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Linux Mint signs a partnership with DuckDuckGo

blog.linuxmint.com

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Re: Linux Mint signs a partnership with DuckDuckGo

#21

Post by robotresearcher »

eCa wrote: post #18
mechanical_fish wrote: post #6

My god, it's yet another piece of software called Mint. Stop the branding madness! Also frustrating is the fact that I couldn't spot the link from the official Linux Mint blog to the "please tell me what Linux Mint is" page. I ultimately resorted to Google. A conversion funnel tragedy.

> Also frustrating is the fact that I couldn't spot the link from the official Linux Mint blog to the "please tell me what Linux Mint is" page. Yes, it's incomprehensible why so many companies: a) don't use their normal headers for the blog, or at least b) put a prominent link back to the homepage (like the logo, for instance). However, when the blog is at http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1884 it is not a gigantic leap o…

> However, when the blog is at http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1884 it is not a gigantic leap of thought to go check what might be at http://www.linuxmint.com/, from where it's one click to the about page.

I think the poster was commenting on the difficulty of getting to the main web site, not the possibility. Having visitors hand-edit URIs is not considered slick customer conversion.

Re: Linux Mint signs a partnership with DuckDuckGo

#22

Post by nakkiel »

eCa wrote: post #18
mechanical_fish wrote: post #6

My god, it's yet another piece of software called Mint. Stop the branding madness! Also frustrating is the fact that I couldn't spot the link from the official Linux Mint blog to the "please tell me what Linux Mint is" page. I ultimately resorted to Google. A conversion funnel tragedy.

> Also frustrating is the fact that I couldn't spot the link from the official Linux Mint blog to the "please tell me what Linux Mint is" page. Yes, it's incomprehensible why so many companies: a) don't use their normal headers for the blog, or at least b) put a prominent link back to the homepage (like the logo, for instance). However, when the blog is at http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1884 it is not a gigantic leap o…

Company? You must have overlooked something.

Re: Linux Mint signs a partnership with DuckDuckGo

#24

Post by azakai »

nextparadigms wrote: post #3

Does DuckDuckGo pay for the Bing engine? And what happens if Microsoft tries to stop them from using it, or they put some limitations on it for 3rd parties?

The details of DDG's arrangement with Bing are obviously not public. However, it is a very safe bet that DDG either gets the information for free, or essentially for free, simply because to do otherwise would make no sense for Microsoft. Microsoft benefits from anything that even potentially reduces Google's market share, by any amount.

Of course, that puts DDG in a dangerous situation, since it depends on Microsoft. Perhaps it has a long-term binding commitment from Microsoft, though, that wouldn't surprise me either.

Re: Linux Mint signs a partnership with DuckDuckGo

#25

Post by w1ntermute »

slowpoke wrote: post #17
orblivion wrote: post #14

Since when do they use Bing? I thought they did their own indexing.

My last information was that they used a combination of third party search APIs (Yahoo, Bing, Google) and producing their own search content. By now, in terms of functionality[1], I mostly use DDG for the bangs, having set it as my default search engine in Firefox (keyword.URL in about:settings) so I can search using the URL bar. I caught myself doing ^T and typing "!w keywords" (to search wikipedia) on other people'…

> I caught myself doing ^T and typing "!w keywords" (to search wikipedia) on other people's computers more than once by now.

You realize that you don't have to use DDG for this, right? You can set up keyword searches in the search bar in Firefox or Chrome (don't know about other browsers) for any site, not just those that DDG supports. Then just type 'w ' into the location bar and hit enter for Wikipedia, for example. You can even do cool things like set up custom searches, like my 'wl' search, which automatically prepends 'list of' to any Wikpedia search.

Re: Linux Mint signs a partnership with DuckDuckGo

#26

Post by notatoad »

mk wrote: post #20
mitko wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What other options for backend besides Bing are there if one would like to do make a new search engine?

DDG uses Yahoo! Boss. http://www.ysearchblog.com/2011/06/27/ydn-qa-with-duckduckgo...

which in turn uses bing.

Re: Linux Mint signs a partnership with DuckDuckGo

#27

Post by maximusprime »

lordlarm wrote: post #16

DuckDuckGo was also added to the Opera Browser, approx. 1 month ago. [1] Anyone know how DuckDuckGo do monetization? [1]: http://my.opera.com/ruario/blog/2011/10/19/the-hidden-featur...

afaik they rewrite any amazon and ebay results to link with their own affiliate ID :/

Re: Linux Mint signs a partnership with DuckDuckGo

#28

Post by notatoad »

w1ntermute wrote: post #25
slowpoke wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My last information was that they used a combination of third party search APIs (Yahoo, Bing, Google) and producing their own search content. By now, in terms of functionality[1], I mostly use DDG for the bangs, having set it as my default search engine in Firefox (keyword.URL in about:settings) so I can search using the URL bar. I caught myself doing ^T and typing "!w keywords" (to search wikipedia) on other people'…

> I caught myself doing ^T and typing "!w keywords" (to search wikipedia) on other people's computers more than once by now. You realize that you don't have to use DDG for this, right? You can set up keyword searches in the search bar in Firefox or Chrome (don't know about other browsers) for any site, not just those that DDG supports. Then just type 'w ' into the location bar and hit enter for Wikipedia, for example…

except that DDG has them all set up already. if you want them in firefox, you have to set them up yourself.

Re: Linux Mint signs a partnership with DuckDuckGo

#29

Post by 110101001010100 »

gaoprea wrote: post #15
mitko wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What other options for backend besides Bing are there if one would like to do make a new search engine?

The Common Crawl index, already has 5bn ranked pages, and the data is open to everyone - http://www.commoncrawl.org/

From the genius who brought us what Google adapted as AdSense. I applaud this effort. I'm no Spike Lee, but in my opinion this is doing the right thing.

Let people compete over what to do with the raw data (data which is of course publicly accessible but subject to the strange inequities of crawling), how best to process and present it, not over access to it. DDG has to pay Yahoo! for a BOSS license. That is just strange when you think about how the raw data was obtained. It is publicly available information.

Nothing against Yahoo! for doing that (selling access to publicly available data), as there are many other examples of this practice across web- "everyone else is doing it". But I do not think it is "the right thing" to do.

Re: Linux Mint signs a partnership with DuckDuckGo

#30

Post by Jd »

notatoad wrote: post #28
w1ntermute wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I caught myself doing ^T and typing "!w keywords" (to search wikipedia) on other people's computers more than once by now. You realize that you don't have to use DDG for this, right? You can set up keyword searches in the search bar in Firefox or Chrome (don't know about other browsers) for any site, not just those that DDG supports. Then just type 'w ' into the location bar and hit enter for Wikipedia, for example…

except that DDG has them all set up already. if you want them in firefox, you have to set them up yourself.

My impression is that Google also always returns wikipedia when you have "wiki" as a search term. Only an extra two characters.
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