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Use DuckDuckGo to improve your privacy online (2018)

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Re: Use DuckDuckGo to improve your privacy online (2018)

#161

Post by Ixio »

anonytrary wrote: post #156

I'm not trying to defend Google by any means, but I've always wondered how DDG can be as profitable as Google if they take into account less information when showing you ads. Surely using more information allows you to more efficiently match supply with potential demand, which is the point of ads. Is there any research out there that shows that this efficiency gap does not exist? I don't use or follow Facebook that m…

The way I see it everyone should have some sort of personal data broker (maybe as a browser extension ?). Your data broker has all of your personal information and keeps it safe for you.

If you make a query on a search engine I'm sure we can find a way to have better results without the search engine retaining your private information. Either there is some kind of third party you can temporarily give your info to and trust it to forget it immediatly after giving you the results. Or the search engine could give standard results and your data broker then filters it using your info (which doesn't leave your pc).

I used to think of this data broker as some sort of AI but now that I think about it maybe a simple browser extension that filters Google search results or augments your DDG queries might do the trick.

Re: Use DuckDuckGo to improve your privacy online (2018)

#162

Post by camillomiller »

pixelbreaker wrote: post #12

I first tried DDG in its early years and it just didn't yield the results I needed, I tried it again a couple of years ago and have stuck with it ever since as it has must better results these days.

It's unfortunately unusable in any language except English

Re: Use DuckDuckGo to improve your privacy online (2018)

#163

Post by probably_wrong »

anonytrary wrote: post #156

I'm not trying to defend Google by any means, but I've always wondered how DDG can be as profitable as Google if they take into account less information when showing you ads. Surely using more information allows you to more efficiently match supply with potential demand, which is the point of ads. Is there any research out there that shows that this efficiency gap does not exist? I don't use or follow Facebook that m…

> I've always wondered how DDG can be as profitable as Google if they take into account less information when showing you ads

AFAIK, no one has conclusively shown that highly targeted ads perform better than interest-based ones (as in, putting ads for cars in car magazines). In fact, I'm under the impression that "we don't really know what we are doing" is the ad industry's secret.

The Atlantic calls this Wanamaker's Paradox[1], in honor of a retailer that said "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, the trouble is I don't know which half". If DDG is right and showing ads based on your search terms is enough, then you'd expect them to get ahead of Google, because they would have similar profits with less overhead.

Of course, there is much more to Google's dominance than "because they show better ads", so I don't think "efficiency gap" is the best way to look at it anyway.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/06/a-dange...

Re: Use DuckDuckGo to improve your privacy online (2018)

#164

Post by detaro »

anonytrary wrote: post #156

I'm not trying to defend Google by any means, but I've always wondered how DDG can be as profitable as Google if they take into account less information when showing you ads. Surely using more information allows you to more efficiently match supply with potential demand, which is the point of ads. Is there any research out there that shows that this efficiency gap does not exist? I don't use or follow Facebook that m…

Does Google take more information into account when showing you ads on the search results page? I thought those were a fairly straight-forward search term based matching/auction too, unlike the ads Google sells on other sites?

Re: Use DuckDuckGo to improve your privacy online (2018)

#165

Post by johnmarcus »

anonytrary wrote: post #156

I'm not trying to defend Google by any means, but I've always wondered how DDG can be as profitable as Google if they take into account less information when showing you ads. Surely using more information allows you to more efficiently match supply with potential demand, which is the point of ads. Is there any research out there that shows that this efficiency gap does not exist? I don't use or follow Facebook that m…

Bing pays well for anything that drives it traffic, just to stay relavent.

Re: Use DuckDuckGo to improve your privacy online (2018)

#166

Post by johnmarcus »

FabHK wrote: post #64
Kiro wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. I support that. What I don't support is people saying it's a false claim when DDG is completely transparent about it themselves.

Does Bing offer the same privacy advantages (no tracking, no history based ads, etc.)? EDIT to add: I think nobody disputes or cares that most results come from (or equal) Bing results, as long as they're good enough.

DDG basically acts as a vpn proxy. Bing sees all the traffic as from DDG the same, they can't differentiate the individual requesters. Assuming DDG does what it says it does anyway.

Re: Use DuckDuckGo to improve your privacy online (2018)

#168

Post by glaberficken »

mr_spothawk wrote: post #80
parthdesai wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with you. I switched to DDG, and within a day i started subconsciously adding `!g` to my query. And it's for simple things, not even complicated programming queries. For example, if i wanna see what the weather is, typing "Toronto weather" in google gives me the current weather right on the front page, whereas with DDG, i have to scan for weather network and click on it to actually get the information. Same goes…

try: "weather: toronto" instead

in my experience you don't need the ":" weather cityname is usually enough

Re: Use DuckDuckGo to improve your privacy online (2018)

#169

Post by bad_user »

WalterSear wrote: post #116
bad_user wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went through the same process, until I realized that Google’s results aren’t better for me because I evolved. What Google does is to have context and to use that context to make the queries more specific. They use for example your location and your history of searches. However being privacy conscious, I deleted my Google history and disabled the collecting of history in my Google account. And then the results becam…

I understand the point being made, but it's arguably irrelevant why Duckduckgo's results are lower in quality - the switch still involves the loss of not insignificant utility, which goes against the experiences I'm reading here from all the people here saying how great their search results were. Moreover, I'm not convinced it's entirely due to my search history, location or other online history. It's definitely not…

I did tests for a keyword I'm interested in and DuckDuckGo definitely doesn't rely only on Bing.

I've brought this discussion up because at that time (4 months ago) the results on DuckDuckGo were worse than Bing's: https://www.reddit.com/r/duckduckgo/comments/9j5f1p/duckduck...

But nowadays they are better for that same keyword. Whether somebody on their side noticed my issue on Reddit and manipulated this particular result, I don't know. But they definitely aren't just a shell over Bing.

Google provides the best results in this case, without doubt. For a software company of their size, hiring some of the best engineers and specialized in ML, I wouldn't have expected otherwise.

I still use Google's Search for double checking whenever I don't find something, but as I said, I increasingly find that for my search queries Google can't help me in finding anything that DuckDuckGo can't.

I don't search academic papers so of course we have a different experience.

---

Btw, I don't think caring about privacy is an ideology. I've worked in the advertising industry and I still do, although I'm on the publisher's side now.

Companies are carelessly trading user data and if that happens to me (1) I need to be informed and (2) I need a substantial reward in return to outweigh the risks and as long as there are cost effective alternatives that protect privacy, I'd rather use those, voting with my wallet and all that.

Re: Use DuckDuckGo to improve your privacy online (2018)

#170

Post by Kiro »

bad_user wrote: post #169
WalterSear wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the point being made, but it's arguably irrelevant why Duckduckgo's results are lower in quality - the switch still involves the loss of not insignificant utility, which goes against the experiences I'm reading here from all the people here saying how great their search results were. Moreover, I'm not convinced it's entirely due to my search history, location or other online history. It's definitely not…

I did tests for a keyword I'm interested in and DuckDuckGo definitely doesn't rely only on Bing. I've brought this discussion up because at that time (4 months ago) the results on DuckDuckGo were worse than Bing's: https://www.reddit.com/r/duckduckgo/comments/9j5f1p/duckduck... But nowadays they are better for that same keyword. Whether somebody on their side noticed my issue on Reddit and manipulated this particular…

https://duck.co/help/results/sources

Money quote:

> We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we also source from a variety of partners, including Oath (formerly Yahoo) and Bing.

The other 400 sources are just used to widget stuff while the organic links are mostly from Bing and Oath. So it's a mash-up.

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