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DuckDuckGo was down

duckduckgo.com

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Re: DuckDuckGo was down

#431

Post by glenjamin »

em-bee wrote: post #376
mdaniel wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This take implies there is no on-call rotation at DDG, which I find suspicious

the most important function of on call rotation is there to fix problems, not to make announcements to the public. so they surely have the first, but maybe not the second.

This is incorrect, the primary job of an on-call rotation is to satisfy customers.

It’s usually much better ROI to publicly acknowledge an issue if the resolution is not going to be single digit minutes, as it massively reduces the incoming query/support burden

Re: DuckDuckGo was down

#433

Post by tombert »

Springtime wrote: post #419
tombert wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The context of the news was a security researcher conducting an audit of the app. If DDG were, as the GP claimed, performing tracking on behalf of MS then it would be more concerning since there is a difference between performing tracking on behalf of a third-party company and merely excluding them from being blocked via a content blocker that most mobile browsers lack anyway. Sorry, I'm still not entirely sure tha…

> Which Firefox fork do you use? Does it work on iPhone? I use Fennec, which afaict is Android only. It's my understanding it removed various Mozilla analytics though some is said to remain. It's compiled independently from source by F-Droid, which supports reproducible builds. Primary reasons I use it is for enabling about:config editing out of the box and third party addons (either Mozilla-approved ones like uBlock…

Yeah, doesn't appear to support iOS, at least not in the app store.

Once Alt stores show up in the US I suspect we'll get a lot more of these browsers showing up on iPhone. My last experience with Android was awful so I went crawling back to iOS, but I think that I just got a bad physical unit more than anything else.

I did see that Kagi's Orion browser allows you to install extensions, though I had issues with stability when I tried it a year ago, but a lot can change in a year so I should probably give it again.

Re: DuckDuckGo was down

#434

Post by tredre3 »

somenameforme wrote: post #420
skeeter2020 wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really understand the scale of this (ongoing) investment? I'm not sure I'd classify this as "Absurd" - the value of DDG is not yet-another (tm) search index but the specific values they add on top. When you have limited resources I'd say they're making the right choice.

Brave rolled their own completely independent search [1] on what I assume is a relatively limited budget. It seems that regularly grabbing the data would be pretty easy. The harder part would be searching/ordering it in an efficient and meaningful way while avoiding SEO, but that seems more like a fun problem than a difficult one (if not both). [1] - https://search.brave.com/

There are two things the general HN sentiment genuinely believes is impossible to build unless you have billions of dollars:

- Search Engines

- Browser Engines

I don't quite understand how we got there because neither of those things are impossible. Both are achievable with a small team and a couple years of runway. As proved by Brave and Ladybird.

Re: DuckDuckGo was down

#435

Post by worksonmine »

Zambyte wrote: post #429
kornhole wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is one of many metasearch sites and not actually a search engine. Other engines include Kagi, Yandex, Brave, Mojeek, Quant, and something called Google.

As someone who uses Kagi, I think it is absolutely not accurate to say they are a search engine rather than a meta search engine. Most of their results come from the other engines you listed. https://help.kagi.com/kagi/search-details/search-sources.htm...

Interesting, I always had the impression they had their own index. Shame.

Re: DuckDuckGo was down

#436

Post by decide1000 »

niutech wrote: post #342
kornhole wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is one of many metasearch sites and not actually a search engine. Other engines include Kagi, Yandex, Brave, Mojeek, Quant, and something called Google.

Quant also relies on Bing API.

Quant or Qwant? Qwant does not rely on the Bing api but has its own index.

Re: DuckDuckGo was down

#437

Post by decide1000 »

kunley wrote: post #384
syklep wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brave explicitly claims not to.[1] Brave also does not rely on Bing for results. [1] https://search.brave.com/help/privacy-policy Edit: mojeek claims the same.[2] [2] https://www.mojeek.com/about/privacy/

Last time i checked, Brave was insisting on convinving me to use certain cryptocurrency platforms and it was more intrusive with it than typical web ads, which seemed really twisted, as the same Brave claimed to give ad-free experience. Are they still doing that?

Yes, those ads are still part of Brave.

Re: DuckDuckGo was down

#438

Post by quectophoton »

nobody9999 wrote: post #216
dewey wrote: post #168

> Hopefully DDG will be back soon, as I'm loathe to go back to Google for search. Maybe Kagi is an option for you? I'm very happy with them and exclusively use them for more than a year now after never getting comfortable with DDG.

>Maybe Kagi is an option for you? Thanks, but I'd rather have my tonsils extracted through my ears. Unless you're buying. From the FAQ[0]: >Kagi Search requires an account only because it is a paid service which requires an account for the transaction. [0] https://help.kagi.com/kagi/faq/faq.html#why-does-kagi-search...

They say this:

> You can create a Kagi account with any email address including a fake one (we do not care or verify it, it is just an id for logging in)

But seeing how they didn't go the Mullvad way, and instead chose to ask for an email during signup and hide this bit of info in a completely separate page, doesn't sit too well with me and comes off as a little bit dishonest (they say they don't need this info but sure seems to me they seem to want to have it).

And part of the message I get from reading their F.A.Q. is that a valid email address might start being required at any time soon.

Sure, they would have payment information anyway, but if searches are also linked to email address, that means companies that offer free services can try to buy this information about their free users. So even if you don't pay for, say, Discord, they can still be interested in the searches that are linked to the email address you signed up with.

The difference in privacy between Mullvad and Kagi is not even that much since both are paid services; but Mullvad can get my money and a good chunk of my internet activity, while Kagi doesn't get either from me.

Look, I don't mind too much paying for stuff. And even if I'm paying, I wouldn't even care[1] if I get non-intrusive non-tracking ads (i.e. just text, or first-party tags) related to stuff that I don't delete from my search history. Show me ads for anime figurines, or new releases of light novels, or nice notebooks, or shops selling plants, or computer parts, or a new Steam Deck, stuff like that. I would even help fine tune the ads if it means I get better recommendations (or fewer bad ones, at least).

But it's these kinds of mixed signals, like trying to project an image of offering better privacy than what's common[2] while also doing the email address thingy, that give me a lot of pause when I'm evaluating a service.

[1]: I'm aware my stance on ads is unusual here in HN. I wouldn't disable my adblocker, but if done right, I wouldn't need to. I haven't gone out of my way to block HN frontpage ads (yet), for example.

[2]: That's the subjective impression I got, which might be wrong. The rest of my comment was written based on this.

Re: DuckDuckGo was down

#439

Post by em-bee »

glenjamin wrote: post #431
em-bee wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the most important function of on call rotation is there to fix problems, not to make announcements to the public. so they surely have the first, but maybe not the second.

This is incorrect, the primary job of an on-call rotation is to satisfy customers. It’s usually much better ROI to publicly acknowledge an issue if the resolution is not going to be single digit minutes, as it massively reduces the incoming query/support burden

yes, but the users of the search engine are not the customers. actually, who would the customers of ddg be?

ad agencies? are they going to get upset if their ads are not visible for a few hours on of many sites where they post them? are they even going to notice?

Re: DuckDuckGo was down

#440

Post by nashashmi »

I realized DDG was just a skin on Bing a couple of days ago. Bing's results have gone incredibly sour. Too many ads on bing. Bing speaks of censorship and fake results (repeated listings of the same garbage on 3rd, 4th pages).

The only thing DDG is good for: using bangs! search any and every search engine thru ![bang].

What other search engines are still good? Google hit the fan a couple of years back after the hire of Prabhakar Raghavan (https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/). Bing cowered to censored results. ChatGPT is muzzled.

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