Degoogling on ¬ just serendipity 🍀

Google Translate → Kagi Translate, DeepL

serendipity@perrotta.dev (Thiago Perrotta) — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 12:34:34 +0100

I added a new tag to this blog: degoogling.

Patrick Dubroy’s post has recently inspired me. Ironically, we’re both former Chrome employees¹.

In Patrick’s words (not mine!):

Not much to say here. I got tired of Chrome’s deceptive messaging about ad privacy and about how careful I had to be to stay signed-out.

Vivaldi is a Chromium-based browser, and after tweaking a few settings, it’s basically a like-for-like replacement. I’ve been happily using it for 6 months now.

I switched over to Brave instead.

Previously I’ve also praised Organic Maps over Google Maps. I am still using it, every week.

This is all off-topic though: today’s post is about translation.

Google Translate is a (very) solid product. In fact, when compared to Chrome and Maps, it’s one of the few Google products that hasn’t been enshittified yet. It does one thing, and does it (very) well. For as long as it keeps its feature set as is and does not get infected with Gen AI or anything that a promotion-seeking Product Manager or Executive may decide to enact, it will continue to thrive and shine.

Nonetheless, it does not flow well with privacy and overreliance on tech giants.

Last week I deleted the Google Translate bookmark and history entry from my web browser, and its app from my iPhone.

There are two replacements I like that are widely available in both phones and desktops.

DeepL
Kagi

DeepL #

DeepL can:

translate words and sentences
translate files and documents
translate speech

Its translation results are often touted as sounding natural and accounting for the context. You can configure whether to use formal or informal language but that’s a Pro (paid) feature.

They are a German company, founded in 2017. Arguably, thanks to that, they excel at translating DE <-> EN.

One caveat is that it pushes you hard to sign up for a user account. I do not have one, there’s no practical need to have one, especially if you’re seeking increased privacy.

Another caveat is that they have increasingly started to adopt Gen AI features all over the place. These features aren’t necessarily super polished, and they feel rushed. It’s easy to ignore them and just move on. Their core product is great.

It can be selected as the default translation app on iOS.

Kagi Translate #

Kagi Translate is much newer (2024). It is very KISS.

From their blog post:

Higher quality translations than Google Translate and DeepL
Zero tracking, no apps needed
Free for everyone (Kagi members get captcha-free access)

I am an overall fan of the philosophy behind Kagi and think that their translation web app fits it well.

Last month they released mobile apps, making it much easier to use.

Kagi Translate can:

translate words and sentences
translate files and documents
translate speech
translate websites

I especially like its built-in dictionary feature and its alternative translations suggestions.

Gen AI is opt-in and not pushed on you. There are no paid features. The interface is very clean. You can configure it with presets such as (i) level of formality, (ii) reading level (A1, A2, B1, etc) and (iii) gender preferences (masculine, feminine, neutral).

It’s a wrap #

As of the time of this post Kagi Translate is my favorite, and DeepL comes second. Google Translate is the fallback.

Both Kagi Translate and DeepL have Chromium extensions for ease of reach and use.

Let that sink in. ↩︎

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Chrome → Brave

serendipity@perrotta.dev (Thiago Perrotta) — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 18:08:51 +0100

♠ Earlier I tried to switch from Chrome to Orion (from the Kagi folks). That did not last.

Even though Orion has various interesting and innovative features, it did not prove to be stable for my workflow. There were various times it has totally frozen or crashed, making me lose track of my open tabs. This is not acceptable, reliability is prime.

You can only realize this by fully switching to it. It is not reproducible, it’s not idempotent; only “vibes” can make you perceive its instability.

I’d be willing to retry it in a few years. Not in 2026 though.

I am not even keeping it around as a secondary browser: I have simply uninstalled it.

The situation on mobile is better. Orion for iOS is great. I’ve been using it as my default iOS browser for ages. Presumably it is stable on iOS because it is actually employing Safari / WebKit underpinnings, as every browser in iOS is required to do.

Now let’s go back to the elephant in the room: I did not want to switch back to Google Chrome:

% brew uninstall google-chrome
==> Uninstalling Cask google-chrome
==> Backing App 'Google Chrome.app' up to '/opt/homebrew/Caskroom/google-chrome/141.0.7390.55/Google Chrome.app'
==> Removing App '/Applications/Google Chrome.app'
==> Purging files for version 141.0.7390.55 of Cask google-chrome

Upon re-evaluating my options, I decided to give Brave a try. There are many things I dislike about Brave in terms of philosophy and politics (for example, Web3 and Crypto), so I cannot endorse it in any way.

However, I realized there are many things that Brave does right out-of-the-box. It has a very decent focus on privacy and adblocking. It strips off Google telemetry and sync (e.g. bookmarks, passwords) features. Its performance and stability is comparable to Chrome – well, they both use Chromium underneath.

I’ve been daily driving Brave as my default / main desktop browser for about 2 months now and I’ve been quite happy with it. It hasn’t crashed at all, not even once. All familiar Chromium features are there. All the Google-proprietary nuisance is gone.

Again, I’d have a hard time to recommend Brave personally. Still, it has been working well for me, so far.

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Chrome -> Orion

serendipity@perrotta.dev (Thiago Perrotta) — Sun, 30 Nov 2025 14:03:19 -0300

♠ It takes effort to overcome friction.

This year I have completely moved away from Google Search. First, thanks to ChatGPT. Then, thanks to Kagi.

You may think this is a blog post gimmick to sound dramatic, but it is really not. Nowadays I bail out to Google (!g in Kagi and in DuckDuckGo) very rarely:

to search for a store to buy a product from (it’s a commercial search engine after all) – do not use it to seek product recommendations though, they would be biased
to see what mainstream search results look like for a specific search term
to search for something obscure or rare – for example, torrents of Linux ISOs™

And now I had been meaning to switch from Google Chrome.

Chromium or Ungoogled Chromium are solid choices, but I wanted to move away completely from the Chromium ecosystem.

Firefox is not a real choice anymore. Firefox was amazing in the 2010s.

Excluding the above, there isn’t a lot of choice.

Safari is solid but it evolves slowly and babysits the power user. I am flabbergasted that I still, in 2025, cannot change its default search engine to one of my choice. This is not OK. It’s possible to use Kagi in Safari by working around its restrictions with an extension, but it is hacky.

Ladybird is promising but it’s still a baby.

If we backtrack to Chromium derivatives, there’s Opera, Vivaldi, Edge and Brave.

Edge is full of Copilot and classic MSFT stuff these days. MSFT, you know, from Internet Explorer.

Vivaldi has way too many features. It is confusing. I want simplicity and minimalism. Vivaldi is like the KDE of Web Browsers.

Opera has no moat. It has lots of bookmarks with sponsors though.

Brave could be a good choice, it ships with some good defaults, but it is surrounded by controversy.

Arc / Dia are very, very, very far from being real options. No, thank you.

Browser vendors have their own interests in mind. They all have their own agenda. It is very hard to find one that has the user interests in mind.

So now I am trying out Orion.

Orion is based on WebKit. It heavily resembles Safari. It supports both Firefox and Chrome extensions, including manifest V2 ones. It ships with a content blocker (adblocker). It has no telemetry. Kagi products and features (search, translate) are well integrated into Orion, but they do not feel pushy in case you do not want to use them. There’s Orion for iOS, so it’s possible to seamlessly sync your browsing history and bookmarks across multiple devices should you want to – and that is done via iCloud.

WebKit. Extensions. Privacy. Pick all three.

I do not have more to say at this time. The test of time will tell whether it will stick.

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Block "Sign in to XXX with google.com"

serendipity@perrotta.dev (Thiago Perrotta) — Sat, 02 Aug 2025 21:26:25 +0200

♠ Jeff Johnson, Sign in with Google in Chrome:

Many websites such as Yelp show an annoying “Sign in with Google” banner when you visit.

This is what Google calls the One Tap user experience. Fortunately, my web browser extension StopTheMadness Pro hides “Sign in with Google” banners.

Annoying is an understatement.

Although Chrome avoids the “Sign in with Google” banners, Google’s browser still has its own custom annoyance. If you’re already signed in to your Google account when you visit a participating website such as Yelp, Chrome will display a One Tap dialog.

Jeff helpfully points out how to block these banners in Google Chrome:

Navigate to chrome://settings/content/federatedIdentityApi
Switch the default behavior to “Block sign-in prompts from identity services”

If the courts and antitrust regulators are reading—they probably won’t read my blog, but one can dream—this is yet another example of Google advantaging its own browser Chrome over other web browsers.

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Kagi trial expires

serendipity@perrotta.dev (Thiago Perrotta) — Sat, 31 May 2025 16:44:02 +0200

♠ My Kagi trial is going to expire within 2 days.

Previously, I wrote:

The question to ask yourself is whether it’s worth paying $10 / month for their professional plan, or whether DuckDuckGo is enough for you. If you can have your company expense them, then it’s definitely a no-brainer.

My company approved my request to expense it, therefore I am going to buy their 1-year Professional plan.

Now, a few observations:

Would I pay for it out of my own pocket? Probably no. It’s perfectly reasonable and enough for my purposes to use a blend of DuckDuckGo + ChatGPT Search. That said, Kagi provides extra value to me on top of that duo; I prefer using it.
Once you grow accustomed with search results without ads it’s very, very hard to go back. Searching on Google suddenly feels like a thing of the past. It’s very similar to the experience of getting used to ad-blocking software in the web browser and then suddenly turning them off. The Web feels messy and bloated.
I did 961 searches at the time of this post, with 18 assistant interactions. I barely use their AI features because I prefer the OpenAI ChatGPT experience. Nonetheless, their AI features are occasionally handy and I find them to be integrated in a non-intrusive way.

TL;DR: Go for Kagi iff you can expense it. This is not a sponsored post. :)

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★ Kagi

serendipity@perrotta.dev (Thiago Perrotta) — Sun, 04 May 2025 19:18:48 +0200

♠ TL;DR: Kagi is a web search engine.

Why would you use something other than Google, you may ask? That’s out of scope of this post. If you think Google is the best and there’s no need to replace your search engine, this post is not for you.

A while ago I had switched my default search engine from Google to ChatGPT Search, but that didn’t last long; eventually I settled on DuckDuckGo.

Last week, a friend told me he got a trial of Kagi. It wasn’t the first time I’ve heard of it: John Gruber also blogged about it.

Then I decided to try it out myself as well. In general I am happy with DuckDuckGo, but we can always try something new, and the company materials have really impressed me.

I emailed someone at the company and got an 1-month trial of their Professional plan¹ – which includes unlimited searches. This is important: there should be no decision fatigue nor anxiety about hitting a ceiling in the number of monthly searches.

What is Kagi? In a Nutshell:

Kagi has no ads and is fully supported only by its users. We worked very hard to provide high quality, fast and tracking-free results at a minimum cost to ensure sustainability of our operation. By choosing a paid Kagi plan, you are also helping accelerate our mission of humanizing the web.

Why should I pay for search?

You’re already paying with your time and attention to advertisers who manipulate your search results, waste your time, and exploit your privacy. Pay with your wallet instead of your life, and get pure, powerful search that works for you — not advertisers. Read more.

What happens if I don’t use any searches?

In months where you don’t utilize any searches on your plan, we will automatically apply a full credit to your account. This credit will be applied to your next billing cycle, effectively covering your subsequent month’s subscription at no additional cost.

Switching from Google to ChatGPT search

serendipity@perrotta.dev (Thiago Perrotta) — Tue, 24 Dec 2024 21:14:04 -0300

♠ Following the footsteps of Daniel Miessler, I have changed my default search engine in Chrome from Google to ChatGPT Search¹, by installing their official chrome extension.

This is effectively possible because, after launching it for a few months, this month they made it free for everyone.

So far the results are impressive and almost always what I am looking for.

When they are not, I can easily fall back to Google by starting my search query in Chrome with ‘g’, or to DuckDuckGo with ’d’.

Edit(2025-01-07): OpenAI is early googling late-stage Google. This.

They should really market it as SearchGPT. ↩︎

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Organic Maps: off-line maps

serendipity@perrotta.dev (Thiago Perrotta) — Wed, 21 Feb 2024 00:36:57 +0100

♠ https://organicmaps.app/:

Organic Maps is a free Android & iOS offline maps app for travelers, tourists, hikers, drivers and cyclists based on OpenStreetMap data created by the community. It is a privacy-focused, open-source fork of […]

Organic Maps is one of the few applications nowadays that supports 100% of features without an active Internet connection. Install Organic Maps, download maps, throw away your SIM card, and go for a weeklong trip on a single battery charge without any byte sent to the network.

Positive impressions:

works great on iOS (didn’t test on Android yet)
a great companion for cycling within the city
more fun and more lightweight than Google Maps
low impact on device battery life
extremely privacy friendly (no ads, no tracking, no push notifications, etc)
extremely mobile data friendly (works fully offline)
open-source, and without any IAP
works out-of-the-box, no sign up necessary

Negative impressions:

do not use it for public transit, it is terrible as it does not have real-time data integration

Update(2025-12): It turns out Organic Maps is also great to track routes (e.g. during hiking or bus tours).

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Google and DuckDuckGo

serendipity@perrotta.dev (Thiago Perrotta) — Wed, 02 Feb 2022 18:51:00 -0500

♠ My search engine of choice is Google, nonetheless I still enjoy DuckDuckGo occasionally.

The main reason to stick with Google is its superior quality, by the means of better search results. 20 years later, it’s still arguably the best search engine. Of course, part of the reason for that is contingent upon how much data it collects, but that’s a topic for another day…

There are at least three reasons to use DuckDuckGo as an alternative:

it’s privacy-focused, there’s no tracking and no bubbling¹
its search results stem from sources other than Google; these days, mostly from Bing
it has !bangs, lots of them

The quest(ion) then becomes: How can I use mostly Google, but still have quick access to DuckDuckGo bangs?

There are several ways to do so.

DuckDuckGoog #

DuckDuckGoog is a search engine which does exactly that:

Searches Google and !bangs DuckDuckGo. Tell your browser!

If I search for i3, it will open https://www.google.com/search?q=i3 and probably think I am interested in Intel i3 CPUs.
If I search for !aw i3, using the ArchWiki bang, it opens https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/I3 and goes straight to the i3 window manager page in the ArchWiki, exactly what I wanted.
If I search for !ddg i3, it opens https://duckduckgo.com/?q=i3, on DuckDuckGo.

Caveat: You cannot add custom search engines to Safari, therefore this method only works in other browsers (Firefox, Chrome, etc).

Self-Hosted #

DuckDuckGoog claims to collect no data:

It’s quite simple. DuckDuckGoog doesn’t track any queries submitted whatsoever, It simply redirects you to DuckDuckGo or Google depending on whether your search contains a !bang or not.

If you still don’t trust it for some reason, you could also self-host it in your own server, as it’s open source.

One advantage of doing so is using (and owning) your own infrastructure, which is probably more reliable in terms of bandwidth and latency than a random guy’s server in the wild.

!Bang Quick Search #

!Bang Quick Search is a Chrome extension:

This extension adds DuckDuckGo !bang search to chrome. You can use it from the URL bar as long as your default search engine is either google or bing (for now). You can also use it directly on google’s and bing’s websites.

So long as your search engine is set to either Google or Bing, it will intercept !bangs from your query to redirect them to DuckDuckGo.

Tip: Use !ddg to search on DuckDuckGo.

Caveat: As a Chrome extension, it obviously only works in Chrome (or any of its derivatives like Edge or Vivaldi).

DuckDuckGo #

Another simple way is to just use DuckDuckGo directly. Whenever you want to go to Google, just add !g to your query.

Final words #

I used all three methods in the past. My favorite one these days is the Chrome Extension because Chrome is my current browser.

As a fallback I find that using DuckDuckGo directly is acceptable as well, however it quickly becomes quite annoying to constantly add !g to every query. Defaults matter.

Switching to DuckDuckGo

Biased search results based on your past searches. ↩︎

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Web Privacy with Firefox

serendipity@perrotta.dev (Thiago Perrotta) — Sun, 20 Oct 2013 22:43:53 -0300

♠ In this post I’ll show you a taste of what you can achieve with the Firefox Web Browser regarding privacy issues.

Motivated by PRISM, tailored ads, cookie tracking and several other inconvenient annoyances from the 2013 web, I think we should be more alerted and conscious about what companies are trying to do with our precious data. Maybe more important than only consciousness is that we should protect this data and act to do something about it.

The following is what I use (actually, what I’m trying to use) to “protect” myself. I recommend you to adopt all or some of these settings.

1 - Startpage Search Engine #

I’ve recently switched my default search engine from Google to Startpage. Please don’t get me wrong — I love Google, but I decided Google is tracking way too much of my search habits. Startpage uses Google as its backend engine, but it does that in a way Google can’t really link my searches to me. Besides, Startpage doesn’t store my IP Address.

If you want to definitively get rid of Google, try DuckDuckGo. You can integrate Startpage with Firefox by following this guide.

2 - Adblock Edge #

Add Adblock Edge to Firefox. It blocks nothing more than ads! I don’t recommend Adblock Plus anymore because it includes Google Ads by default. You can still use Adblock Plus by opting-out of this feature, but I disagree that it is enabled by default. It’s like the Amazon ads Canonical includes by default with Ubuntu.

I support some ads (like Reddit or Kongregate ones, for example) and I understand the web wouldn’t function right without them. However, I will not tolerate ads I haven’t requested getting in the way of my web experience. I advise you to enable ads for services and websites that you like. Think carefully about it — they may break if they don’t get revenue from ads. Adblock Edge is open source.

3 - Ghostery #

Add Ghostery to Firefox. It blocks several tracking and analytics services and URLs. You can be surprised to see how many tracking services are on popular websites like WSJ. My Ghostery has blocked at least 10 of them there.

Note: Ghostery is not open source — it is proprietary.

4 - Self-Destructing Cookies #

Add Self-Destructing Cookies to Firefox. It does exactly what you would expect: it destroys cookies from a tab as soon as you close it. You can control which websites won’t have their cookies automatically destroyed. If you don’t allow cookies for websites you use often, you’ll end up losing patience having to log in again every time you close all their tabs.

5 - NoScript #

Finally, add NoScript to Firefox. It is the wildcard of all these add-ons. You can selectively control which websites (domains) are allowed to execute scripts in your browser. You can block several malware vectors with it. If I had to choose only one add-on to use with Firefox, certainly I would choose NoScript.

Be aware that NoScript can be annoying at first. By default, all scripts are blocked, and you have to enable (add to its whitelist) the URLs you trust. You can enable the reverse behavior too: allow every script and block only ones you distrust (though this is a bit risky).

Conclusion #

This is a basic setup for someone who worries about web privacy. I won’t say it gets you 100% anonymous on the web because it doesn’t. There are more ways to get even more privacy (like Tor), but they’re beyond the scope of this post. Maybe I’ll write another post about those goodies.

Note: This is my first English post. It may have typos or grammatical errors, but I’m more focused on the content than perfection. If you spot any errors, please let me know in the comments or via email. Thank you for your patience!

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Degoogling on ¬ just serendipity 🍀

Google Translate → Kagi Translate, DeepL

DeepL #

Kagi Translate #

It’s a wrap #

Chrome → Brave

Chrome -> Orion

Block "Sign in to XXX with google.com"

Kagi trial expires

★ Kagi

Switching from Google to ChatGPT search

Organic Maps: off-line maps

Google and DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGoog #

Self-Hosted #

!Bang Quick Search #

DuckDuckGo #

Final words #

Related #

Web Privacy with Firefox

1 - Startpage Search Engine #

2 - Adblock Edge #

3 - Ghostery #

4 - Self-Destructing Cookies #

5 - NoScript #

Conclusion #