remembers everything. This may be one of, although not the only reason, to try using the minimalistic anonymous search aggregator “Google” and “Yandex” DzenPoisk.ru as the main search engine . Zen Fox presents a Zen search
Shake but not mix - the principle is not only the signature bond cocktail, but also the legal use of the search capabilities of these two giants. Do whatever you like to ensure that the results of Yandex do not appear on the same page with Google under any sauce.
In general, it depends on your priorities. On the one hand, using only one search engine, you can often miss useful sites available to users of other search engines. But on the other hand, it’s not that the need to compare the results of two search engines was a daily necessity for a significant number of users - usually, users still need one search engine, and Zen Search does not pretend to break established traditions, by default always open a tab with the service that you used the last time.
So rather, the Zen Search feature is the anonymity of this very search. That, in general, is becoming relevant even for the most law-abiding users in the country, where they are obliged by law to store data about their users for at least six months. So then explain to Comrade Major six months later that you googled "panties of little girls" because the wife asked her daughter to buy new things.
But real paranoid cannot be satisfied in simple words. What guarantees can we have that a service that promises privacy will not turn out to be an even more cunning trap than the good Google Uncle? Service developers answer this question like this:
At the same time, a double search allows you to depend less on the quirks of a particular search engine - the main of which, of course, may be the threat of blocking:
Half of the power of Vkontakte rests on a huge collection of illegal music and films. In fact, VK is a service where people keep friends and music - the two most important substances in the life of the millennial generation. Dragging music to the search engine is a great idea. You can really find almost everything in Soundcloud. This is already much better than what the search giants offer: let's say, in recent years, my traditional script for finding music, the name of which I read somewhere and wanted to listen to, was: right-click on Google → click on the YouTube window in the search → new tab with a song. Honestly, a little excessive - firstly, why do I need a video if I just want to hear a music, and secondly, I don’t like extra tabs. In this sense, the built-in AUDIO search engine actually solves my problem.
But still, to the state of a killer feature, the search lacks the ability to create playlists that would directly contradict the idea of anonymity of the search engine. This could already be food for extension creators if Dzenpoisk became popular. In general, these are just thoughts out loud. The main thing: music search is promising.
There are no miracles for free, so switching to an anonymous two-headed search will also require getting used to a number of inconveniences. What they consist of - I will tell below, but is it worth it or not - you decide.
Firstly, that Google, that Yandex, have long moved away from just search results, trying to immediately give answers to a user’s question: for example, translating a word or the exchange rate immediately on the SERP screen. Zen Search has not yet been trained in such tricks, offering a more old-school version with a transition to the corresponding site.
Secondly, to the place that Google uses in its issuance under clever clues, it forcibly imposes advertising on its partners, taking 60% of the revenue from it. However, this is easily treated by the adblock, and in the Yandex tab, which is offered in the default search engine, there is no advertising at all.
There are a number of Zenpoisk features - auto-switching of the language of issuance according to English-language queries, an advanced mathematical calculator, improved maps - which, of course, will be interesting to many, but are unlikely to determine the fate of the project. With all the shortcomings typical of startups - and not all startups are still being released already licked and richly fertilized with dough from incubators, there is still room for good old garage undertakings - Dzenpoisk looks like a very interesting attempt, which is worth giving a chance.
I also could not resist the experiment, setting Dzenpoisk as my default search engine. Glory to Chrom, replacing the search engine is done with minimal stress for the user, you just change the search operator in the settings, and voila: searching through the address bar displays “Zen”, “Zen” instead of “Google” also appears in the right-click menu.
At the psychological level, this makes the transition to a new search engine much easier than the need to remember a new site and get used to its face. However, the main "Zen Search" with its lone search line will appeal to fans of minimalism, and for those who have reached enlightenment through the settings, you can leave only one text cursor at all.
One way or another, DzenPoisk does not solicit users before its users. So why not give it a try.
Why is it necessary
In general, it depends on your priorities. On the one hand, using only one search engine, you can often miss useful sites available to users of other search engines. But on the other hand, it’s not that the need to compare the results of two search engines was a daily necessity for a significant number of users - usually, users still need one search engine, and Zen Search does not pretend to break established traditions, by default always open a tab with the service that you used the last time.
So rather, the Zen Search feature is the anonymity of this very search. That, in general, is becoming relevant even for the most law-abiding users in the country, where they are obliged by law to store data about their users for at least six months. So then explain to Comrade Major six months later that you googled "panties of little girls" because the wife asked her daughter to buy new things.
But real paranoid cannot be satisfied in simple words. What guarantees can we have that a service that promises privacy will not turn out to be an even more cunning trap than the good Google Uncle? Service developers answer this question like this:
And what kind of guarantees can anonymous services have in principle? Probably not. It’s just that if the opposite is discovered, such services will immediately lose their audience, who went here for anonymity. By the way, we have only 10% of the audience who appreciates anonymity. Judging by the reviews in Vkontakte "Zen Search" , now he and his international version of MinimalSearch.comthey are used primarily for minimalism (50%), and only then for the opportunity to compare the issuance of Yandex + Google (25%). Here, by the way, there is still a good question of what is considered anonymity, 100% anonymity on the Internet does not exist in principle. For our part, we use TLS encryption, we don’t store it and, therefore, we can’t pass on the log of search queries, websites visited, the IP address of the user, we prevent the transfer of the search request to the sites to which we are switching, we do not have and will not have accounts or bindings to by phone - in general, everything that is written in our Privacy Policy. But we do not plan to stop on this, now work is underway on the use of proxies, integration with Tor, anonymity is one of the priority areas of our development.
At the same time, a double search allows you to depend less on the quirks of a particular search engine - the main of which, of course, may be the threat of blocking:
Theoretically, of course, there is a risk and there were examples of the ban of the once popular metasearch engines from Google. But while a) the license agreement is being observed, b) the providers themselves receive income from such services + expand their market share, get a new distribution channel, c) get a new player, i.e. the opportunity to learn from his mistakes / victories for free, d) in the case of everything, they can always slam - the risk remains not very large. And even if the hour X comes, we can replace the provider with another one that has decent Russian localization.
Music Search
Half of the power of Vkontakte rests on a huge collection of illegal music and films. In fact, VK is a service where people keep friends and music - the two most important substances in the life of the millennial generation. Dragging music to the search engine is a great idea. You can really find almost everything in Soundcloud. This is already much better than what the search giants offer: let's say, in recent years, my traditional script for finding music, the name of which I read somewhere and wanted to listen to, was: right-click on Google → click on the YouTube window in the search → new tab with a song. Honestly, a little excessive - firstly, why do I need a video if I just want to hear a music, and secondly, I don’t like extra tabs. In this sense, the built-in AUDIO search engine actually solves my problem.
But still, to the state of a killer feature, the search lacks the ability to create playlists that would directly contradict the idea of anonymity of the search engine. This could already be food for extension creators if Dzenpoisk became popular. In general, these are just thoughts out loud. The main thing: music search is promising.
Underwater rocks
There are no miracles for free, so switching to an anonymous two-headed search will also require getting used to a number of inconveniences. What they consist of - I will tell below, but is it worth it or not - you decide.
Firstly, that Google, that Yandex, have long moved away from just search results, trying to immediately give answers to a user’s question: for example, translating a word or the exchange rate immediately on the SERP screen. Zen Search has not yet been trained in such tricks, offering a more old-school version with a transition to the corresponding site.
Secondly, to the place that Google uses in its issuance under clever clues, it forcibly imposes advertising on its partners, taking 60% of the revenue from it. However, this is easily treated by the adblock, and in the Yandex tab, which is offered in the default search engine, there is no advertising at all.
Final weigh-in
There are a number of Zenpoisk features - auto-switching of the language of issuance according to English-language queries, an advanced mathematical calculator, improved maps - which, of course, will be interesting to many, but are unlikely to determine the fate of the project. With all the shortcomings typical of startups - and not all startups are still being released already licked and richly fertilized with dough from incubators, there is still room for good old garage undertakings - Dzenpoisk looks like a very interesting attempt, which is worth giving a chance.
I also could not resist the experiment, setting Dzenpoisk as my default search engine. Glory to Chrom, replacing the search engine is done with minimal stress for the user, you just change the search operator in the settings, and voila: searching through the address bar displays “Zen”, “Zen” instead of “Google” also appears in the right-click menu.
At the psychological level, this makes the transition to a new search engine much easier than the need to remember a new site and get used to its face. However, the main "Zen Search" with its lone search line will appeal to fans of minimalism, and for those who have reached enlightenment through the settings, you can leave only one text cursor at all.
One way or another, DzenPoisk does not solicit users before its users. So why not give it a try.