I have mixed feelings about this. If you recommend DuckDuckGo, Qwant, Ecosia you're essentially recommending Bing. Each of them have to show bing ads, forward the users' IPs as per Bing's terms of service (to fight ad fraud etc). Similarly, if you recommend StartPage, you're recommending Google. Same drill with ads. I like DuckDuckGo. But unless they build their own search - I think the fundamental problem has not be…
> forward the users' IPs
Seems doubtful since that would be contrary to DDG's main marketing message and their reason for even existing.
I have mixed feelings about this. If you recommend DuckDuckGo, Qwant, Ecosia you're essentially recommending Bing. Each of them have to show bing ads, forward the users' IPs as per Bing's terms of service (to fight ad fraud etc). Similarly, if you recommend StartPage, you're recommending Google. Same drill with ads. I like DuckDuckGo. But unless they build their own search - I think the fundamental problem has not be…
Aren't DuckDuckGo searches a mixture of Bing, Yahoo, Yandex and their own crawler? I don't know a great deal about their infrastructure and would love to learn more about it.
I have mixed feelings about this. If you recommend DuckDuckGo, Qwant, Ecosia you're essentially recommending Bing. Each of them have to show bing ads, forward the users' IPs as per Bing's terms of service (to fight ad fraud etc). Similarly, if you recommend StartPage, you're recommending Google. Same drill with ads. I like DuckDuckGo. But unless they build their own search - I think the fundamental problem has not be…
>Each of them have to show bing ads, forward the users' IPs as per Bing's terms of service (to fight ad fraud etc)
The ToS you are referring to is for companies without custom deals in place.
I call publicity stunt. Jack is doing just as much to censor free thought as is Google.
I met Jack a number of years ago. He did not strike me as someone interested in stifling free speech. Although he was incredibly successful, even then, his values seemed to be high above those of most mortals. One of these values that he explicitly mentioned was free speech. Additionally, while discussing our accomplishments, he stated that he had an IQ of 155. My own is 160, which is above his, but he nonetheless seemed almost as intelligent as me, which I am certainly not used to.
DuckDuckGo is still not ready to be my daily driver. Here's my last significant Google search: "monaco IndentAction.Indent" The documentation I was looking for[0] was the: - 1st hit on Google[1] - 17th hit on DDG[2] but to be fair I didn't find it within the first 10 (!) pages of Bing[3], so at least it's better than Bing. And I work for MSFT. I submitted feedback to DDG & Bing, hopefully it helps. [0] https://micros…
This is awesome - happy to see privacy oriented search become more popular. I think DuckDuckGo needs a better name though - Something more ubiquitous. Duck, maybe? Quack?
There was a rant by some other HN user about how DDG owns "duck.com" yet refuses to just point it to a search page.
duck.com DOES redirect to duckduckgo.com. IIRC Google used to own duck.com and wouldn't redirect, but once DDG got ownership they redirected it.
I was very impressed listening to Weinberg on The Angel Philospher podcast recently, and have been very happy with DDG as my default engine for about a year. And yet it was only yesterday that I realised that (for a certain section of the web) adverts on DDG are playing to a self selected audience - basically it's like running banner ads on HN.
I have mixed feelings about this. If you recommend DuckDuckGo, Qwant, Ecosia you're essentially recommending Bing. Each of them have to show bing ads, forward the users' IPs as per Bing's terms of service (to fight ad fraud etc). Similarly, if you recommend StartPage, you're recommending Google. Same drill with ads. I like DuckDuckGo. But unless they build their own search - I think the fundamental problem has not be…
> But unless they build their > own search IIUC, they have built their own search, but use Bing(among others) for paid ads. If this is the case, it seems that it’s the business model that needs innovation and not the search engine itself.
Building even a mediocre search engine involves a gigantic index in >40 languages that is constantly refreshed, plus image and video indexes, porn, spam, malware filters, complex ranking, freshness, originality algorithms, constant quality analysis and continuous maintenance and improvements for the infrastructure. They are not transparent about breakdown of queries or details of their deals with Bing and Yandex. They try really hard to create an illusion that it is a real search engine, but seems like it is basically smoke and mirrors.
DuckDuckGo is still not ready to be my daily driver. Here's my last significant Google search: "monaco IndentAction.Indent" The documentation I was looking for[0] was the: - 1st hit on Google[1] - 17th hit on DDG[2] but to be fair I didn't find it within the first 10 (!) pages of Bing[3], so at least it's better than Bing. And I work for MSFT. I submitted feedback to DDG & Bing, hopefully it helps. [0] https://micros…
Their search still sucks, not using until it is at least on par with Google.
I have an idea to improve DDG results: write a greasemonkey script that automatically adds !g to all queries