12 ms·

I really wish they'd let me set Siri to search DuckDuckGo.

craftyguy 9y ago
Apple Knows Best(TM)
azurezyq 9y ago
DDG has a long way to go on long tail queries. In search industry, you can probably spend 1x time and resources to reach 90% Google's relevance score. However, to reach 95% or more, you probably need 100x in time and resources. E.g., NLP in query understanding; Knowledge Graph in webpage understanding; Much larger corpus; Location awareness, etc.
- tesseract 9y ago
  For true long tail queries it seems to me that often (speaking only as a Google user, not an expert) the NLP really ends up getting in the way by causing the query to be reinterpreted as something more mainstream. But I agree that it's important for getting high quality results for a lot of common queries. And that quality and relevance scoring of results is also a hard problem.
tanilama 9y ago
For what reason. Apparently, aside from their tight relationship with Google, Bing's result is not good enough for Apple to continue, since DuckDuckGo is using Yahoo, who is backed up Bing, I don't see a legit cause for Apple to switch to it.
- partiallypro 9y ago
  Quality of results had absolutely nothing to do with the decision, Google and Microsoft bid on the right to be the search engine. Since Microsoft had already been on the platform they may have seen poor or negative ROI from the deal. Google outbid them with a $3 Billion deal, simple as that. Simple searches you would do from your phone would be/are neck and neck between Google and Bing, where they diverge a bit are more complex/technical queries.
  - yeukhon 9y ago
    Last part: deal breaker for me. I can't speak for others, but I am going to assume many feel the same. I couldn't stand looking at Yahoo search results. I switched back to Google after Firefox made Yahoo the prefer choicd (the deal with Yahoo)
    - partiallypro 9y ago
      Yahoo results aren't the same as Bing's; it is merely powered by it, Yahoo still has some control over results and how it uses Bing's service.
      - yeukhon 9y ago
        It is essentially the same result when the underlying engine is Bing, even though Yahoo can choose how to use the engine.
  - notsuretho 9y ago
    I’m not as convinced about the quality of text search for bing vs google. I’ve found the former to be inferior in terms of SEO gaming. That said, it doesn’t use AMP (not relevant here) and its map and images offering is excellent.
lemoncucumber 9y ago
I could almost see Apple buying DuckDuckGo, given that a) Apple cares about their users' privacy, and b) Apple cares about having control over the entire user experience. DuckDuckGo would fit right in with both of those core pieces of Apple (no pun intended). I don't think it'll actually happen, but it doesn't seem too far-fetched.
- beaner 9y ago
  Apple doesn't care about it's users' privacy. It only ever started making a big deal about privacy when people started criticizing Google for hoarding too much personal info and using it to target ads, which people think is evil. Apple doesn't do these things (it's not Apple's business model), so they began heavily marketing "privacy" as something you'd get from them and not the competition. They make sort of okay attempts at privacy, but since they don't collect a lot, they don't need to do a lot, and many of the things they have done have been weak, easily exploitable, or hacked. "Privacy" for Apple is a marketing term like "unbelievable," "magic," and "revolutionary."
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - rtpg 9y ago
    They also made a political stand on the search warrant for that one iPhone that they could have unlocked. A stand that wasn't even popular among the general public ("companies should help police investigate terrorists" polls very well). Being super pedantic, Apple doesn't care about anything, just like a company can't care... but I think it's safe to say that it's not last on the list of things they prioritize.
    - willtim 9y ago
      It seemed more like a marketing stunt to me. The issue was about a single iPhone with a warrant to search it. Apple made it a very public debate about all iPhones.
jasonmaydie 9y ago
duckduckgo is not bad but they really need to scale their servers because I found the response time wasn't good at all.

Apple Knows Best(TM)

DDG has a long way to go on long tail queries. In search industry, you can probably spend 1x time and resources to reach 90% Google's relevance score. However, to reach 95% or more, you probably need 100x in time and resources. E.g., NLP in query understanding; Knowledge Graph in webpage understanding; Much larger corpus; Location awareness, etc.

tesseract 9y ago
For true long tail queries it seems to me that often (speaking only as a Google user, not an expert) the NLP really ends up getting in the way by causing the query to be reinterpreted as something more mainstream. But I agree that it's important for getting high quality results for a lot of common queries. And that quality and relevance scoring of results is also a hard problem.

tanilama 9y ago

For what reason. Apparently, aside from their tight relationship with Google, Bing's result is not good enough for Apple to continue, since DuckDuckGo is using Yahoo, who is backed up Bing, I don't see a legit cause for Apple to switch to it.

partiallypro 9y ago
Quality of results had absolutely nothing to do with the decision, Google and Microsoft bid on the right to be the search engine. Since Microsoft had already been on the platform they may have seen poor or negative ROI from the deal. Google outbid them with a $3 Billion deal, simple as that. Simple searches you would do from your phone would be/are neck and neck between Google and Bing, where they diverge a bit are more complex/technical queries.
- yeukhon 9y ago
  Last part: deal breaker for me. I can't speak for others, but I am going to assume many feel the same. I couldn't stand looking at Yahoo search results. I switched back to Google after Firefox made Yahoo the prefer choicd (the deal with Yahoo)
  - partiallypro 9y ago
    Yahoo results aren't the same as Bing's; it is merely powered by it, Yahoo still has some control over results and how it uses Bing's service.
    - yeukhon 9y ago
      It is essentially the same result when the underlying engine is Bing, even though Yahoo can choose how to use the engine.
- notsuretho 9y ago
  I’m not as convinced about the quality of text search for bing vs google. I’ve found the former to be inferior in terms of SEO gaming. That said, it doesn’t use AMP (not relevant here) and its map and images offering is excellent.

lemoncucumber 9y ago

I could almost see Apple buying DuckDuckGo, given that a) Apple cares about their users' privacy, and b) Apple cares about having control over the entire user experience. DuckDuckGo would fit right in with both of those core pieces of Apple (no pun intended). I don't think it'll actually happen, but it doesn't seem too far-fetched.

beaner 9y ago
Apple doesn't care about it's users' privacy. It only ever started making a big deal about privacy when people started criticizing Google for hoarding too much personal info and using it to target ads, which people think is evil. Apple doesn't do these things (it's not Apple's business model), so they began heavily marketing "privacy" as something you'd get from them and not the competition. They make sort of okay attempts at privacy, but since they don't collect a lot, they don't need to do a lot, and many of the things they have done have been weak, easily exploitable, or hacked. "Privacy" for Apple is a marketing term like "unbelievable," "magic," and "revolutionary."
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- rtpg 9y ago
  They also made a political stand on the search warrant for that one iPhone that they could have unlocked. A stand that wasn't even popular among the general public ("companies should help police investigate terrorists" polls very well). Being super pedantic, Apple doesn't care about anything, just like a company can't care... but I think it's safe to say that it's not last on the list of things they prioritize.
  - willtim 9y ago
    It seemed more like a marketing stunt to me. The issue was about a single iPhone with a warrant to search it. Apple made it a very public debate about all iPhones.

jasonmaydie 9y ago

duckduckgo is not bad but they really need to scale their servers because I found the response time wasn't good at all.