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Improving DuckDuckGo

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Re: Improving DuckDuckGo

#21

Post by daveFNbuck »

h1d wrote: post #19
brentadamson wrote: post #4

I run https://jivesearch.com , so I might be biased. The single biggest thing they can do to improve their product is open source everything. They've instead decided to move away from that by freezing their instant answers with no explanation as to if/when they will re-open source them. Makes me question their commitment to privacy and transparency.

Won't open sourcing the code make sites get to cheat their ranking by trying to make it rank logic friendly?

They could open source everything else. I'm pretty sure they don't do their own ranking anyway.

Re: Improving DuckDuckGo

#22

Post by brentadamson »

h1d wrote: post #19
brentadamson wrote: post #4

I run https://jivesearch.com , so I might be biased. The single biggest thing they can do to improve their product is open source everything. They've instead decided to move away from that by freezing their instant answers with no explanation as to if/when they will re-open source them. Makes me question their commitment to privacy and transparency.

Won't open sourcing the code make sites get to cheat their ranking by trying to make it rank logic friendly?

You can make the ranking configurable. Once we get our own index built we will go back to doing this. The way we used to do it was by having a PostgreSQL function that is customizable once you get everything set up...I'm sure there are other ways to do it as well.

Re: Improving DuckDuckGo

#23

Post by rvnx »

h1d wrote: post #19
brentadamson wrote: post #4

I run https://jivesearch.com , so I might be biased. The single biggest thing they can do to improve their product is open source everything. They've instead decided to move away from that by freezing their instant answers with no explanation as to if/when they will re-open source them. Makes me question their commitment to privacy and transparency.

Won't open sourcing the code make sites get to cheat their ranking by trying to make it rank logic friendly?

No because DDG is a frontend to Bing results. The ads are different (DDG shows Yahoo ads, which also shows Bing ads) and Bing shows Bing ads only.

Re: Improving DuckDuckGo

#24

Post by brentadamson »

cpeterso wrote: post #14
brentadamson wrote: post #4

I run https://jivesearch.com , so I might be biased. The single biggest thing they can do to improve their product is open source everything. They've instead decided to move away from that by freezing their instant answers with no explanation as to if/when they will re-open source them. Makes me question their commitment to privacy and transparency.

I just DDG and have found !bang shortcuts that are broken or 404 for weeks. I've tried reporting the problems on their feedback forms or Reddit, but never got any responses. If it was open source, I could have submitted a pull request to fix them. I'm surprised they don't have automatic heartbeat queries with expected results for every bang shortcut, at least.

I had the same issue with them back when I was a user. If you find any broken !bangs at Jive Search feel free to submit a pull request.

Re: Improving DuckDuckGo

#25

Post by phinnaeus »

rvnx wrote: post #23
h1d wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Won't open sourcing the code make sites get to cheat their ranking by trying to make it rank logic friendly?

No because DDG is a frontend to Bing results. The ads are different (DDG shows Yahoo ads, which also shows Bing ads) and Bing shows Bing ads only.

Source?

Re: Improving DuckDuckGo

#26

Post by erikig »

turc1656 wrote: post #15

If anyone from DDG is watching this thread, thank you for your product and your commitment to privacy. As a privacy-conscious individual, I greatly appreciate your work. Is there a way to donate? I know you already monetize your product through ads, but I use an ad-blocker (among other things) because, well, most of the internet does not operate with the same values that you do. Since you aren't making any money off…

They make money off ads (based strictly on the search terms) so they should be just fine.

If you'd like to chip, you can donate to the various privacy initiatives they support here:

https://www.crowdrise.com/duckduckgoprivacychallenge

(and here)

https://duckduckgo.com/donations

Re: Improving DuckDuckGo

#27

Post by nashashmi »

turc1656 wrote: post #15

If anyone from DDG is watching this thread, thank you for your product and your commitment to privacy. As a privacy-conscious individual, I greatly appreciate your work. Is there a way to donate? I know you already monetize your product through ads, but I use an ad-blocker (among other things) because, well, most of the internet does not operate with the same values that you do. Since you aren't making any money off…

White list their page.

Re: Improving DuckDuckGo

#28

Post by GordonS »

kgraves wrote: post #18
sdinsn wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've got to protect their IP somehow.

I much rather trust a product that is open source, which makes me slightly uncomfortable and concerned about DDG.

So let's say they release their source code - how can they possibly prove that their servers are running that same code?

Re: Improving DuckDuckGo

#29

Post by saagarjha »

> All of these requests are all fully encrypted in transit to DuckDuckGo, such that nobody else but us can see them. And like with all other requests to DuckDuckGo, there is no personally identifiable information embedded in them, and we do not store IP addresses associated with them.

They say they don’t Store IPs, but every request presumably has one. So it would be very easy for them to change this if they so wished, at which point their data collection wouldn’t be anonymous. As much as I like DuckDuckGo, I’d really like it if I could trust that they protect my privacy without having to trust them that they are doing so.

Re: Improving DuckDuckGo

#30

Post by [deleted] »

turc1656 wrote: post #15

If anyone from DDG is watching this thread, thank you for your product and your commitment to privacy. As a privacy-conscious individual, I greatly appreciate your work. Is there a way to donate? I know you already monetize your product through ads, but I use an ad-blocker (among other things) because, well, most of the internet does not operate with the same values that you do. Since you aren't making any money off…

[deleted]
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