DuckDuckGo Challenges Google on Privacy (With a Billboard in San Francisco) • Hacker News Board

Re: DuckDuckGo Challenges Google on Privacy (With a Billboard in San Francisco)

#111

Post by joesb » Thu, Jan 20, 2011, 5:12 AM UTC

mahmud wrote: post #89

moultano wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Both Yahoo and Google have a proven history spying on people on behalf of government. [citation needed]

And ye shall receive: "An Indian man is facing five years in jail for making an "offensive" comment [against Sonya Ghandi] after Google handed his personal data to local police." http://www.v3.co.uk/vnunet/news/2217063/google-handing-user-... Yahoo taken to task over China http://www.boycottyahoo.com/yahoo_taken_to_task_over_china.h...

Distortion. That's not Google spying on people. The guy use Orkut, a social network website, surely there's his account information there.

The personal data that is handed over is email address of the account. It's probably a privacy violation if it's really that hard to find out someone's email address once you know his social network account, but it's not spying on people.

Re: DuckDuckGo Challenges Google on Privacy (With a Billboard in San Francisco)

#112

Post by endtime » Thu, Jan 20, 2011, 5:13 AM UTC

dauphin wrote: post #94

epi0Bauqu wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just the current search, but the problem is millions of pages run third-party ads, and most are run by very few networks. These ad networks can aggregate the terms and then they have previous searches as well.

Pedophilia is illegal in most countries, I'd be happy if ad networks gather data about your interest on young boys and pass it to the feds! Beasts! Edit: judging by the downvotes, I guess a good bunch of hackers like to live in atrocity!

I think the downvotes are because you're missing the point so hard that they're assuming you must be trolling.

Re: DuckDuckGo Challenges Google on Privacy (With a Billboard in San Francisco)

#113

Post by thiago907 » Thu, Jan 20, 2011, 5:20 AM UTC

well googlesharing.net (by moxie marlinspike) prevent google from tracking your searches... its a ff addon if im not mistaken

Re: DuckDuckGo Challenges Google on Privacy (With a Billboard in San Francisco)

#114

Post by Matt_Cutts » Thu, Jan 20, 2011, 5:21 AM UTC

samstokes wrote: post #82

I'm surprised he's only paying $7000 to put up a massive billboard next to a major consumer route for a month. I'm sure billboard advertising doesn't have great conversion rates, but I still imagined that would cost more. Anyone care to comment on their experiences with billboard ads?

Consumer Watchdog paid to put their message up on a Jumbotron in Times Square: http://blogs.forbes.com/oliverchiang/2010/09/02/consumer-wat...

That article says they paid $25000 for their cartoon that tried to make Eric Schmidt look creepy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ouof1OzhL8k

Re: DuckDuckGo Challenges Google on Privacy (With a Billboard in San Francisco)

#115

Post by onwardly » Thu, Jan 20, 2011, 5:21 AM UTC

peteforde wrote: post #67

I'm all for a good story, and the one-man DDG going up against Google is certainly a great one. However, considering the number of armchair business analysts on HN I'm shocked that nobody seems to call out Gabriel for appearing to fall into a cliched trap: "we don't track you" isn't a product, it's a feature. I genuinely wonder what DDG would do if Google simply addressed all of their referrer privacy issues. Then wh…

I'm assuming the goal of this billboard was to attract attention to DuckDuckGo, not to live up to the marketing "cliche traps" you mention. By attacking Google on Google's turf, not only will he put himself in front of a lot of influencers, but also was able to make the billboard itself a news item.

If the billboard had said "Find what you need faster" (a benefit of special search syntax), it wouldn't be a story. But this billboard is a story.

P.S. Kind of reminds me of when the local KFC put an ad on the billboard that towered over the local Boston Market. It said: "They don't know beans about chicken in Boston." (This was in SC, btw.)

Re: DuckDuckGo Challenges Google on Privacy (With a Billboard in San Francisco)

#116

Post by ezalor » Thu, Jan 20, 2011, 5:24 AM UTC

jarek wrote: post #108

dauphin wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open an English dictionary (the Oxford one if you're serious), and come back. Note my fault if tbl didn't know how to speak English corectly backed then.

Surely whether or not the RFC's authors know how to spell a word has no bearing on how sensible it is to correct the spelling of "HTTP_REFERER"? I mean, if dools had said "HTTP referer" then you might have had a point, but "HTTP_REFERER" unambiguously refers to the name of the header field.

No need to be pedant dude.

Re: DuckDuckGo Challenges Google on Privacy (With a Billboard in San Francisco)

#117

Post by mahmud » Thu, Jan 20, 2011, 5:27 AM UTC

dschobel wrote: post #107

mahmud wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the whole privacy on search thing really a big issue? Yes it is, if you're a political activist. Both Yahoo and Google have a proven history spying on people on behalf of government.

"spying on people" is a really unfair way to describe what happens when you voluntarily share your information with a third party who is in turn subpoenaed. You should be taking issue with the governments demanding the records rather than expecting these companies to break the law on your behalf.

Where do you draw the line? what governments is google allowed to hand over information to vs which ones it can deny?

Re: DuckDuckGo Challenges Google on Privacy (With a Billboard in San Francisco)

#118

Post by anti-pedo » Thu, Jan 20, 2011, 5:28 AM UTC

endtime wrote: post #112

dauphin wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pedophilia is illegal in most countries, I'd be happy if ad networks gather data about your interest on young boys and pass it to the feds! Beasts! Edit: judging by the downvotes, I guess a good bunch of hackers like to live in atrocity!

I think the downvotes are because you're missing the point so hard that they're assuming you must be trolling.

OK thanks for the precision.

I might not have the right kind of "humour" for this place. I might not like Jason Bieber's music, but I sure don't want to harm him neither...

Btw, repeat after me: trolls do not exist (the Harry Potter books get it wrong). See: http://bit.ly/gaIrQQ

Re: DuckDuckGo Challenges Google on Privacy (With a Billboard in San Francisco)

#119

Post by awakeasleep » Thu, Jan 20, 2011, 5:29 AM UTC

dschobel wrote: post #107

mahmud wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the whole privacy on search thing really a big issue? Yes it is, if you're a political activist. Both Yahoo and Google have a proven history spying on people on behalf of government.

"spying on people" is a really unfair way to describe what happens when you voluntarily share your information with a third party who is in turn subpoenaed. You should be taking issue with the governments demanding the records rather than expecting these companies to break the law on your behalf.

Few spies self-identify as someone who hurts innocent people. They think of themselves as supporting their family while helping their government or something.

Don't focus on what nouns different parts of the spying apparatus choose to label themselves with, or what other functions they serve. Instead, consider their effects in the context of being a spying apparatus.

Re: DuckDuckGo Challenges Google on Privacy (With a Billboard in San Francisco)

#120

Post by jdp23 » Thu, Jan 20, 2011, 5:32 AM UTC

truebosko wrote: post #6

Is the whole privacy on search thing really a big issue? I, for one, want Google to be all Orwellian on me because it will mean better search results. I had a scenario like this a few days ago when I googled for "fabric" -- Being a Python developer I was looking for http://fabfile.org and it shows up as the second result while logged in. If I'm not, it won't show up. This may be the outlier state of mind on HN, but I…

i don't think it's an outlier state of mind at all ... in fact at this stage the majority of people in the US aren't concerned about search privacy.

but, y'know, DuckDuckGo doesn't have to get the majority of people. with their incredibly low costs, if they can get their search market share to even 1%, they can be hugely profitable. and there are at least that many people who care.