What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017) • Hacker News Board

Re: What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)

#191

Post by wolfgang42 » Thu, May 28, 2020, 6:13 PM UTC

worble wrote: post #115

magicalhippo wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but it's kinda annoying having to turn it on and off, as it remembers and I keep forgetting what I used last. If I'm searching for programming stuff or similar, I want it off. If I'm searching for shops that sells bricks for my new wall, I want local results. I've also noticed that even with it on, the "local" indexing is distinctly significantly worse than Google. That is, Google is much, much better at findi…

> If I'm searching for programming stuff or similar, I want it off. If I'm searching for shops that sells bricks for my new wall, I want local results. In all fairness, how exactly do you expect DDG to know what you want from this, without doing some sketchy privacy invasive scanning of your search? If you really want a company to scan your every search and then tailor the results specifically, then by all means use…

> how exactly do you expect DDG to know what you want from this

The obvious heuristic is “does this search term frequently appear on local result sites?” For example, “brick suppliers” is a search term associated with websites that have a business address, whereas “python string length” mostly isn’t. The search engine already has to scan your search to know what to send you from the index; it doesn’t require anything more than that to be able to guess at the intent of specific searches.

Re: What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)

#192

Post by zerr » Thu, May 28, 2020, 6:14 PM UTC

MattGaiser wrote: post #14

zerr wrote: post #11

While we are at it - what is the business model for freeware web browsers such as Vivaldi, Firefox, etc... I know they have some deals with MS, Google and friends but how such deals are done? Is it from some personal contacts or do you have to apply officially? What are the particular numbers - is it something you have to negotiate? What is the range in this case? etc...

Mozilla makes a referral fee from search engine searches made with the browser. Their revenue is in the hundreds of millions. https://www.cnet.com/news/google-firefox-search-deal-gives-m...

Yeah, so how one approaches those search engine companies for such deals?

Re: What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)

#193

Post by jpab » Thu, May 28, 2020, 6:25 PM UTC

worble wrote: post #115

magicalhippo wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but it's kinda annoying having to turn it on and off, as it remembers and I keep forgetting what I used last. If I'm searching for programming stuff or similar, I want it off. If I'm searching for shops that sells bricks for my new wall, I want local results. I've also noticed that even with it on, the "local" indexing is distinctly significantly worse than Google. That is, Google is much, much better at findi…

> If I'm searching for programming stuff or similar, I want it off. If I'm searching for shops that sells bricks for my new wall, I want local results. In all fairness, how exactly do you expect DDG to know what you want from this, without doing some sketchy privacy invasive scanning of your search? If you really want a company to scan your every search and then tailor the results specifically, then by all means use…

I posit that whether a search should be "local" or "global" is much more a factor of what is being searched for than who is searching. If I search for a barber I want local results, and I expect that that would be true for most people. If I search for a weird error message I saw while using my computer I want global results, and again I expect that is true for most people.

If true, then DDG could apply the same heuristics about location-sensitivity for everyone's searches and improve the results for everyone, without any tracking of detailed individual preferences.

Re: What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)

#194

Post by blablabla123 » Thu, May 28, 2020, 6:28 PM UTC

seb314 wrote: post #138

baryphonic wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I switched to DDG, I was happier with it than with Google. To me, DDG feels like Google felt ten years ago, before it was infested with "AI." Today, Google search results look more like the invasive shopping mall ads in Minority Report, tailored to what it thinks I'll click on, rather than relevant results based on my query. I only rarely (~once a month) have to use Google search to find something that DDG just…

I'd like to prefer DDG... but recently I noticed what seem to be blind spots on many (maybe less popular?) topics. e.g. I can't find how to setup/configure borgbackup on nixos via ddg for any of ~3-5 query variations I tried. For non-logged-in google with uBlock the relevant documentation is the first hit.

I used to try DDG a few years ago but eventually switched back to Google as default. Now I have it again as default since a year. Not sure when or how it happened but since a few months, I almost exclusively use DDG, switching to Google maybe once a week. Indeed that's then usually for niche topics. On the other hand I think my search and surfing behaviour also changed. I'm starting to rely more on Bookmarks again; also I'm actually reading websites again and browse through them instead of just CTRL+F-skimming through them...

Re: What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)

#195

Post by SAI_Peregrinus » Thu, May 28, 2020, 6:57 PM UTC

JTon wrote: post #149

lostlogin wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I switched to DDG, I was happier with it than with Google. I regularly do !g, but I think the thing that is reducing that fastest is the declining quality of Google results. If I search for ‘x, y and z’, I then see a load of results with small text underneath saying ‘include z?’. It drives me demented, why wouldn’t I want to include my search terms?

> It drives me demented, why wouldn’t I want to include my search terms? Well, I think the answer to your question is Google is trying to be friendly to the layman. It's not hard to think of examples where the user inputs a something into the search box that a CS major knows will not result in the implied wants of the user. Google tries to do a lot of human to machine translation work, and I think you're seeing the r…

Google no longer fully respects quotations. It will still attempt to "correct" the quoted text, and may ignore some terms from it.

Re: What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)

#196

Post by chris_f » Thu, May 28, 2020, 6:58 PM UTC

bmn__ wrote: post #190

chris_f wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the poster, but here is an example. Elsewhere in this thread I posted a fact that I knew, but wanted to double check. It was about the LexisNexis news database containing 35k sources. Here are the queries for "lexis news 35000" on Google and DDG: https://www.google.com/search?q=lexis%20news%2035000 https://duckduckgo.com/?q=lexis+news+35000&ia=web The information I was looking for is in the first Google results.…

You are mistaken in assessing the situation, this has nothing to do with results, but with query composition. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=lexisnexis+35000+news+sources You have trained Google to recognise Lexis as an alias for LexisNexis. DDG does not offer that, so one has to spell it out explicitly. You have to decide whether it's acceptable for you to change habits back to the common ground for Web searching. The va…

You have trained Google to recognise Lexis as an alias for LexisNexis.

I disagree completely. Google knows Lexis is an alias for LexisNexis, but I did not train it from an individual level filter bubble perspective.

Look at the below results. They are sourced from Google but proxied so that Google doesn't get any information on the end user. The firsts result should be one that provides the relevant article I was initially looking for. [0]

https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=lexis+news+35000

Just one final point. Half the results on the DDG page for initial "Lexis" search I ran are for the car company "Lexus". So let's not pretend that DDG is respecting user search queries.

[0] http://www.lexisnexis.com.sg/en-sg/products/nexis.page

Re: What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)

#197

Post by SAI_Peregrinus » Thu, May 28, 2020, 6:59 PM UTC

ravenstine wrote: post #172

lostlogin wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I switched to DDG, I was happier with it than with Google. I regularly do !g, but I think the thing that is reducing that fastest is the declining quality of Google results. If I search for ‘x, y and z’, I then see a load of results with small text underneath saying ‘include z?’. It drives me demented, why wouldn’t I want to include my search terms?

Not to delegitemize your use of `!g`, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who never needs to use that, and if that's true, I think we need to hear more from the people who are perfectly happy with DDG by itself. Who else here doesn't use !g?

I'm sure I used it once when I was trying out the bang commands. After that, I don't think I have. It just hasn't been necessary to find what I need.

Re: What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)

#198

Post by treebornfrog » Thu, May 28, 2020, 7:04 PM UTC

From the article: "Alarmingly, Google now deploys hidden trackers on 76% of websites across the web to monitor your behavior"

Its not Google that deploys these, it's webmasters who want free Google analytics. Big difference.

Re: What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)

#199

Post by DarkWiiPlayer » Thu, May 28, 2020, 7:16 PM UTC

cercatrova wrote: post #128

DarkWiiPlayer wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did that a lot, but honestly, these days I find google unusable. The add section at the top seems to be steadily creeping down, replacing more and more actual search results; googles attempt to remove URLs from the web annoys me to no end because I often go by URI more than by title and the fact that DDG has the sites favicon next to the URI oh boy that's a useful feature. In fact, I'd say favicons are what I go for…

Interesting, I don't think I've seen an ad on Google (or anywhere, really) in years. I've been using uBlock Origin on desktop and mobile (Kiwi Browser on Android, as well as AdGuard).

I only have uMatrix, which blocks most annoying iframe ads, but doesn't target things like googles ad results which are part of the page itself. Googles ads are actually quite nice in that they aren't flashy images, but they do appear like normal search results. It's the same for DDG, but there the ads have a big "AD" in a box behind the title; meanwhile in google it's way harder to visually parse what you want to click on.

Re: What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)

#200

Post by qchris » Thu, May 28, 2020, 7:22 PM UTC

bla3 wrote: post #188

jamespullar wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The page I linked above doesn't mention DuckDuckHack. Are you quoting that from a different source? It does mention DuckDuckBot which is their own web crawler. https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/du...

Hey cool, then that page changed recently. I hadn't heard of duckduckbot, that's exciting!

Same! I knew about duckduckhack, but that it had been put in "maintenance mode" a couple years ago, but wasn't aware that DDG had started operating their own crawler. It's exciting to see--I'm hopeful they'll be able to leverage it to improve their result quality and capabilities while staying privacy-friendly.