5 ms·

Isn't DDG basically Bing + bangs? Doesn't seem fair to credit it at beating Google without highlighting the billions of dollars that MSFT has invested.

mda 9y ago
Ahh. the uncomfortable truth that DDG is just a meta search engine with a few shortcuts.
- senatorobama 9y ago
  Wow. It is a hustler company.
- FabHK 9y ago
  "just"? It's an alternative to datenkrake Google that does not track you and adds some neat features (bangs, keyboard navigation, etc.)
  - mda 9y ago
    But it is not an actual search engine. We do not know the details of their agreements with the actual search engines they depend on.
r3bl 9y ago
I mean, a probably more relevant summary of what DDG offers would be: Bing/Yahoo/Yandex mashup stripped out of personalized results + bangs + [until recently] community maintained instant answers. Edit: Worth pointing out: as far as I am aware, they're using all the other search engines with an agreement with those companies, which makes it completely okay in my book to credit them as the one. I credit my operating system to Canonical, even though the heavy lifting and behaving nicely on hardware is done by people contributing to Linux. Linux out of the box doesn't mean a thing to me. Bing out of the box doesn't mean a thing to me. DDG and Ubuntu do mean a lot to me.
- hnlmorg 9y ago
  > I credit my operating system to Canonical, even though the heavy lifting and behaving nicely on hardware is done by people contributing to Linux. Linux out of the box doesn't mean a thing to me. Bing out of the box doesn't mean a thing to me. DDG and Ubuntu do mean a lot to me. That's a dangerous comparison to make because there isn't really any consensus* on which part of the stack to name the OS. For example, Linux is technically just the kernel. So most of the UX you deal with will be GNU and other user space tools. Depending on the DE you use, you might not even deal with much of Canonical's code. And Ubuntu does owe an awful lot to it's parent distribution, Debian. In short, I get the point you're attempting to make but unfortunately your comparison is more contested than the original subject you were discussing. * though many do advocate GNU/Linux
  - r3bl 9y ago
    That's precisely my point. Canonical did a good thing of mashing it all together into a single product. DDG does the same for search in my book. They've both outsourced the heavy lifting to some third party. In DDG, Bing/Yahoo/Yandex does all of the heavy lifting. In Ubuntu, it's the Linux kernel. They would be nothing without those products they depend on. But they bundle that with like hundreds of different, smaller in scale products to offer a nice experience out of the box. For smaller in scale companies that are trying to compete with big players (like Microsoft and Google), this does seem like a winning combination in my book.
thanatropism 9y ago
I'd say bangs are the whole product. When you fail to use bangs, it presents, as a plus, medium decent results. (Good for stuff like error messages on stack overflow and forums, not so good for vaguer queries).
AdamSC1 9y ago
DuckDuckGo uses multiple sources for our results, as well as our instant answers and bangs. But the most important feature is that DuckDuckGo is the search engine that doesn't track you. We don't store your personal information and we don't sell you out to advertisers. Our goal is to raise the standard of trust online, and so at DuckDuckGo you are not the product, search is. We think that's an important difference. Disclaimer: DDG staff.
- FanaHOVA 9y ago
  > at DuckDuckGo you are not the product, search is. So... who's paying?
  - AdamSC1 9y ago
    Still advertisers. It's a nuanced but important difference. Case A - if you type in "Car" we show an ad about cars. Advertisers are paying to appear at the top of that page. They do not know who you are or what you previously searched. Case B - if you type in "Car" you are shown an ad about cars. Advertisers are paying to target based on your interest in cars, and possibly other websites you've visited, online actions you've taken, re-marketing pixels from third-party websites, or your affinity to other demographic groups. In "Case A" the search page is the product. In "Case B" you are the product.
    - jeremy7600 9y ago
      It is not a difference at all.
- seanalltogether 9y ago
  When do those other multiple sources come into play? When i do searches for general information I just see bing results. https://imgur.com/P1akOab https://imgur.com/P1akOab
- mda 9y ago
  Can you give us a breakdown of percentages of queries answered by each backend / source? Do you have specific contracts that allows you to use their indexes anonymously or are you at their mercy?

mda 9y ago

Ahh. the uncomfortable truth that DDG is just a meta search engine with a few shortcuts.

senatorobama 9y ago
Wow. It is a hustler company.
FabHK 9y ago
"just"? It's an alternative to datenkrake Google that does not track you and adds some neat features (bangs, keyboard navigation, etc.)
- mda 9y ago
  But it is not an actual search engine. We do not know the details of their agreements with the actual search engines they depend on.

r3bl 9y ago

I mean, a probably more relevant summary of what DDG offers would be: Bing/Yahoo/Yandex mashup stripped out of personalized results + bangs + [until recently] community maintained instant answers. Edit: Worth pointing out: as far as I am aware, they're using all the other search engines with an agreement with those companies, which makes it completely okay in my book to credit them as the one. I credit my operating system to Canonical, even though the heavy lifting and behaving nicely on hardware is done by people contributing to Linux. Linux out of the box doesn't mean a thing to me. Bing out of the box doesn't mean a thing to me. DDG and Ubuntu do mean a lot to me.

hnlmorg 9y ago
> I credit my operating system to Canonical, even though the heavy lifting and behaving nicely on hardware is done by people contributing to Linux. Linux out of the box doesn't mean a thing to me. Bing out of the box doesn't mean a thing to me. DDG and Ubuntu do mean a lot to me. That's a dangerous comparison to make because there isn't really any consensus* on which part of the stack to name the OS. For example, Linux is technically just the kernel. So most of the UX you deal with will be GNU and other user space tools. Depending on the DE you use, you might not even deal with much of Canonical's code. And Ubuntu does owe an awful lot to it's parent distribution, Debian. In short, I get the point you're attempting to make but unfortunately your comparison is more contested than the original subject you were discussing. * though many do advocate GNU/Linux
- r3bl 9y ago
  That's precisely my point. Canonical did a good thing of mashing it all together into a single product. DDG does the same for search in my book. They've both outsourced the heavy lifting to some third party. In DDG, Bing/Yahoo/Yandex does all of the heavy lifting. In Ubuntu, it's the Linux kernel. They would be nothing without those products they depend on. But they bundle that with like hundreds of different, smaller in scale products to offer a nice experience out of the box. For smaller in scale companies that are trying to compete with big players (like Microsoft and Google), this does seem like a winning combination in my book.

thanatropism 9y ago

I'd say bangs are the whole product. When you fail to use bangs, it presents, as a plus, medium decent results. (Good for stuff like error messages on stack overflow and forums, not so good for vaguer queries).

AdamSC1 9y ago

DuckDuckGo uses multiple sources for our results, as well as our instant answers and bangs. But the most important feature is that DuckDuckGo is the search engine that doesn't track you. We don't store your personal information and we don't sell you out to advertisers. Our goal is to raise the standard of trust online, and so at DuckDuckGo you are not the product, search is. We think that's an important difference. Disclaimer: DDG staff.

FanaHOVA 9y ago
> at DuckDuckGo you are not the product, search is. So... who's paying?
- AdamSC1 9y ago
  Still advertisers. It's a nuanced but important difference. Case A - if you type in "Car" we show an ad about cars. Advertisers are paying to appear at the top of that page. They do not know who you are or what you previously searched. Case B - if you type in "Car" you are shown an ad about cars. Advertisers are paying to target based on your interest in cars, and possibly other websites you've visited, online actions you've taken, re-marketing pixels from third-party websites, or your affinity to other demographic groups. In "Case A" the search page is the product. In "Case B" you are the product.
  - jeremy7600 9y ago
    It is not a difference at all.
seanalltogether 9y ago
When do those other multiple sources come into play? When i do searches for general information I just see bing results. https://imgur.com/P1akOab https://imgur.com/P1akOab
mda 9y ago
Can you give us a breakdown of percentages of queries answered by each backend / source? Do you have specific contracts that allows you to use their indexes anonymously or are you at their mercy?