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Cliqz is shutting down

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Re: Cliqz is shutting down

#21

Post by chris_f »

I spent a good amount of time using Cliqz. For creating their own search index, it was pretty good. But it was nowhere near as good as Google or Bing, and to the average end-user that's all that matters. Most people don't really care about the engineering behind a tool, they just want the tool to work.

The company name never bothered me, but from the comments it looks like I'm in the minority there. Is it any worse than DuckDuckGo?

If you are looking for another search engine with their own search index, also check out Mojeek. https://www.mojeek.com/

Re: Cliqz is shutting down

#22

Post by chris_f »

prox wrote: post #11
heipei wrote: post #10

For what it's worth, their engineering blog about how to build a large-scale search engine more or less from scratch was really interesting: https://0x65.dev/

Weren’t there a bunch of posts on HN by them?

Yeah, I believe in December they did a post a day. A lot of the posts made it to the front page.

Re: Cliqz is shutting down

#23

Post by chispamed »

pmontra wrote: post #18

I'm a little sad about it. I've been using Cliqz from the browser search bar for a few months only because it's not Google. I'm probably switching to DDG now. The search engine kind of works, but years behind Google. The most annoying missing feature is no "exact terms" search, which is a problem when googling error messages. All considered I pressed the Google button at the bottom maybe half of the times, and I bet…

If you are searching for privacy-focused Google seaarch alternatives and are not happy with DDG, you may want to give Qwant (https://www.qwant.com, best one regarding privacy I've found so far but since the quarantine began it's been a bit slow) or Startpage (https://startpage.com, they actually show you google results) a try as well.

Re: Cliqz is shutting down

#24

Post by Nextgrid »

dessant wrote: post #6

> Cliqz lost the fight against Google. There’s no way to sugarcoat this. > A cynic might say that Cliqz failed because of our strong passion for technology and a missing drive from business development. A cynic might also say that you were dishonest and masqueraded as something different than what your business model represented, so people had no compelling reason to switch over from Google, which does a much better…

The problem with Brave is that they're curing the symptom (people disliking and/or blocking ads), not the disease (the current state of advertising itself).

Let's assume they hypothetically succeed and Brave's BAT-powered ad platform is the only thing available, they'll then have the exact same problem of fraud as the current ad industry and will need to deploy invasive tracking in an attempt to curb it, without success.

The problem is that the advertising model of "attention" is broken to begin with. Even without malicious intentions, how do you determine the value of attention? Is it "cheating" to look away or mute when an ad is shown? Is it cheating if you're looking at an ad in a foreign language you don't understand? Is it cheating if you're watching a video in bed and fall asleep by the time the ad is shown? Is it cheating to be looking at ads intentionally (because someone like Brave is paying you in tokens) without having any intention of buying the advertised products?

In my opinion the solution is to not base advertising on "attention" but base it on real results, aka the advertised product/service making more sales. Make the ads time-based ("your ad will be shown here for the next 2 weeks") and then the whole idea of tracking or fraud goes away because the only result is whether you're making more sales, and if so then it doesn't matter whether real people are looking at the ads or bots are "looking" at them because the advertisement is delivering results. This is how advertising has been done for a century in traditional media like print and TV.

Re: Cliqz is shutting down

#25

Post by solso »

dessant wrote: post #6

> Cliqz lost the fight against Google. There’s no way to sugarcoat this. > A cynic might say that Cliqz failed because of our strong passion for technology and a missing drive from business development. A cynic might also say that you were dishonest and masqueraded as something different than what your business model represented, so people had no compelling reason to switch over from Google, which does a much better…

Cliqz never masqueraded anything, only in your odd perception of the world. Advertisement as implemented today is a privacy hazard, but there are other ways to do it, client-side, which is what Cliqz attempted. The same goes for data-collection, you can collect all and put the privacy of the users at risk, or collect only signals that cannot be record-linked, which is what Cliqz did.

Cliqz search was never on par with Google -- I build parts of it -- but was getting there little by little. To be more precise, it was getting good enough, to not be a factor. That has some merit given the totally independent index (not relying on Bing under the hood).

Brave the same as Cliqz are trying their best to offer an alternative. If you think you can do better, please do so. Believe, I'll root for you regardless of my opinion about you (we crossed path in the past). Why would I support you, even though that does not mean I use what you build? Because we are in need of having plurality on the Web, the more the better. Unlike you, I do not see the point of speaking bullshit, not sure if out of ignorance or ill-will, don't know, don't care.

Re: Cliqz is shutting down

#26

Post by chris_f »

solso wrote: post #25
dessant wrote: post #6

> Cliqz lost the fight against Google. There’s no way to sugarcoat this. > A cynic might say that Cliqz failed because of our strong passion for technology and a missing drive from business development. A cynic might also say that you were dishonest and masqueraded as something different than what your business model represented, so people had no compelling reason to switch over from Google, which does a much better…

Cliqz never masqueraded anything, only in your odd perception of the world. Advertisement as implemented today is a privacy hazard, but there are other ways to do it, client-side, which is what Cliqz attempted. The same goes for data-collection, you can collect all and put the privacy of the users at risk, or collect only signals that cannot be record-linked, which is what Cliqz did. Cliqz search was never on par wit…

In your experience, what was the biggest challenge to be on par with Google?

From using Cliqz, I felt that the relevance of search results was fairly good.

The challenge I had in many cases was that the coverage was so much less for non-common search terms that the information I was looking for just wasn't there.

The Instant Answers on Google are also getting good to the point where sometimes I don't have to leave the SERP.

Re: Cliqz is shutting down

#27

Post by dessant »

solso wrote: post #25
dessant wrote: post #6

> Cliqz lost the fight against Google. There’s no way to sugarcoat this. > A cynic might say that Cliqz failed because of our strong passion for technology and a missing drive from business development. A cynic might also say that you were dishonest and masqueraded as something different than what your business model represented, so people had no compelling reason to switch over from Google, which does a much better…

Cliqz never masqueraded anything, only in your odd perception of the world. Advertisement as implemented today is a privacy hazard, but there are other ways to do it, client-side, which is what Cliqz attempted. The same goes for data-collection, you can collect all and put the privacy of the users at risk, or collect only signals that cannot be record-linked, which is what Cliqz did. Cliqz search was never on par wit…

Your employer being dishonest does not necessarily qualify you, so I'm not sure why it is being taken personally. There are also several incredibly talented people at Google who do awesome things, some even fight for human rights and privacy, but that does not absolve the atrocities Google as a company commits against the human race.

Nor does your team's work on search engines absolve Cliqz of attempting to build a company that is based on pervasive user tracking, anonymized (deanonymizable in the future) or otherwise. I'd rather not address the rest of your personal attacks.

Re: Cliqz is shutting down

#28

Post by hellcow »

chispamed wrote: post #23
pmontra wrote: post #18

I'm a little sad about it. I've been using Cliqz from the browser search bar for a few months only because it's not Google. I'm probably switching to DDG now. The search engine kind of works, but years behind Google. The most annoying missing feature is no "exact terms" search, which is a problem when googling error messages. All considered I pressed the Google button at the bottom maybe half of the times, and I bet…

If you are searching for privacy-focused Google seaarch alternatives and are not happy with DDG, you may want to give Qwant ( https://www.qwant.com , best one regarding privacy I've found so far but since the quarantine began it's been a bit slow) or Startpage ( https://startpage.com , they actually show you google results) a try as well.

Startpage was acquired by an ad company: https://reclaimthenet.org/startpage-buyout-ad-tech-company/.

Re: Cliqz is shutting down

#30

Post by judge2020 »

throwaway914892 wrote: post #13

Cliqz was a hypocritical product right from the start, and it never attracted a large userbase. The only reason it survived that long because the company behind Cliqz didn't care about throwing lots of money into the idea of creating a competition to google. Second, the product doesn't provide any practical benefit to google users, so there is no point to switch. Cliqz didn't realize that you can't sell privacy as a…

In fewer words, Brave won't fail because their "product that works" is Chrome.
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