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DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

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Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#131

Post by CameronNemo »

jdironman wrote: post #107
p-e-w wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I was actually hoping for an answer that doesn't require blind trust. So the correct answer seems to be "we absolutely could link your searches to your identity, but we promise that we won't; however, you cannot verify that we are keeping that promise". Which I'm afraid is not good enough. To be clear, I'm not saying that they are lying, and indeed I have no reason to suspect they are. But I'm looking for techno…

Why not just have a payment method that isn't linked to you?

Do they support any such payment methods? Only Monero and cash come to mind.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#133

Post by yoshamano »

colordrops wrote: post #78
DanHulton wrote: post #70

I debated bringing up Kagi at the top level here, since I already commented on it in a reply, but honestly I really want them to succeed and shit like this is why. It's a paid search service, and I'm honestly really happy with that distinction and what it entails. Being paid means that they can deliver on and support features that users can use to get the best results for them, without worrying how those features may…

> They are working out the kinks with the pricing scheme You mean being way too expensive? I appreciate them wanting to stay afloat but they need to bring the cost per search down drastically. They are doing something wrong behind the scenes with regards to spend or optimization.

This is what has been holding me back from trying out Kagi. I will probably jump over to Kagi at some point because I've noticed the quality of DDG searches going downhill as well. However, I'm firmly in Kagi's idea of 1% of Internet users. I search for anything at the drop of a hat. I just checked my history in Firefox for duckduckgo.com for "This Month" and it came back with 704 individual searches (DDG likes to add on a =web and generate a new request so I filtered for just those). My phone is an island all on its own, and I probably have another 100-150 searches on there. March and February are right around the same numbers. For fun'sies lets just say 1000 searches per month. $10/month for the 700 searches plan + 300 * 0.015 for the overages = $14.50/month.

Unlike the other comments down-thread, this number feels right. I don't like it, and my gut doesn't want to accept this. If you're not harvesting user data and/or selling ads, and the monthly subscriptions are the only source of revenue then $14.50/month sounds right.

I'm still riding this fun'sies train so lets just kick some numbers around. I suspect their FAQ might be a little out of date, but lets go with it. https://kagi.com/faq says that, "it costs us about $1 to process 80 searches". 1000 searches / 80 = $12.50, so they make $2 per month from me. I hope that 80 searches for $1 covers all of their OpEx. If it doesn't, then that $2 per month gets a bit more sad. https://blog.kagi.com/status-update-first-three-months states that, "Kagi search is currently serving ~2,600 paid customers." from September 1st last year. Let's say they've grown 10x since then and we're at 26,000 paying customers and they're all me. $52,000 in profit on $377,000 per month in revenue. So they're clearing $624,000 a year on this totally hypothetical scenario.

Is https://moneyconnexion.com/per-second-earnings-of-top-compan... accurate? Who knows. If it is accurate, it takes Google just shy of 15 minutes to make that same $624,000.

Mostly this is just me thinking out loud. Like I said, I'm trying to wrap my head around this pricing.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#134

Post by eino »

helpfulclippy wrote: post #112
wastewastewaste wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yea, the tool tip says "200 searches is enough for 99% of Internet users", but I doubt their target demographic is the 99% that don't need more.

Just a datapoint, but I feel like I do a lot of searches… I’m always looking stuff up, and I’m also in the habit of using my search engine as a lazy form of autocomplete for urls. I apparently do about 700 searches a month according to Kagi. If I were on the basic plan, I think that would mean I’d be paying $5/mo. + $0.015/search * (700-200) searches/mo. = $12.50/mo. For what search is worth to me, that seems reasona…

Then it would be better take the professional plan including 700 searches for 10$/mo.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#135

Post by justin_oaks »

p-e-w wrote: post #104
freeAgent wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their privacy policy is here: https://kagi.com/privacy The short answer to your question is: yes, you can use it without linking any real-world identifiers to your search queries. That is explicitly stated in the linked privacy policy. With that said, I guess it's possible that they are violating their own privacy policy. That seems like a bad idea from a legal perspective, and I don't have any reason to suspect they…

Yeah I was actually hoping for an answer that doesn't require blind trust. So the correct answer seems to be "we absolutely could link your searches to your identity, but we promise that we won't; however, you cannot verify that we are keeping that promise". Which I'm afraid is not good enough. To be clear, I'm not saying that they are lying, and indeed I have no reason to suspect they are. But I'm looking for techno…

Any promises made by a company can disappear with a change of management/ownership.

Don't rely on company promises if you can avoid it.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#136

Post by CrendKing »

DanHulton wrote: post #70

I debated bringing up Kagi at the top level here, since I already commented on it in a reply, but honestly I really want them to succeed and shit like this is why. It's a paid search service, and I'm honestly really happy with that distinction and what it entails. Being paid means that they can deliver on and support features that users can use to get the best results for them, without worrying how those features may…

You need to realize that you like Kagi exactly because it has NOT been "succeeded", and you start to dislike DDG because it finally picks up popularity.

Anything in the world that's used by large amount of users are guaranteed to piss off some portion of them, because they can only focus on limited amount of features. Google had been like that. Firefox had been like that. When 70% of Firefox users are non-techies, Firefox has to start focus on the privacy niche to survive. Then the rest 30% vocal techies all start to protest and saying Mozilla has lost its direction and hope to regain market share.

When Kagi starts to gain popularity, I guarantee you they will start to polarize on their features, some of which you won't like, regardless of their business model, because the (majority) users they are catering to are also paid users, same as you. Only when they have only small amount of users could all of such be homogeneous enough so that every single feature they dish out is something you like.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#137

Post by plaguepilled »

mike_d wrote: post #130
plaguepilled wrote: post #40

Ah yes, the classic corporate footgun. I am sure power users who are alienated will most definitely stay quiet and not complain to their peers, damaging the reputation of a once reliable tool. This has never happened before after all. :')

DDG does not have a search engine, they have a frontend UI to Bing. Search API pricing from Microsoft is going up, so they either have to cut the complexity of queries or just not be in business.

This is an interesting detail - I was not aware Microsoft's pricing increased. That said, would this really increase complexity substantially?

And as a nitpicky aside, if this was done in response to Microsoft's cuts, I should really have found out about this from DDG themselves, rather than a github repo commit. Though it does change the intent quite a bit.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#138

Post by eino »

geysersam wrote: post #83
colordrops wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are working out the kinks with the pricing scheme You mean being way too expensive? I appreciate them wanting to stay afloat but they need to bring the cost per search down drastically. They are doing something wrong behind the scenes with regards to spend or optimization.

Why do you think their prices are unreasonable? Just curious. 1.5 cents per search doesn't sound expensive, although if you do 100 searches per day that's $45 per month...

Why would you pay that? You’d subscribe to the unlimited plan for 25$/mo.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#139

Post by Animats »

hedora wrote: post #27

I’ve also noticed that “”’s stopped working as expected there recently. Sample query: “lowes pet bedding”. The quotation marks do something; they remove some results from tractor supply and home depot. However, many results don’t contain the word “lowes” or “bedding”. For example: https://animalcare.lacounty.gov/licensing/ And, none contain the exact phrase. Google does the expected thing (return one result). Annoyin…

I tried

    graphics card -"nvidia"
    graphics card -"radeon"
on DuckDuckGo, Google, and Bing. Google is currently the only one which appeared to exclude the requested term. Bing and DuckDuckGo not only didn't exclude it, they highlighted it in results.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#140

Post by Kiro »

0xd1r wrote: post #7

I'm hoping that this is a commit that is reverted back, after some amount of backlash from the community, if at all this was intentional. Else, it evokes the sentiment of riskynacho on the comment, "It's almost like DuckDuckGo wants to eliminate itself from being a safe useful alternative in the search engine competition."

Backlash won't matter since this is most likely due to a change in the underlying Bing API they are getting their search results from.
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