Friends tell me that Google will sell my name and "contact information", resulting in a deluge and a half of unwanted messages, notifications and offers. That may be happening but so far, it isn't too bad. I read just today of a politician trying to amass a treasure chest to pay for publicity whose campaign made more money selling contact information gleaned from donors than in direct donations. I don't know enough about modern computers and internet communications to know why the big companies and small ones all want me to use their browser, the program that takes me browsing around the internet. I have Microsoft's Edge, Mozilla's Firefox, Opera and Vivaldi on my computer. I rarely use Google's Chrome. I do use Chrome once in a while.
I have heard of Duckduckgo for searching the internet and finding web addresses, a.k.a. URL's (universal resource locator). So, I told my go-to browser, Firefox, to use Duckduckgo for searches. More than 20 years ago, I used Lycos, the best internet searcher software I could find at the time. Lately, with my browser set to use Duckduckgo, I have been finding that Google has a better design and better results. That may be because I am used to the Google layout but I am finding more of what I want going to Google.com
My nephew has a degree in computing and when I say that he used Gmail, I did, too. When you use Gmail, there is a handy "app launcher" on the web page that can lead you to the many, many Google products and services.
I have inserted a thin red line in the upper right corner of the image. I urge exploration of the little 3x3 set of white dots. There are many excellent tools there.
