Ask Paul: March 24 (Premium)

After a rather interesting flight home from Mexico City, we’re back to face our home sale and another move. But first, it’s almost the weekend…

Anecdotal

goodbar asks:

Hey Paul – Question on search engines.  I know you use google as does most of the world, but I am curious if there’s really a noticeable difference between google vs bing vs brave search vs duckduckgo vs ?.  Have there been any studies other than usage numbers that back up google as the most efficient search engine?  I’m fairly certain I could ultimately find what I need on any of them, but not certain on if one will get me to my answer milliseconds, seconds or minutes faster.

I probably told this story already—maybe multiple times—but many years ago now I was visiting with a friend in France and his wife commented on my Windows laptop, noting that she had stopped using Windows because it so buggy. So I asked her how long it had been since she used Windows, and she said several years. To which I replied, basically, then your opinion is out of date, and you have no idea what Windows is like now.

And that’s what most of our experiences are like: if we use something even once and move on to something else, we still have this idea in our head that our opinion of that first time, no matter how out of date, is still correct. And that opinion is part of what validates our use of whatever thing we moved to.

The nice thing about search engines, of course, is that you can easily try one without “leaving” the service you usually use. And my experiences with non-Google search engines, while absolutely anecdotal, always have followed the same path: I try it—Bing, Brave Search, DuckDuckGo, whatever—and I always quickly go back to Google. Why? Any number of reasons from literally not seeing what I wanted or expected, or just basic UI stuff. But the most common thing is I search for something, don’t find what I need, and then try the same search in Google and it works. I’ve never tried another search engine and thought, yeah, maybe. Ever.

Others have, though, and obviously, others successfully use these things. (Conversely, they probably never use Google Search either, where their opinions are likewise out of date.) I don’t know what everyone’s experiences are—and I’ve had some try to convince me, say, that Bing is “better” than Google, or whatever—but this, at least, is something anyone can experiment with easily. I’ll just say that if Bing, or Brave Search, or DuckDuckGo really was “better,” most people would probably just use it, if only because of the non-issues with switching costs. But they’re not. So my guess is that most people who do use these other services are doing so just because they have concerns about Google. Understandable, but I’m not going to bite my nose to spite my face. Google seems that much better to me.

I’m not sure if there’s a way to objectively compare these things. Part of the issue is that we could have different expectations of a search. Some might want a list of links so the can compare. Some might just want an answer. And so on.

I may write something soon about Bing usage in the wake of the ChatGPT-based chat feature, but the short version is that there are two things to consider here. Bing will likely make small usage gains because of this, and percentage point increase in usage is likely worth billions of dollars in revenue per year. But these searches are more expensive and might not be profitable. And they are likely so small as to not matter much at a high level to either company. It’s going to be hard for Bing to escape the shadow of its past as a distant also-ran. It’s just not a good brand. I guess that’s four things. I’m still sorting through this.

Loop

ggolcher asks:

Have you tried out Loop? Any opinions?

Related to this, jrzoomer asks:

Paul do you fully intend to migrate from Notion to Microsoft Loop?

Yes. And in what I promise you is a coincidence, I was planning to write about this topic too (and most certainly will, while the Bing piece may or may not happen). So I’ll just summarize quickly here by saying the following.

Loop is interesting on a number of levels. It’s a platform and not just a modern collaboration solution for note-taking, ideating, and writing. That said, the client piece, the thing I care about the most, is very much a Notion clone. And I mean that quite literally: the copying here is alarmingly baldfaced, and reaches a level that, say, Teams did not compared to Slack when it was first released. I am having trouble with that.

On the other hand, a Notion clone that exists in the Microsoft ecosystem, is part of the Microsoft 365 subscription I’m already paying for, and that integrates with the OneDrive I’m already using, is quite appealing. So I will absolutely suck it up, drop Notion, and use Loop instead, assuming it meets my needs and works as well or better than Notion. It seems that it will.

The other half of Notion, which I will not use, is the whole component thing where you can embed Loop in other apps like Outlook and Teams. This will be very valuable to Microsoft’s corporate customers though. And is a key differentiator and, I think, a key reason why Loop can see the same market penetration and usage as does Teams.

I get an error that files won’t save. Also, for the amount of time it’s been in the oven, I was underwhelmed with the MVP functionality.

My guess is that the delays are tied to the back-end componentization stuff, and because the permissions have to work exactly right in corporate environments. I agree it seemed like a long wait.

Microsoft has a history of moving very slowly (Cortana, desktop search) and quickly (Teams, new Edge) to catch up. What do you think will happen here?

I think we’ll see what we saw with Teams: managed organizations using Microsoft technologies will switch en masse and smaller orgs and individuals will continue to a la carte it with whatever tools they prefer.

Stuck on you

andrew b. asks:

As a journalist who covers Windows, are you stuck there? Or, is there a line Microsoft could cross at which you would switch to Mac or Linux?

I started to write, “I’ve made my bed and now I have to sleep in it…” but that’s not quite right. 🙂

Before I fell into writing, Microsoft was the center of personal computing and I was not a fan. A few things happened to change that: thanks to my wife’s job at the time, I got an early peek at Microsoft Office 6.0, which was quite impressive compared to the productivity apps I had on my Amiga. And then the Windows 4.0 (later 95) betas with the new UI, which I thought was impressive. But even before that, I knew I’d have to suck it up and figure out this world, as I was going back to school to learn to be a software developer, and Windows was it. There was no other choice.

By the time I fell into writing, things had started to shift. Microsoft was still the center of personal computing, but now its newer products were of acceptable quality. So it didn’t feel like a step down anymore. There was a real moment of soul searching during its U.S. antitrust trial, when the terribleness of this company came to light, but by then I was part of this community and felt that my real role was to help that majority of people who were using Microsoft’s products. Not to support Microsoft or Windows, but to support people. Whatever helps you sleep at night I guess.

In the wake of the antitrust stuff, two things happened: Amazon, Apple, and Google took over major chunks of the personal computing market, displacing Microsoft and Windows. And Microsoft became a better company. I worried for a while that my focus on Microsoft and Windows was limiting, and we even made a point of explicitly marketing Thurrott.com as being about personal computing, whereas the SuperSite for Windows was explicitly about Windows. But what I’ve come to understand over time is that focus isn’t limiting, it’s useful. And while I do spend time with other platforms, other device types, and whatever else, my real focus, as I finally summarized neatly in my Twitter bio, is “Personal technology, with a focus on productivity, mostly Microsoft.”

Could Microsoft ever screw up enough that I move to other platforms? Sure. Sometimes I feel like that’s their goal, in my more bitter moments. The issues I raised recently about Edge, Teams, Word, and Paint are great examples of a steady decrease in product quality in which Microsoft is pushing its corporate aims over the needs of its users, and I find that infuriating. Windows 11 is the same thing. It’s hard to deal with sometimes.

But I use the Mac, and I use Linux, and Chrome OS too, and while each has its pros and cons, none have ever stood out to me so much that I’d ever switch. Sometimes just using these things is a healthy reminder that, to me, Windows, for all its issues, is still very much what I prefer. If you look at the question above about Google Search, you can draw a parallel here, too: how bad does Google need to be as a company to get me not to use Search (and Maps and Gmail and Calendar and Photos)? I don’t know, but they’re a pretty terrible company and I keep using those things. Unfortunately, this is the deal with all of Big Tech. Terrible but irreplaceable.

On a case-by-case basis, however, I think we should all reserve the right to make sure we’re using the products and services—the tools—that we find the most useful. Switching from Windows to, say, the Mac is a big step. Switching from OneDrive to Google Drive, from Slack to Teams, and from Word to a Markdown editor (or whatever) are smaller steps. It’s healthy to experiment. And to use the right tools for the job.

I’m good where I am with Windows. This is what I’d use no matter what I did for a living.

Everything is a computer now

andrew b. also asks:

While I would certainly not run an OS on my PC without security updates, I have recently noticed myself doing just that with other devices. Where do you land on other things like routers and IOT devices? Are you replacing various internet-connected items in your house the minute they fall out of support? Do you know those dates? Has “support life” become a scam to get people to shell out money regularly for new products?

When we moved to Pennsylvania, I examined all the ways in which we might integrate smart home devices and services into our house, and what I realized over time is that I’m not interested in most of it. Today, as we prepare to move out of that home and into an apartment, there’s not much to speak of past some smart lights, some smart speakers (all Sonos), and a smart display. We never wanted or need smart security devices, a smart garage door opener, smart blinds, or whatever else.

I’m also reminded of the time when someone from Microsoft was going on and on years ago about how everything was going to turn into a computer and that this was so great because they could keep updated. I thought this was nuts: the worst thing about a PC was that it was always being updated, and TVs changed from things that turned right on to things that needed to boot up. Not all advances are really advances.

Anyway, the proliferation of smart devices, which by definition are connected to the Internet, is going to dramatically expand our attack surfaces, and this will require more work on our part. Work that most people will not do, or in some cases can’t, which will lead to security exploits. Regarding replacements, I guess it depends on the device and the risk. We have a NAS device that has personal information on it, and it’s out of date. So the possibilities there were to replace this thing, which we don’t use all that much, at great expense or to just disable its Internet connectivity and use it as we always did anyway, which is from inside the house. So we did the latter.

But that’s just one device. We do use our ISP’s router, which maybe isn’t smart. I have my own Wi-Fi equipment, which I just updated (and it supports WPA3 security). So overall, I think my exposure right now is minimal, thankfully. But if I was serious about smart home tech, I’d keep up on this in the same way I do so on PCs, mobile phones, and other devices. And maybe that’s the same service we can provide to our families and friends, to help them do so as well. But this is going to get exponentially more difficult as more and more smart devices make their way into our lives.

80’s bands

andrew b. also asks:

Would you agree that the 1980s was the best decade for band names (looking only at the time of their peak and ignoring when they were actually formed)? Men Without Hats, Men at Work, Missing Persons, Talking Heads, The Pretenders, A Flock of Seagulls, and so on.

Yes, but I wonder if this isn’t a familiarity bias thing. Nirvana, Gin Blossoms, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden are all great names (1990s), as are Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Yes, Rush, and Genesis (1970s).

But yeah. The 1980s, obviously. 🙂

Rumble on the TikTok

helix2301 asks:

Paul, what do you think about the service Rumble? I know a lot of people who don’t want to be censored(for lack of a better term) go there but I have noticed a lot of content creators going there now like gamers since it’s easier to be discovered because it is a smaller platform than Twitch and YouTube. While I don’t necessarily agree with everything Rumble stands for it reminds me of the old YouTube or old Twitch where it’s easier to get discovered.

I am not super-familiar with Rumble, but this seems to have a similar same vibe to Mastodon, where the goal is to replace popular Big Tech service(s) with something smaller, friendlier, and maybe even open-source (Rumble is not open-source). I get it, and I think these things have their place, especially with the once-fertile major services becoming so big that it’s hard for individuals to make their mark now. (Developers have a similar issue with mobile app stores, when you think about it.) I saw that the Hipstamatic app, which was a classic iPhone photo filter app in the early days, just came back as a paid social service that’s like Instagram before it became enshittified. Also a similar idea, I guess.

I was also wondering about your thoughts on TikTok and this entire ban thing a lot of people are using that platform to make a living or grow their business banning it I think might hurt more than help people.

There are two sides to this TikTok thing, one of which is pure xenophobia, which I always find problematic. But the other is common sense: no government entity should allow consumer apps or services on managed devices, and it doesn’t matter if they’re Chinese or not. Banning TikTok broadly makes no sense to me—how could this be “worse” for kids than YouTube or Facebook?—for the reason you note: it’s a platform that American content creators make money on. And I write this knowing I will never use or care about TikTok in any meaningful way.

Whatever, TikTok has gotten an outsized amount of attention at the governmental level.

Downsizing

JustMe asks:

How is your move going overall?  It seems almost as if life is less stressful when you’re in or headed to Mexico at the moment.  🙂

Well, it’s a matter of timing. We just got home last night and now we face the reality of moving. We went over to the apartment today to get the keys. Discovered the previous tenant was a smoker. (F me.) Got the Internet turned on. And then tomorrow my son comes for the weekend with the cats, and we will move some of the smaller stuff over, including our home offices and contents. And Monday we have movers doing the big work. Late next week, we close on the house and we’re done.

We kept the trip to Mexico because there was nothing we could really do here until now anyway, so what the heck. But we did some remote things while we were away like switching services off at the house and on at the apartment. (Gas, electric, etc.) But there was nothing here we needed to do physically.

The next several days will be very busy.

In conjunction with your move – have you found yourself paring down the technology you hold onto (laptops, NUCs, spares, etc) or do you still have a stash for those “just in case” moments?

Not yet. I don’t think so much in terms of “just in case” as I do in testing matrices, though I do like having a few options. But maybe it amounts to the same thing. I do have too many computers and electronics, and while I’m always trying to cut down on that, it will be more important to do so with an apartment. I think we’ll have a clearer picture of that soon as we move things over there and figure out what that looks like. (I suspect we’ll need to be aggressive.)

Mexico City

LordMartarius asks:

Hola Paul!  I am enjoying your adventures in Mexico City (and a bit jealous as well ?).  I saw in one of your photos that you have parking space(s) at your apartment.  Are you planning in the future to purchase a car?

There is a parking spot under the building that comes with the apartment, but no, we will never buy a car there. We just won’t need it, given how inexpensive it is to get around by Uber or Metro. And we can travel inter-city in Mexico via nice buses. I drove there exactly one time, on our second trip in 2021, and I will never do that again. It’s chaotic in Mexico City and too remote out of the city.

Looking forward to more postings from Eternal Spring and the Thurrotts!

Thanks!

Time change

leoaw asks:

Did your phones and laptops handle Mexico’s lack of daylight savings time all right?

Yes. Everything switched automatically, and correctly.

How about once you got back home?

Same.

This kind of thing has been problematic in the past, and in particular with certain devices, like Fitbit. But it all worked fine in both directions. We left here before Daylight Savings Time (DST), were in Mexico when the U.S. switched to DST (and Mexico did not for the first time), and then flew home in DST. No issues.