Google Quietly Adds DuckDuckGo as a Search Engine Option for Chrome Users in About 60 Markets (techcrunch.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: In an update to the chromium engine, which underpins Google's popular Chrome browser, the search giant has quietly updated the lists of default search engines it offers per market -- expanding the choice of search product users can pick from in markets around the world. Most notably it's expanded search engine lists to include pro-privacy rivals in more than 60 markets globally. The changes, which appear to have been pushed out with the Chromium 73 stable release yesterday, come at a time when Google is facing rising privacy and antitrust scrutiny and accusations of market distorting behavior at home and abroad.

Comments

It's not that surprising

[SurenEnfiajyan]

considering that DuckDuckGo uses other search engines underneath, especially Google.

Re: It's not that surprising

[jouassou]

You're both right. They have their own crawler, but also source results from ~400 other sites, including e.g. Bing, Wikipedia, and WolframAlpha.

Re:It's not that surprising

[Straumli Perversion]

https://duck.co/help/results/sources You can get google results by adding !g to your search (or !sp if you want to get google results through startpage.com).

Re:It's not that surprising

[cordovaCon83]

Please refer to this link. I don't see what the big deal is though - I use DuckDuckGo because they don't share my information with their partners. I could care less if they aggregrate their search results from many different sources.

Re:It's not that surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

While convenient if DDG is your primary search engine, you forgo any of its advantages by using these: it simply redirects you to the other site.

Re:It's not that surprising

[fustakrakich]

I use DuckDuckGo because they don't share my information with their partners.

How do you know that?

Re:It's not that surprising

[Darinbob]

The advantage is anonymity and disabling of tracking.

This is a very welcome move by Google

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm under the impression that there are people within Google connected to the Do no Evil policy which Google as a corporate long forgot. Small things like these, or the internal opposition related to Chinese Google and Pentagon AI fiasco makes me want to believe there is hope.

I use it nearly 100% of the time

[Lucas123]

People often complain Duckduckgo.com doesn't return the same number or quality of search results as Google; That's simply not true. The vast majority of the time I use it, I find the information I'm searching for on the first try. Years ago, I made a conscience decision to support Duckduckgo.com because of their ethics. Anyone who cares about their privacy should be supporting organizations that respect it and refuse to use technology that tracks you for marketing and other purposes. So, if you believe the same, step up and start using those technologies to the detriment of those that don't. Send a message.

Re:I use it nearly 100% of the time

[93 Escort Wagon]

Agreed. I suspect many times people will try an alternative once or twice - often early in that alternative’s life - and then hold that impression for the rest of their lives. Or they won’t even try it and just parrot what their “tech friend” said on the matter.

It’s similar to how, just the other day, I heard some dude railing against MySQL because it didn’t support transactions. He’d apparently heard that 10-15 years ago, and it was still his go-to argument against that product.

It’s funny how many people who work in the rapidly-changing field of tech still fall prey to that tendency.

Re:I use it nearly 100% of the time

[QuietLagoon]

Proof? Or are you just feeling ornery today?

Re:I use it nearly 100% of the time

[jjshoe]

MyISAM still doesn't support transactions.

Re: I use it nearly 100% of the time

[jouassou]

Depends on the topic. For e.g. tech searches, it works really well. But if you're trying to search for a scientific paper where you don't have a doi or arXiv identifier (but know e.g. the first author's last name, the journal abbreviation, the volume number, and the publication year), Google usually shows it as its first or second result, while DuckDuckGo can show 20-30 results that cite that article before getting it right. In my experience, searching for local businesses where I live is also much easier on Google, even if I add my city and country to the search terms.

But I agree that it's worth supporting DuckDuckGo for privacy reasons, and luckily, you can always add a !g when you're searching for stuff it does badly. (I have the same attitude to OpenStreetMaps vs. Google Maps; I usually try the open alternative first, but know that for some searches, I'll just have to resort to Google.)

Re:I use it nearly 100% of the time

[drinkypoo]

People often complain Duckduckgo.com doesn't return the same number or quality of search results as Google; That's simply not true. The vast majority of the time I use it, I find the information I'm searching for on the first try.

You mean it's simply not true for you. I try using it every so often and the information I want has literally never been on the first page, and usually isn't on the second or third either.

Anyone who cares about their privacy should be supporting organizations that respect it and refuse to use technology that tracks you for marketing and other purposes.

Trust? How cute.

Re:I use it nearly 100% of the time

[Anubis IV]

Agreed. Several years back I found it lacking and switched back to Google, but I gave it another shot a year or two back and haven't stopped using it ever since. Plus, with bangs, which are easily one of its best features and something I sorely miss whenever I sit down at someone else's computer, a Google search is never more than a "!g" away if for some reason I think I need it, though that happens less and less with time. Between using bangs to jump immediately to a particular site, the ability to change DDG's appearance, and the significantly better privacy, sticking with it has been an easy decision.

Re:I use it nearly 100% of the time

[jimbo]

DDG have their own index for specialized sites and use Bing for regular web results.

Re:I use it nearly 100% of the time

[mark-t]

People often complain Duckduckgo.com doesn't return the same number or quality of search results as Google; That's simply not true.

Or... you could find a better way to say that instead of being so dismissive of it or suggesting that their experiences can't possibly be representative.

The vast majority of the time I use it, I find the information I'm searching for on the first try.

Good for you. That's not everyone's experience however... including my own, for what's that worth, and you suggesting that because you don't seem to have any problem with it must mean that people who say it's not as useful for finding what they want online can't possibly be representative of the real world is absolutely no different than someone suggesting that it's *NOT* really useful because they haven't been able to get good results from it.

Pot, meet the kettle.

Re: I use it nearly 100% of the time

[jouassou]

If they're handing over single queries, without tracking/correlating/storing/selling which queries come from the same person (e.g. via cookies, browser fingerprinting, etc.), I'm okay with it. It's the profiling I dislike about Google and Microsoft, not the collection of anonymized data.

Re: I use it nearly 100% of the time

[jouassou]

They have their own crawler as well, according to their Wikipedia page. Bing is just one of ~400 backends used in addition to their own crawler.

Re:I use it nearly 100% of the time

[Quake1v1]

If they are not sharing your info with google, what does it matter? Seems like a win win.

Re:I use it nearly 100% of the time

[lgw]

That's because DuckDuckGo is basically a frontend or wrapper for Google.

They've never been a frontend for Google. They started as an anonymizing frontend for Bing. They've grown a lot since then, though Bing is still a big part of results.

Re:I use it nearly 100% of the time

[lgw]

!wa is the best. Yes, I could just go to Wolfram Aplha's site, but since DDG is my default search engine, !wa is awesome. Best web calculator around.

For those unfamiliar, try
!wa (e^x + e^-x)/2
!wa integral of e^-(x^2) dx from negative infinity to n

Re: I use it nearly 100% of the time

[mark-t]

The people who say it isn't useful don't want it to be useful.

What's the more outlandish? That you somehow know what other people you've never met might intend or want, or that your experiences are not necessarily the same as other peoples, and that the experiences described are not necessarily simply the result of wishful thinking?

I have no problems using DDG.

Like I said... hooray for you. That's not everyone's experience, and your counterpoint of how well it works for you is immaterial. Your persistence on the point, and particularly in how you suggested that people who believe it is not useful must simply not want it to be useful, is lending no small amount of credibility to the idea that *you* are the one with the agenda.

Re: I use it nearly 100% of the time

[vux984]

You searched for 'git reset', and are upset that ddg didn't tell you git ammend?? Wow.
FWIW ddg returns what you wanted if you don't actively search for the wrong thing.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=git+...

What's next? you going to search for the honda sports car with split rear window... and then get mad if it doesn't return "Corvette" ?

Re: I use it nearly 100% of the time

[K. S. Kyosuke]

How many programmers does it take to develop Google Search?

Two of them, apparently.

Re: I use it nearly 100% of the time

[K. S. Kyosuke]

That the authors of MySQL, who were clueless more often than not, still haven't been able to develop a quality storage engine of their own? Unlike competent software efforts such as PostgreSQL and Firebird?

Re: I use it nearly 100% of the time

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Shoul he use the Bing bang?

Markets? Do you mean Countries?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's not reduce whole countries to just markets. We are users and citizens, not just consumers or products.

Re:Markets? Do you mean Countries?

[grumpy-cowboy]

Sorry but yes you are the product.

Re:Markets? Do you mean Countries?

[AmiMoJo]

Bizarre that Google is giving their product away to DuckDuckGo, isn't it? I mean how is that evil, it makes no sense.

Re:Markets? Do you mean Countries?

[lgw]

It's win-win for Google. They get your search history without the cost of serving results. Everything you type in Chrome goes to Google, of course.

Re:Markets? Do you mean Countries?

[AmiMoJo]

Ah, I had forgotten about that particular conspiracy theory. I assume you have zero evidence to back it up.

Shame as I'd love to be the one kicking off that GDPR complaint. Imagine being responsible for costing Google 4% of global turnover.

Re:Markets? Do you mean Countries?

[lgw]

Does Chrome autocomplete for you? Yeah, that's everything you type in the "omnibar" going to Google, and they save your history.

There's a Gooogle privacy setting for that:

Web & App Activity
(Paused)
Used by Assistant, Google Maps, and others

If you turn this setting on, Google will save your activity on Google sites and apps in your Google Account, including searches and associated info like location. You can also choose to save which apps you use, your Chrome history, and which sites you visit on the web.

All nicely GDPR compliant, I'm sure. You might check if you still have it enabled, as perhaps you're not comfortable with it.

If you search on DDG on Chrome, that url becomes part of your "Chrome history". And Google knows how to parse the URIs of common sites to extract everything.

Re:Markets? Do you mean Countries?

[AmiMoJo]

Autocomplete uses DDG if that is your selected search engine. The rest is explicitly opt in. Also note that you can encrypt synced data with your own key.

In other words, Google doesn't record every web site you visit.wothout your permission, and can't read it if you don't want them to. They don't know what you enter in the search bar. Doing so would be a clear GDPR violation unless explicitly opted in to.

Your original comment was dishonest, and your follow up plain wrong.

But...

[Anonymous Coward]

Methinks this does not remove you from the Google bubble, especially if you are logged in to Chrome, which I never am. Everything in Chrome's history is reported back to the mothership, logged in or not.

I'd like to use duckduckgo but...

[QuietLagoon]

... it seems to purchase crawler data from other search engines, and the data is not as complete as the data google uses. Specifically, does duckduckgo purchase crawler data from bing? I see similar gaps in the results returned by bing and duckduckgo. Does duckduckgo have its own crawler?

Re:I'd like to use duckduckgo but...

[Anonymous Coward]

They literally use bings search engine under the covers.

They just direct your search query to bing, and then show it, potentially with a couple of 'info cards' they made themselves for the most common stuff (eg. currency conversions).

If it isn't on duckduckgo

[p51d007]

I probably don't want to "find" it anyway.

anti trust

[houghi]

Mist likeluy to avaid ant trust issues. Snd better them thsn the competition, right.

Google is good now?

[fustakrakich]

I wait until they include YaCy

Simplifying support for competition?

[Krishnoid]

Most notably it's expanded search engine lists to include pro-privacy rivals in more than 60 markets globally.

How dare they help level the playing field a little! Why do they hate America?