DuckDuckGo - Is Google Playing Fair?

Penurious Penguin writes "Privacy-oriented search-engine and Google-rival DuckDuckGo is contending possible anti-competitiveness on the part of Google. MIT graduate and founder of DuckDuckGo Gabriel Weinberg cites several examples; his company's disadvantages in the Android mobile OS; and browsers, which in Firefox requires only a single step to set DuckDuckGo as the default search — while doing so in Chrome requires five. Weinberg also questions the domain duck.com, which he offered to purchase before it was acquired by Google. His offer was declined and duck.com now directs to Google's homepage. Weinberg isn't the first to make similar claims; there was scroogle.org, which earlier this year, permanently shut down after repeated compatibility issues with Google's algorithms. Whatever the legitimacy of these claims, there certainly seems a growing market for people interested in privacy and objective searches — avoiding profiled search-results, a.k.a. 'filter bubbles.'"

Comments

Nobody plays fair

[overmoderated]

It's all about numbers, shares, dollars and control of data.

Re:Nobody plays fair

[poetmatt]

which is why DuckDuckGo, a so called "privacy oriented browser", uses bing for it's underlying searches. Any time you hear "anticompetitive search", it's 100% microsoft/fairsearch funded. It's not even remotely about privacy or security as a result of that. Anyone who believes duckduckgo is about your privacy when bing has your information, is misinformed.

if you wanted privacy in your search, use a multi-search engine and get real results the way you want. It's that simple, and they do exist. To act like people are somehow " at a loss" when they can go to any website they want to search is to fail to acknowledge that bing is a horrible search engine.

TLDR: anti-google (and pro-microsoft) article.

Re:Nobody plays fair

[Anonymous Coward]

Adding a search engine isn't "one click", you need to go to "manage search engines", scroll to the bottom, click "get more search engines", search for one, click "add to firefox", "allow", and then select it from the search menu. The effort in Chrome is roughly the same.

This is a fraudulent, astroturfed complaint.

Re:Nobody plays fair

[CastrTroy]

Actually, just tested with Chrome. It's trivally easy. Once you've done a single search with DDG, it shows up in a list of "Alternative Search Engines" Try it right now. Do a search on DDG. Then go to settings. Under the search section, Click on Manage Search Engines, Look for DDG in the "Other Search Engines" section, and click on "Make Default". That's pretty simple. I mean, they could include DDG in their default list, but then WebCrawler, or AltaVista, or a multitude of other search engines would probably complain as well. If you've already done a search on DDG, it's the exact same number of clicks. "Wrench", Options, Manage Search Engines, Make Default. VS. Wrench", Options, Drop Down Box, Bing/Yahoo/Chrome.

Re:Nobody plays fair

[MysteriousPreacher]

which is why DuckDuckGo, a so called "privacy oriented browser", uses bing for it's underlying searches. Any time you hear "anticompetitive search", it's 100% microsoft/fairsearch funded. It's not even remotely about privacy or security as a result of that. Anyone who believes duckduckgo is about your privacy when bing has your information, is misinformed.

Are you sure you're understanding how the site works?
Standard searches made via DuckDuckGo will not result in you personally being tracked by the underlying search engines. This is because your client isn't making direct contact with the underlying search engines - DuckDuckGo is collating the results together and presenting them. In that context, what you're saying is that buying a can of Heinz Beans from a supermarket results in Heinz tracking me - even though I have no direct contact with them (and assuming the supermarket isn't passing on personally identifying purchaser information to Heinz).

There's no Bing/Google tracking happening here:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=test%20search

Using a bang (such as !bing or !image) is where tracking can kick in because at that point you're most likely hitting a source site. This is comparable to ordering beans directly from Heinz.

This link would result in tracking from bing:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=!bing+test+search

DuckDuckGo is a multi-search engine. You're only making contact with the underlying search providers when you choose to, and at that point it's pretty clear because you're seeing a Google/Bing page.

Re:Nobody plays fair

[__aaqvdr516]

Duckduckgo isn't a browser, it's a search engine. It doesn't just use Bing. It pulls from over 50 different sources for search results

From http://www.pcworld.com/article/245129/are_duckduckgos_bing_ties_a_problem_for_linux_mint_.html

It is true that DuckDuckGo bases its results in part on those from Bing, according to an explanation on its support center. DuckDuckGo actually draws its results from more than 50 sources, it says, including also Yahoo, BOSS, embed.ly, WolframAlpha, EntireWeb, Blekko, and its own crawler.

Bing doesn't get your information. Duckduckgo is an intermediary in the process and duckduckgo doesn't store your information.

It's time to take off that tinfoil hat and start wrapping the house instead.

Re:Nobody plays fair

[koxkoxkox]

No, when you are on www.duckduckgo.com, you show the list of search engines by clicking the small arrow, you see "Add DuckDuckGo" at the bottom, you click it and you are done. Admittedly, that's two clicks.

Re:Nobody plays fair

[jensend]

DuckDuckGo has made a whole host of guarantees that they will never track you, collect personal info, etc. They've built their entire brand around these guarantees. (Their billboard slogan is "Google tracks you. We don't.") You don't have to simply trust their goodwill; their self-interest will enforce this too. If they broke their guarantees, their company would lose its reputation very quickly, their brand would soon be worthless, and they'd likely be vulnerable to a host of lawsuits.

Google, on the other hand, freely admits that they do collect and use such information. You have to read the fine print and look around to get a better idea about how they plan to use that info, and they won't tell you at all about the unintended ways this info gets used (here's DuckDuckGo's page about that).

I call bullshit

[LF11]

DuckDuckGo can sod off, in my opinion. My one experience with DDG results from their inclusion as the default search engine in Linux Mint. 1) Their search results are crap. 2) Trying to replace them with Google as the default search provider was CRAZY DIFFICULT. I don't want to hear about how hard it is to change default search providers to DDG, because changing back was a non-trivial task for me.

There is a market for a not-Google. Just like there is a market for a not-Facebook. But just like recent U.S. elections proved, being a "not-something" is not necessarily enough to gain market share. You have to be better, or at least perceived as being better. DDG is not, at least not in my experience, and whining in public is certainly not helping.

cej102937

the domain name story seems like a stretch

[Trepidity]

What seems more likely:

1) He offered to buy duck.com from On2 Technologies (which was originally named The Duck Corporation), but they held out for more than he was willing to offer. It's an obviously valuable domain name so this doesn't require some kind of secret agreement with Google: maybe they just thought they could get more than he was offering for it.

2) Sometime later, Google bought On2 for their codec (VP8, on which WebM was based). Of course this means they got all their other assets too, like their old domain name. Typical Google practice is to redirect acquired domain names to google.com, or to a specific product page on google.com if relevant. Considering that Google is very interested in codecs, it seems rather unlikely that Google really bought On2 for the domain name.

Re:Well, I use duckduckgo

[Trepidity]

They didn't specifically purchase duck.com, though. They bought On2 Technologies, formerly known as The Duck Corporation, in order to acquire the VP8 codec, which became WebM, and got all the rest of On2's assets as part of the package. It seems unlikely that the real point of the purchase was to acquire duck.com, considering that VP8 is actually pretty important to them.

Re:Well, I use duckduckgo

[i kan reed]

Since July 2, 1890. You shouldn't ask rhetorical questions that have actual answers.

This free thing I got isn't good enough...

[cardpuncher]

Some time back in Britain, a bank marketing genius decided that the way to get new customers was to get rid of the old charging model and offer "free" banking. It was such a brilliant wheeze that all the other banks had to follow suit. However, in order to make a profit, banks were then obliged to slap on a whole new range of exceptional and penal charges in the small print and to give their customers the hard sell for a bunch of other financial products that they didn't need (and for which the banks are now paying billions of pounds in compensation). Everyone is agreed that "free" banking is broken, but nobody can be the first to reinstate charges because their customers will all take a hike.

Search engines are the same. Having "free" search engines is a really crazy idea if you think the end user should have some interest in how the results should be selected and presented. But nobody is ever going to pay to use a search engine while the other(s) is/are still free, even if the results are worse.

So we're stuck with a model in which the selection and presentation of results must of commercial necessity be orchestrated for profit and the more people who see those results the more profit is made.

You can argue about the extent to which the orchestration is fair and transparent - and indeed whether fairness and transparency are adequate counterweights - but as long as someone else is paying the conductor you get no say in the performance.

Re:Not anticompetitive, just stupid name

[geek]

Because "Google" is so much better? "Yahoo!" was a great name? Get the fuck over yourself. Friggin prima donna

You can blame me for duck.com.

[mydots]

I started working at The Duck Corporation (duck.com) in 1996, a few years before it went public as On2 Technologies/The Duck Corporation (on2.com and duck.com), and was working with Google/Duck/On2 until a year and a few months after the acquisition in 2010. At Duck/On2, I was responsibile for everything related to building our networks and maintaining all the hardware, software, servers, domains, networks and a ton of other stuff, you know the typical system administrator job.

Prior to the acquisition, but after going public as On2, we likely didn't sell duck.com because that was still my primary email address and I and a few others still actively used it, and we still kept up a basic website for information about our old and basically no longer supported software; and it was just one of those things still tied to the company with a lot of history as The Duck Corporation, so we decided to keep it. Feel free to blame me, since I always requested that we keep it when we saw the many offers for the domain over the years, mostly in the hundreds to couple of thousand dollar range; and because of my history with the company, I am sure I was a big part of that decision to not sell it.

When Google bought us, I knew I was still going to be there for a while to make sure all our company data, and some specific services that had to stay up, was migrated into their servers. Since we hosted all our own servers with our own hardware and software and they had to ulimately be shut down, I had to get things moved over and still needed to get my duck.com email.

So at that point, since I was still getting a lot of duck.com emails and had my duck.com email address for literally many hundreds of websites, publications, mailing lists, business contacts and other things, since I mainly used duck.com for well over a decade, I wanted to make sure Google's DNS and email was configured to still get duck.com emails. I actually had started trying to switch all my duck.com to google.com, but it was an overwhelming process. I still wonder how much email is still going to my duck.com email address.

I took it upon myself to learn the Google way of configuring their public DNS, email and a bunch of other things because I was nosey and wanted to learn and did learn some really cool and interesting stuff about them while I was there. I made sure the MX record for duck.com was still configured to deliver my email (and a few other email addresses) to my Google email account. Since it was decided to no longer keep the website up, I can't give you a real explanation, but I ended up configuring duck.com websites to point to the google.com main page instead of nothing. So you can go ahead and blame me, but no one at Google specifically told me to point duck.com to their site.

Re:You can blame me for duck.com.

[addie]

And this kind of comment is why I still read Slashdot.

Thanks for the explanation!