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DuckDuckGo Is Giving Away $225,000 To Support Open Source Projects (businessinsider.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the share-the-love dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Google Search competitor DuckDuckGo announced it will be giving away a total of $225,000 to support nine open source projects, each project will receive $25,000. DuckDuckGo said it performed 3 billion searches in 2015. It differs from many other search engines as it offers private, anonymous internet search. It doesn't gather information about you to sell ads to marketeers, like Google. Instead, it shows generic ads as it's part of the Microsoft/Bing/Yahoo ad network. It also has revenue-sharing agreements with certain companies in the Linux Open Source worlds, and makes money from select affiliate links. The $225,000 DuckDuckGo is giving away is chump change compared to the $100 million Google gives away in grants ever year. However, for the select projects, it should still be very beneficial. Last year, DuckDuckGo gave away a total of $125,000 to open source projects, so it's nice to see them donate an extra $100,000 to a good cause.

62 comments

  1. Open sores is for cows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    You are all copy and paste cows. You say Mooo. Moooo. Moooo! Mooo cows Mooo! Moooo say the cows. YOU CHEATING OPEN SORES COWS!!!

    1. Re: Open sores is for cows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Buddy! Where have you been?

    2. Re: Open sores is for cows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      OP is kinda like an angry Donald Trump cow poster.

    3. Re: Open sores is for cows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      You are all ducks. Quack. Quack say the ducks. You ducky-go ducks.

  2. But are their search results as good? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Bing and Yahoo don't seem to offer the same quality of results so I wonder about Duckie?

    1. Re:But are their search results as good? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It's not Google, but they've improved tremendously just over the past year. It's probably very close to Bing at this point.

    2. Re:But are their search results as good? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's not google, but I 0nly fall back to them maybe once every few weeks. Their image and video search really suck though.

    3. Re:But are their search results as good? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They are an excellent way to search a specific site. More general searches, not so much.

    4. Re:But are their search results as good? by tgv · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Depends. For generic, English searches, it works. For specialized technical searches or other languages, I still have to go back to Google from time to time.

    5. Re:But are their search results as good? by Barefoot+Monkey · · Score: 3, Informative

      Duckie should be roughly similar to Bing, since that's where it draws its search results. There might be some differences due to the fact that DuckDuckGo prevents Bing from tracking you, which limits how much the search results can be customised for you.

      Give it a try - I hear that it works well (Bing has improved immensely since it first appeared). If you aren't happy with the results and prefer Google's, but still want to avoid being tracked, then try using StartPage. It's an anonymous search engine, like DuckDuckGo, but it uses Google to generate search results, which I find to be better.

    6. Re:But are their search results as good? by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      I've been using DDG as my primary search engine for a few years. If you stick !google or !bing into the search form, it will redirect you to them for the search, so if I don't find something then I try the other two. It's been at least two years since doing this actually found something useful. Yesterday I had the converse experience of a colleague complaining that something I'd suggested that he read (the Symbian kernel internals book, out of print but now available online) was hard to find - he'd searched using Google, which only had stale references to developer.symbian.com, which no longer exists. I'd found it as the second hit with DDG.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    7. Re:But are their search results as good? by Dins · · Score: 1

      Their image and video search really suck though.

      I disagree. I think their image and video searched have improved dramatically over the last year or two to the point where I never use Google anymore for image/video searches. YMMV

      I too only end up using Google for something maybe once every couple weeks. Duck Duck Go is the shit...

    8. Re:But are their search results as good? by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      something I'd suggested that he read (the Symbian kernel internals book, out of print but now available online)

      What a coincidence - I used to hang around with archaeologists too.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    9. Re:But are their search results as good? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Huh, I wasn't even aware they have an image search. It's not shown on the 'lite' interface I use.

      How do you trigger it from https://duckduckgo.com/lite/?

    10. Re:But are their search results as good? by fbobraga · · Score: 1

      thanks: I used DDG because I didn't know this https://startpage.com/ ^^

    11. Re:But are their search results as good? by zixxt · · Score: 1

      Yes! Startpage and Ixquick are so much better than DDG in terms of privacy and search results, it a shame that somehow DDG got all the attention over them.

      --
      ---- GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
    12. Re:But are their search results as good? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They don't rely on Bing exclusively, they have other sources as well as their own crawler.

    13. Re:But are their search results as good? by yuvcifjt · · Score: 0

      Because ixquick isn't really a search engine as it relies on google/bing/etc.

      And ddg are somewhat open source and customisable, especially their instant answers.

      I haven't used google for over 5 years now...
      I first switched to bing for 2 years, and then tried (but disliked) ixquick, until I discovered and fell in love with duckduckgo.

    14. Re:But are their search results as good? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Can you please expand, how are those better in terms of privacy?

    15. Re:But are their search results as good? by DrVxD · · Score: 1

      What a coincidence - I used to hang around with archaeologists too.

      I guess that makes me a dinosaur - I used to work at Symbian...

      --
      Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
  3. Google is useful, not fundamental. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    Starting by coca-coling it's gay side already to retain market. Bing and Yahoo is winning market again. yay! :D

  4. Cynic by liqu1d · · Score: 1

    All the "free" marketting doesn't hurt either.

  5. Wow, Google is the sparse one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A bake-off using the duck meme:

    DuckDuckGo

    Bing

    Google

  6. Money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Question is, where are they getting all this money?

    1. Re: Money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Selling your data on the down-low?

    2. Re:Money by JackAxe · · Score: 1

      Without looking into it, the generic adds it shows?

    3. Re: Money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      they have ads, but i suspect the average user of ddg is more inclined to have an adblocker than the average flock-following user of google or huh-i-can-change-the-default? bing user.

      more importantly.. we don't really know who or what ddg is... who backs it, and whether or not they're in bed with various 3 and 4 letter acronyms.

      and finally, do we really know ddg founder gabriel weinberg? can we really, truly trust someone who made his millions by collecting and then profiting off personal information of others? (optobox/names database sold to classmates.com in '06)

    4. Re: Money by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 0

      they have ads, but i suspect the average user of ddg is more inclined to have an adblocker than the average flock-following user of google or huh-i-can-change-the-default? bing user.

      I have DuckDuckGo white listed - so I see their adverts.

      --
      #DeleteChrome
    5. Re:Money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      Without looking into it, the generic adds it shows?

      Huh? It adds generics?

    6. Re:Money by Merk42 · · Score: 1

      Out of thin air like all the ideal paywall-less ad-free sites I expect the internet to be.

    7. Re: Money by Dins · · Score: 1

      Same here. It's one of the only, if not the only site I actually have white listed so I see their ads.

    8. Re:Money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      From advertising, actually. Self-hosted, clearly marked, non-disruptive, non-tracking, contextual, text-only ads that don't install malware. The kind of ads that don't get blocked by people who usually block ads, and the actual ideal of the people you're attempting to mock.

    9. Re: Money by yuvcifjt · · Score: 0

      Me three, I have duckduckgo whitelisted on my laptop/pc and my relatives computers.

      Their ads are clear and unintrusive, and I make it a point to sometimes click on them, just to help ddg.

    10. Re:Money by yuvcifjt · · Score: 0

      Exactly!

      Because their ads don't track me, I have ddg whitelisted and sometimes help them out by clicking the ads.

    11. Re:Money by DrVxD · · Score: 1

      Huh? It adds generics?

      Only sum of the time

      --
      Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
    12. Re: Money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      PROBABLY, got the patoot beat out of him, which perhaps caused a 2nd. Thought of humm? Maybe there is where I really make my money.!?.since privacy has high priority rates with most individuals.

  7. NTP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    http://www.informationweek.com/cloud/infrastructure-as-a-service/ntp-needs-money-is-a-foundation-the-answer/d/d-id/1319557

    1. Re:NTP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Quite often the 'standard' implementation is not the best one. Try OpenNTPD. It's better.

  8. I don't DO "Open 'sores'" w/ good reason... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    See subject: & "When the solution is simple God is answering" & as "The Lord of hosts" so-to-speak that I'd win that on the basis of what I said having designed something that gives anyone more speed, security, reliability, + even a bit of anonymity for nothing that's proven safe & "110% bulletproof & bug free" too -> http://www.bing.com/search?q=%...

    * :)

    (I invite you all to do the same...)

    DO YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE AS TO WHY I DON'T LIKE OPEN "SORES" or, isn't THIS good enough (Hi Google, "our /. sponsor"... yes, I'm calling out your "BEST & BRIGHTEST" PhD lol, on hosts... lol!) right here boys http://it.slashdot.org/story/1...

    You damn well KNOW it is... the hard way. That? Is just NOT for me - I'm more about finding the shortest path between A &C minus B (like adding on 'MoAr' to do less) - a refresher on that note? See 1st link...

    APK

    P.S.=> As to all /.'ers? Show me YOU can do better (please, by all means) - or, don't you believe in yourselves, given time & effort? apk

    1. Re:I don't DO "Open 'sores'" w/ good reason... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Can anybody translate this for me? I have the vaguest hope that there may be some actual value embedded here. But I sure can't divine what's being said.

      Am I off base? Not clued to the lingo? Or are these just the ranting of a loon, or the random text generation of an out of date bot?

    2. Re:I don't DO "Open 'sores'" w/ good reason... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Agreed, his babbling is undecipherable. But from what I've read on this page, the main consensus is that his tool is just outright useless.

    3. Re:I don't DO "Open 'sores'" w/ good reason... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Who the hell is this "APK" and why is this tool sending me e-mails???

  9. Here's the list of recipients by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Since it wasn't in the article, here's a list of recipients.

    • Freedom of the Press Foundation for SecureDrop
    • Freenet Project
    • OpenBSD Foundation
    • CrypTech Project
    • Tor Project for onion services
    • Fight for the Future for Save Security
    • Open Source Technology Improvement Fund for VeraCrypt
    • Riseup Labs for LEAP
    • GPGTools for GPGMail
    1. Re:Here's the list of recipients by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thanks, terrible article. DDG isn't my favorite search but it isn't nearly as jarring as when a Firefox install comes up with Yahoo. Google is still king but I'm glad these other options exist. I like startpage.com's format of results more the DDG tho.

      I'm wondering how they are making money? They're providing free search without advertising so how do they keep their lights on? Does their funding sources influence their mission? and do these gifts have any strings attached? In the sort of way like "Hey we gave you a bunch of $$$ and we think you should prioritize this encryption algorithm over some other one"...

    2. Re:Here's the list of recipients by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They do have advertising. It's just not targeted ads.

    3. Re:Here's the list of recipients by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      They do have targeted advertising, but it's targeted at the search term, not at some profile of you. They're the same sorts of ads Google used to show, back when I ever saw ads from Google that were vaguely relevant to something I wanted. They don't record information about you and they work to ensure that things like referrer headers aren't sent to other sites leaking information about your searches. They do use cookies if you modify settings, but the cookies only include your settings (you can inspect them and see that you get the same cookies from the same settings on different machines. Not sure if they still do, but they also used to define what the cookies mean so that you could construct your own if you wanted).

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  10. How to fix crowd funding: Success Criteria by shanen · · Score: 0

    I like the basic idea of crowd funding, but ALL of the websites I've examined so far have been more or less terrible. The more "successful" are more like lotteries than anything else. Clear success criteria are needed (and the same model could be applied to slashdot, too).

    Before I want to donate my hard earned money I think the project proposal needs to be quite complete. It should have a budget and a schedule. Neither has to be perfect, but they have to be realistic at minimum. Required resources including the people need to be described, and I even think the serious contributors should be guaranteed some compensation from the budget (though discounted from the top market rate in exchange for the freedom of choosing to do the work). The project proposal needs a good sanity check to make sure nothing crucial is important, with sufficient testing being the most frequent omission in software-related projects. Most importantly to my way of thinking there should be clear success criteria so the donors will know what success looks like.

    Sounds like preparing the project is a lot of work, but there has to be some planning for good results. However, the up-front work also justifies a commission for the agent (I think of the agent as a "charity share brokerage") who helps make sure it gets done properly and who also evaluates the finished project and reports on the results to the donors and the world. Hopefully the donors are going to find out how much good they've accomplished so they can be motived to donate to future projects.

    Too busy to write more just now, but lots of details available upon request, or even more interested to hear your suggested improvements.

    --
    Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
    1. Re:How to fix crowd funding: Success Criteria by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      i think you were too busy to read even the summary... but thanks for your non-sequitur on kickstarter!

  11. I want... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    $20 million dollars. I'm a very good cause. And notably make more.

  12. I have no idea why by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... people love this search engine so much. Google absolutely destroys it when comes to being able to actually find things.

    If I want to actually find what I'm looking for, I use Google (well, StartPage) so that I can rely on the top 3 results instead of having to dig through 50 off topic hits first.

    1. Re:I have no idea why by yuvcifjt · · Score: 0

      Because duckduckgo don't bubble you and track you.
      They are also popular because you can hack the code.

      I haven't used google for over 5 years, and I particularly love ddg's instant answers and the fact they utilise OpenStreetMap and Wolfram Alpha, Wikipedia, etc.

  13. Donation sum by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Last year, DuckDuckGo gave away a total of $125,000 to open source projects, so it's nice to see them donate an extra $100,000 to a good cause."

    The way I see it, they gave away $225,000. So how did it end up as extra $100,000?

  14. are their servers... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...still in Russia? I wouldn't expect any privacy from Putin's cyber-thugs.

    1. Re:are their servers... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I caught myself in thinking the same about about another website the other day. Then I realized I'm comparing Russia to the United States. How could anyone be any more intrusive and untrustworthy than the United States when it comes data.

  15. Bwaaahahahaha Arstechnica... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I WIPED ARSTECHNICA's 'best & brightest' (weak) OUT easily in 2003-2006 @ Windows IT Pro easily - Jeremy Reimer got his website removed by Shaw of Canada his ISP & hosting provider + he was put on a tracking ticket by them for email harassment... his "henchman" Jay Little said "I am an EXPERT on Exchange" which much to his dismay worked against him @ "The Memory Optimization Hoax" where I proved to them AND Dr. Mark Russinovich (former "co-worker" of mine @ Sunbelt where we retailed our wares there & he bitched I outsold his work, awww) that that technology unhalted & sped up frozen Exchange Servers USING MICROSOFT'S OWN DOCUMENTATION TO DO IT (clearmem.exe is the same tech, but not GUI, & I designed the 1st program of that nature in GUI no less).

    Jay Little then trolled & stalked me to other websites where I annihilated him on ramdrives as well - he was banned + had his website @ CrystalTech removed by that hosting provider for libeling me.

    FOOLS... you're the same kind of scum, trolling me by unidentfiable ac posts, but you're just as easy to dispatch with truth & facts.

    APK

    P.S.=> Bad move bringing up the DOLTS of Arstechnica - all they can do is "gossip" like old biddies behind my back, BUT OUTSIDE THEIR "PRIVATE PLAYPEN"? The results are QUITE different, see above, lol... apk

  16. Bite Google by Cornwallis · · Score: 1

    " The $225,000 DuckDuckGo is giving away is chump change compared to the $100 million Google gives away in grants ever year."

    Well fuck you too. DuckDuckGo doesn't require you to sell your soul as Google requires.

    1. Re:Bite Google by invalid_user · · Score: 1

      I am with the devil Google. Oooo, so scary. Goooogggllleeeee. I am here to take your soooooul....

      Grow up.

  17. Only unidentifiable ac trolls & no results? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject boys: Is that "the best ya got?" Yes. My reasons for NOT open 'sores'ing' my code was from GOOGLE no less who isn't able to prove ME wrong either... lol!

    * HUGE mistake that Google... huge!

    APK

    P.S.=> It's NOT easy being "world-class" (like me) & impossible to prove me wrong on hosts boys - your lack of results here proves it for me... apk

  18. Good to see.. by slashrio · · Score: 1

    ..that they're doing fine.

    --
    "Trump!!", the new Godwin.
  19. Still kinda sucks compared to Google by melted · · Score: 1

    But that's expected, since it's basically a nerd friendly front end for Bing.

    1. Re:Still kinda sucks compared to Google by yuvcifjt · · Score: 0

      Don't knock it until you try it.

      I haven't used google for over 5 years now, possibly longer.

  20. Where does that money come from?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    These pseudo-privacy-friendy search engine companies cause me grave concern. There are very few of them (DuckDuckGo, Disconnect.me, Startpage) and all promise something entirely unverifiable: where it the source code to their search engines? Even more concerning: where on earth did DuckDuckGo get all of that money if not from ad revenue and selling user search information?

    The only positive advance can come from decentralizing search, but in the meantime there are Searx instances where at least the source code is available to all under the Affero GPLv3+ license, which is the only decent license for software that users access through a network. "Cloud computing" is a terrible name for this. It is using software executing on someone else's computer: that is essentially what so-called "Web apps" are, and AGPLv3+ protects the deserved liberties of users in a global internetworked world.

    Now the benefit of Searx is the fact that anyone can run an instance of it, so we can choose where we proxy out from, but it still is merely a centralised glorified proxy to Google/Bing/Yahoo/etc. It does however have one of the best user interface and features of any search engine I have ever used.

    There is an instance in the USA that is perhaps most popular:

    http://searx.me/

    And one in France from La Quadrature du Net (and associated Onion hidden service):

    http://searx.laquadrature.net/
    http://searchb5a7tmimez.onion/

    And here is another Searx hidden service instance, no idea which country it is in:

    http://ry2yhmjtylb6vtta.onion/

    If one wants any decent level of anonymity, stop accessing search engines running non-free software and stop sending clearnet DNS requests and use an .onion Searx instance. Only then can one begin to have even an iota of defense searching the web.