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Can DuckDuckGo Become the Anti-Google? (marketplace.org)
"Recently, a privacy-oriented search engine called DuckDuckGo raised $10 million from a Canadian pension fund," reports Marketplace.org, saying the privacy-focused search engine is "trying to establish itself as the anti-Google."
An anonymous reader quotes their report:
"So it's like Google, except when you search on it, you're completely anonymous," said Gabriel Weinberg, CEO of the company. The searches are encrypted. The site knows where you are, but only while you're searching, and it doesn't store your personal information. "We serve you the search results and we throw away your personal information...so your IP address and things like that. And we don't actually store any cookies by default. And so when you search on DuckDuckGo, it's like every time you're a new user and we know nothing about you..." Weinberg said about a quarter of Americans have taken some action to protect their privacy, and DuckDuckGo searches have been growing about 50 percent a year.
"We are proud to have a profitable business model that doesn't rely on collecting personal data," the company tweeted in June, and this week they also shared a quote from a Harvard Business Review article that asked "How far can the surveillance economy go?"
"Most consumers are either unaware of the personal info they share online or, quite understandably, unable to determine the cost of sharing it -- if not both."
"We are proud to have a profitable business model that doesn't rely on collecting personal data," the company tweeted in June, and this week they also shared a quote from a Harvard Business Review article that asked "How far can the surveillance economy go?"
"Most consumers are either unaware of the personal info they share online or, quite understandably, unable to determine the cost of sharing it -- if not both."
Link? Never mind, I'll Google it.
And DDG has pretty terrible lag, and the results leave much to be desired. I try to switch to it from time to time and I switch back to Google within a day or so.
and everything seems to be working out well. The one thing that is annoying is the add DuckDuckGo dialog and the Cookie Dialog close each time you start your browser (DuckDuckGo is my home). Wish I could just go in to the options and turn them off for good. Maybe I can but I did not see that during my quickie setup.
;)
Other than that I like it so far!
Just my 2 cents
DuckDuckGo indexes only a few hundred sites, like StackOverflow. Everything else, they pass on to Google or Bing.
Sure, it's anonymous, but it sure as hell can't replace Google - it's little more than an anonymous plugin to Google Search.
Last I checked, DuckDuckGo was powered by Yandex. Has this changed?
Or are we to believe that in Soviet Russia, the search engine doesn't search you?
What's their business model? Where do they get their money?
"We are proud to have a profitable business model that doesn't rely on collecting personal data," - That alone is worth investing in, if you care about that. All you have to do is use it and you have advocated for individual privacy.
There's no easier way to send a message I can think of. And if you care about that, support the EFF also - and test your uniqueness. https://panopticlick.eff.org/
Meet my neighbor. She goes to web sites by typing the URL into the Google search window and pressing Enter.
Suggesting that she switch to DuckDuckGo would be like suggesting to me that I start speaking Urdu.
DDG is mostly a layer on top of Bing. It's great for avoiding tracking, but I don't care about that. I just use Bing directly. It's fast, the results are good, and I don't support Google's censorship of the internet.
I've been using DuckDuckGo for about a year as the search on my main computer. I've found it always gives me good results...i.e. what I'm looking for... It's fast. I've never felt the need to switch to a different search engine.
It does have ads but these are clearly labeled. The ads seem to be targeted to my search terms which is appropriate.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
DuckDuckGo's results are a compilation of "over 400" sources,[45] including Yahoo! Search BOSS; Wikipedia; Wolfram Alpha; Bing; its own Web crawler (the DuckDuckBot); and others.[3][45][46] It also uses data from crowdsourced sites, including Wikipedia, to populate "Zero-click Info" boxes – grey boxes above the results that display topic summaries and related topics.[10]
It's an American business, based in the U.S. That means they're susceptible to government subpoenas and gag-orders, just like any other American business.
When intelligence agencies deliver a court- and gag-order that says they want all searches originating from a particular IP, and youre not allowed to say a word about it, then DuckDuckGo obeys and begins recording the data and hands it over. They are not above American law, and whoever gets the court order either obeys or goes to federal prison, it's just that simple.
You may want to consider switching to startpage.com and select their EU servers in the settings. It's also another anonymous Google-backed search engine, but the EU part makes it a better choice.
bla bla bla it doesn't store your personal information...
Yeah, I gotta bridge for ya
The moment they become statistically noticeable everything changes. Your best hope for (kinda) private unfiltered searches is Yacy
Duckduckgo, Bing and others are optimised only for English speaking countries, for the other Google can be the best choise.
Duckduckgo is good only for general and generic results. Google remains in many situtation the work horse for serious and heavy duties.
... that you're not being fully monetized?
I use DuckDuckGo for quite some time now, and in most cases it works well. Just like Google, though, in harder cases it tends to lists loads of results which have no relation whatsoever to the search terms, even if the terms were typed in double quotes – only that DuckDuckGo's result are even worse than Google's. Sometimes they just can't admit not having found anything useful, it seems.
If you must use a typical browser, use https://start.duckduckgo.com/ for searches. Better yet, use the Tor browser with DuckDuckGo's onion address:
https://3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion...
Also use obfuscation addons, of course.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
DuckDuckGo works good for searches. The only services I can't yet replace are Google mail and Google maps. I've tried several alternatives, but google maps simply show me what I need while the others don't yet. Proton mail may do the mail trick, but I'm not there yet. I don't like that google tracks me and their analytics are everywhere. AdBlock origin on Firefox minimizes things, but I still get tracked. Plus I have an Android phone. :(
Like another AC posted above
Use https://start.duckduckgo.com/ instead of the usual duckduckgo url
but you might have to wait for some kind soul to mod it up so you can see it.
All your search info is being collected for comrade Putin at Party HQ in Stalingrad.
DuckDuckGo is a decent enough search engine and I generally support it, but it has a few small frustrating problems with it that I'd like to see changed. First off, it's 'safe mode' content filter is on by default. This is annoying to those of us that are knowledgeable enough to realize how big of a problem cookies are and keep them disabled or filtered by default with a browser add-on. While that's not always an issue, as with any filter list you can get things filtered out erroneously. And my second companion is actually directly linked to my first one. If you do auto delete your cookies you get two pop ups for the site each time you load it. One asking if you want to add DuckDuckGo to your browser and the other suggesting you make them your star page. Neither are hardly deal breakers, but still annoying.
Each competitor shouts their value as not being like the current top dog, with the hope that they can be that same top dog eventually. The cycle repeats.
I've switched as many services I can to companies that, at a minimum, care about individual privacy.
I used to use Google's cloud products exclusively - no more. It's Protonmail and Duck Duck Go for me - for now. Apple, under Tim Cook, seems to be taking privacy seriously as well.
I am willing to pay for services that advertise privacy as a feature.
Love DDG. The only thing that keeps me having to switch back to Google is the lack of a "last year" option (or custom date range) when refining search results. According to the bottom of this page they are working on it, although this feature has been pending for a very long time.
... that doesn't contain a crappy ContentID system that can be abused, they'll be 100%.
The problem with not knowing anything about the user is that it often significantly reduces the quality and usefulness of search results. For example, consider a search for "string".
Neither result set would be appropriate for both audiences. (Every now and then, this goes hilariously wrong, and I have to add "-programming" or "-science" or whatever for some search, but most of the time, it's right.)
The thing is, a lot of people complain about tracking, but the fact of the matter is that all that tracking is done to produce better outcomes for the user. Whether that data is used to improve search results or to improve ad targeting, the user benefits by getting results that are more tailored to his or her interests and seeing less crap that he or she won't have the least bit of interest in. Far from surveillance, I would call that personalization. As long as Google aggressively protects the data that they collect and keeps it private, I find it to be a good thing.
But obviously, different people have different perspectives, and some folks are more distrustful of data collection than others. For the folks on the distrustful end of the spectrum, it is good that alternatives like DDG exist. And no matter where you fall on that spectrum, I think you'll agree that there is a strong need for tough privacy laws, to ensure that if Google's management decides to retire and move to Bermuda, the next batch of execs won't be allowed to use that data in different ways that violate our privacy, such as selling it to the highest bidder, or giving it away to companies that do research for political parties, or publishing our private information for all to see.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
In other words, they may as well be doing this:
if self.engine != Google:
return self.engine.search(query)
When google is OBVIOUSLY hiding proper results from me i go straight to duckduckgo. It's becoming more and more of a problem lately.
Quite frankly, if I can't find it on DDG, I probably don't need it anyway. Not to mention how google ranks crap based on politics.
as it could then point to more competitors and try to avoid some of the anti-trust actions that it will soon face. OK: Bing, Yahoo do compete but they are big players as well. Having a small competitor will let them claim to not be an oligopoly that squeeze out the small guys.
I can't bring myself to use something with such a dumb name. Can you hear anyone ever using it as a verb? It'd sound even dumber than "let me Bing! that for you".
Not that something like Lycos or Altavista was any more intuitive in their day, but I just feel dumber if I start typing duckduckgo in my address bar.
It makes it a shitty and incoherent experience. Startpage is just as private and only uses google so returns far better results.
numbnuts
This. Google has made it such that if a search Engine cannot guess what I want from a misspelled generic word, then it sucks. I don't want to put in the effort of actually typing in a unique identifier for the actually information I am searching for. I don't want to have to spell it correctly, and I don't want to have to know enough about what I am searching for to know what to type in.
And half the reason I use Google is for stuff beyond search engines. Like its calculator which does better than dedicated sites like wolfram now, and it's timer.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
So we're supposed to live in a dystopia because you can't type "java string" or "c++ string" or whatever type of string you're looking for? You need the search engine to guess right?
Sarcasm?
the only thing I miss on duck duck go are the translation, image, and mapping features of google.
But that only gets me to go back to google for one thing every so often when I want that. Otherwise, I avoid google.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Back in the old days, Google's corporate motto was "Don't do evil". I'm sure DuckDuckGoose won't ever succumb to the lure of money and go back on their lofty ideals, either.
Have you read my blog lately?
Anyone know if there's a warrant canary at DuckDuckGo?
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
That's just the tip of the iceberg. Everything you search for benefits from context. If you search for information about travel destinations and then search for Italy, you probably want tourism information, not information about its government and population. You get better results based on knowledge of those recent searches. And that context doesn't always cease to be relevant just because you closed the browser window. After all, planning a trip often takes weeks, not hours.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
no thanks.
Use this https://github.com/asciimoo/se...
Yeah, I get it. Just because you want a "do what I mean" machine that knows you well enough so that you only need to shout a few syllables instead of articulating what you want, everybody needs to be under constant surveillance by an advertising company.
searx instance
For example, consider a search for "string".
DDG "string" results:
1) Definition of String by Merriam-Webster
2) String Class - Microsoft Docs
3) STRING: functional protein association networks
4) String (Java) - Oracle Help Center
5) String (computer science) - Wikipedia
....
Seems okay. Nothing on the first page about cat toys, or bikinis, or musical instruments, or any other more-or-less common uses of strings. Searching one generic word like that and expecting a page full of C++ string functions is (imo) unreasonable. I'd rather go, "Hey search engine, show me results about Java String functions" instead of saying, "Hi, It's me, Anon Y. Mous, id#422483391007556. Show me string" But that's me.
I have been using https://startpage.com/ for many years. Its parent (lxquick) actually predates DuckDuckGo.
I lost count of how many people's machines I have switched to making it their default search engine (and often removing "Google.com" completely AND installing Firefox and making THAT their default browser). Not only is it fast and private, it gives the same Google search results, and doesn't blast users with stupid "G O O G L E" special event animations and mini games and associated junk. Oh, and it never insists you install Chrome for a so-called "better browsing experience" (yeah right; I will stick with Firefox, thank you very much).
They have a mobile app too, but unfortunately, it seems slower AND there is no way [I have found] to make it the system default under Android (surprise, surprise).
I just tried.
I get vastly different results on Startpage, than I get on Google wheb eiter browsing it in maximum anonymity or logged in (but with all tracking settings turned off).
I'm a professional. Assume I know how to anonymize myself as much as one can in a browser. (Down to making sure I can't be recognized by the fonts installed etc...)
But boy do I love an over-confident loud-mouther who puts his assumptions over what he can see with his own eyes... --.--
What's your point? Morons do moronic things. Who cares?
Duh.
Eventually it will be bought out, shut down through legal action or bankrupted.
Having been DDG user for several years, it works for me in 99.9% of cases. The case that doesnt cut it is searches for recent events (as in minutes or 1-2 hours ago) perhaps due to somewhat slower crawling.
DuckDuckGo is a well-known honeypot, operated by USIC. Their entire claim of privacy is based on "just trust us!!"
Fabulous! I can't wait for anti-Google Drive, anti-Google Maps, anti-Google Voice,...
Is it so hard to search for "c++ string"?
"....is done to produce better outcomes for the user."
No. It is done to provide more focused targetting for their customers. The user is the product. The customer is who pays for Google.
They run on AWS, so who knows what Amazon might be doing with the data.
Chrome OS works nice for grandma, who just wants email and a Web browser, and is confused by all the other features of Windows or Android. Everybody else needs a "real" OS. (This is not mean to disparage Chrome OS, only to point out its limitations.)
Google's annual revenues are over $100 billion. It uses a significant chunk of that to update and improve its search engine.
Google has achieved its level of success and usefulness by spending money, lots of it. It's not enough to have the right philosophy or algorithm. Maintaining and improving a project as big as Google Search requires a ton of money, and will continue to do so.
It's going to be really tough for DuckDuckGo to reach a level of sophistication remotely close to Google's.
I hope they enhance the workflow for DuckDuckHack. Currently, it's in maintenance, which I hope doesn't comply with Google's definition of that word (eventual abandonment). I like the ability for the community to contribute to DDG's improvement. Hopefully this continues in some form.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
Have used it exclusively for 2 years, maybe only downside is on the Images search. Otherwise, no issues finding what you need.