Can DuckDuckGo Become the Anti-Google? (marketplace.org) 163
"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."
I might try it (Score:4, Funny)
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Use https://start.duckduckgo.com/ [duckduckgo.com] instead of the usual duckduckgo url
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https://start.duckduckgo.com [duckduckgo.com] omits the DuckDuckGo self promotion etc.
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Here's a better link [3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion]. Instead of trusting they don't track me, I prefer some additional assurance.
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I tried to use DuckDuckGo and StartPage, but I always go back to Google. Nothing out there comes remotely close to competing with Google's superior search engine. There is straight up stuff that DuckDuckGo won't even display in their search results and yet comes up as the very first or second thing in Google. Google is flat out better at finding what people are looking for.
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Sadly, I think this is true at least for some of us. For one thing, there are all those library documents that Google scanned. I'm actually interested in those sometimes.
On top of which, I'm less than wild about DudkDuckGo because its search results generate a link back to DuckDuckGo which then presumbly redirects to the material instead of generating a simple href to the material. i.e. DuckDuckGo -- like Google -- knows not only what I searched for but which links I click in the search results. If they
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"I'm less than wild about DudkDuckGo because its search results generate a link back to DuckDuckGo which then presumbly redirects to the material instead of generating a simple href to the material."
No link back for me, DudkDuckGo just gives me a simple href to material.
Yet it shows me worse results. (Score:1)
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... --.--
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http://www.startpage.com
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This isn't modded "-1" yet? Slashdot used to be better at detecting astroturfers.
I made the switch everywhere over a week ago (Score:5, Informative)
Other than that I like it so far!
Just my 2 cents
Re:I made the switch everywhere over a week ago (Score:5, Informative)
Change the URL to https://start.duckduckgo.com/ [duckduckgo.com] and those things should go away once you configure the settings. Let us know.
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Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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Create a bookmark to "https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%s" with keyword "d", then type "d foo" into the URL bar. Then get rid of that useless "search bar" space waster. With this setup, there's no need for any kind of a "home page", and you can also use any other keyworded site (like "wp" for Wikipedia) without requiring multiple steps.
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I prefer to have a search bar, but what I would like is for the address bar to do a google search even when I have a different search engine selected in the search bar. I don't suppose anyone around here knows how to accomplish that? I'm really goddamned tired of doing Wikipedia searches for things I expected to find with Google. That's actually how it worked originally, but someone decided it would be a good idea to change it. They were wrong.
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https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%25s... [duckduckgo.com]
I am generally unimpressed by DDG searches for many things, especially technical stuff. Too much spam gets promoted to the top of the listings. And by default Strict filtering is set and you only get a few results. In fact, when trying to craft a keyword search I couldn't figure out how to deliver 30 results per page, that is a bit of a problem, even startpage allows you to get 20. And since such a high percentage of the DDG resul
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"https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%s&ia=web"
"https://www.google.com/search?num=100&safe=off&hl=en&biw=1366&bih=573&tbs=qdr%3Ay&ei=NlawW-yqJ8fGjwS9zLdY&q=%s&oq=%s&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0l10.154342.155902..156128...0.0..0.145.526.3j2......0....1..gws-wiz.......0i131.rwbf_ZZ_mks"
That's nice, I was redoing my "gy" bookmark, just for grins and used the search term "idiot" and then tested it with the search term "moron" and most of
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https://duckduckgo.com/lite
You're welcome.
Re:I made the switch everywhere over a week ago (Score:4, Informative)
Have used DDG for years as my primary search engine on my desktop, but unfortunately I don’t think the results are nearly as effective as Google.
The most basic issue is that meaningful information is never displayed directly in the results. If I search for EURUSD on Google, I get the actual exchange rate. On DDG, I have to click a spammy link to get it. I also have better luck with highly technical searches in Google. But, for 80% of the stuff it is good enough.
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If I search for EURUSD on Google, I get the actual exchange rate.
If I search for EURUSD on DuckDuckGo I get the exchange rate as an "instant answer". No need to click anything. Maybe your browser is preventing DuckDuckGo's instant answers from being displayed.
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I will have to check. I am aggressive with NoScript in Firefox, so that might be my issue.
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I'm aggressive with NoScript in SeaMonkey but typing eurousd in the url bar and scrolling down to the search option gives me the exchange rate at the top of the results, plus the SeaMonkey foundation gets a couple of cents (or less), which supports my preferred browser.
The search result ends up as
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I just tried and in the zero-click info box at the top of DDG I get the exchange rate along with a little drop-down for each currency so that I can change either one. For 'highly technical searches', DDG partners with a couple of source-code indexing domain-specific search engines and so typically points me to the documentation for whatever I'm looking for in the zero-click box too.
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The most basic issue is that meaningful information is never displayed directly in the results. If I search for EURUSD on Google, I get the actual exchange rate. On DDG, I have to click a spammy link to get it.
More astroturf. More lies. You get the exchange rate above the search results.
For many searches, you get an excerpt from Wikipedia above the search results. For many tech searches, you get the most-upvoted answer from stackoverflow above the results.
Plus, the bang codes rock. Try this search: !wa (e^x + e^-x)/2 dx
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All I get is a blank page with a yellow bar at the top warning me about the page only being partially encrypted.
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Err... no? (Score:1)
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.
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Google and Bing get paid for it. Making it easy for other search engines to use them just means more money for them, like when Microsoft convinced Yahoo to become a Bing skin.
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Stories about DDG are filled with paid astroturfers from Google. DDG has never fronted Google - that's just another lie. They do front Bing to some extent: when they started, they were just anonymizing front-end to Bing, but they've come a long way since then.
Re: Err... no? (Score:1)
Google has crappy results. Whenever I use it, there's a shit ton of crap sites I have to sort through because everybody is trying to get on the first page and the pages usually suck.
With duckduck go, it's a lot less of a problem, but I'd love to have a way of reporting sites that lock the content the search was based on.
Liar? (Score:5, Informative)
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]
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And ofcourse: "We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we also source from a variety of partners, including Oath (formerly Yahoo) and Bing."
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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?
So what if the Russians do get everything? They don't care if Joe Random in the US, UK, etc is searching for drugs or torrent sites or whatever. You have FAR more to fear from Western governments as an individual, especially the US & UK, than Russia or even China.
More people by far are killed by their own government than die in wars between foreign nations.
Strat
Someone please tell me (Score:1)
What's their business model? Where do they get their money?
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Untargeted ads. The ads are also small and clearly labeled. That was the reason that I first started using Google, and now, why I've kept with my browsers default search engine. Seems the browser people (SeaMonkey Foundation) get a bit of cash from me using DDG, which is good.
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Short answer: No (Score:2)
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.
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I do that as well. Helps to avoid running into phishers and squatters. Admittedly she's at as great a risk with Google if she isn't using ublock to avoid winding up on a "sponsored" phisher or squatter.
Good old Google has sent so very many customers to my door begging for help after they got scammed on a sponsored link. And by good, I mean to hell with them.
Works for me! (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Ever gett the feeling... (Score:3)
... that you're not being fully monetized?
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Well, they do have ads in my search results so I assume they are making some money from me... probably not as much as Google gets for dishing out "personalized" ads targeted to my anarchist view of the world.
There's that little problem with DuckDuckGo (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Re:There's that little problem with DuckDuckGo (Score:5, Insightful)
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
That's why it's vital to do all searches over Tor -- which DuckDuckGo supports well, unlike infinite captcha loops on Google.
People prefer convenience over privacy, but once there's no convenience cost, there's no reason to not use the safer way,
Re: There's that little problem with DuckDuckGo (Score:3)
This. I use Duckduckgo, and about 95% of the time it provides excellent results. In rare cases, I switch to Google, usually because I can't find decisive search tetms, and Google's scary context sensitivity is helpful.
But. American businesses are subject to the increasingly totalitarian tendencies of the US government. Any business that is serious, really serious about privacy should not be in the US.
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While US legislation has much to hold against it, how is EU any sort of alternative? At least speech is free in America and you cannot be charged for having illegal opinions in your search history or not forgetting things legislated to be forgotten. Their are probably one or two countries I would rank better than America for wanting your data in them, but the EU would top the list of the least desirable.
Oh please! (Score:1)
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 [yacy.net]
It's good, but its results are somewhat lacking (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Use DuckDuckGo's Onion URL in Tor Browser (Score:2)
If you must use a typical browser, use https://start.duckduckgo.com/ [duckduckgo.com] for searches. Better yet, use the Tor browser with DuckDuckGo's onion address:
https://3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion... [3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion]
Also use obfuscation addons, of course.
So far I'm happy with Duck... (Score:1)
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. :(
Not bad... but could use a few changes (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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I decided I would turn off the safe mode filter. I was surprised just how many completely innocent searches would bring up tons of naughty pictures. It reminds me of surfing the web in the 90's, where endless porn pop-ups would regularly be thrown in your face every 2 seconds, to the point where it crashed your browser. Ah, nostalgia!
Incidentally, if anyone thinks naughty pictures are a problem on the Internet and that kids need more protection, they should get into a time machine and see the 'Net from 2
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Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Last year please. (Score:3)
So just like Google, only not remotely like Google (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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 s
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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.
Is it still so anonymous when used in Chrome? (Score:3)
In other words, they may as well be doing this:
if self.engine != Google:
return self.engine.search(query)
Re:Is it still so anonymous when used in Chrome? (Score:4, Informative)
Chrome openly sends everything you type into the omnibox to Google "for your protection". Purging all Google products from your life is the only safe way.
Been using it for years (Score:3)
Google would like DDG to make a little success ... (Score:2)
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've been using it for quite awhile... (Score:2)
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.
Remember the good old days... (Score:2)
Canary? (Score:2)
StartPage (Score:3)
I have been using https://startpage.com/ [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).
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>The not-so-good issue is that you are still depending on Google
Agreed. Which means the ranking and such will be the same. It is good and yet bad at the same time. No diversity in the results, you are still getting Google's world-view of search.
>Also its results are a somehow-restricted version of what you find in google.com.
That is not my experience. You will NOT see the "sponsored" results from Google, but that is kinda the whole point. Also, since Google doesn't know who it is, it is possible t
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honeypot (Score:3)
DuckDuckGo is a well-known honeypot, operated by USIC. Their entire claim of privacy is based on "just trust us!!"
Sure, just like Chrome OS is the anti-Microsoft (Score:2)
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.)
$10 million vs. $100 billion? (Score:2)
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.
DuckDuckHack (Score:2)
Only Search Engine I Use (Score:1)