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Mozilla is now openly peeing in Google's punch all the while being dependent on piles of money they take from it. At some point Google will get tired of this a

Mozilla is now openly peeing in Google's punch all the while being dependent on piles of money they take from it. At some point Google will get tired of this and will withdraw from the agreement. They won't be the default search provider, but that will play to their advantage - Firefox out-of-the-box user experience will take a sharp nose dive. Say all you want about DDG and alternatives, but they still can't hold a candle to Google's search quality. So what Mozilla will end up with is (a) a dip in funding and (b) a dip in the user share. This might be just enough to either make them reconsider their ethics or to kill Mozilla altogether. So, yeah, a good CEO that can shed the Google dependency is very much required.

ur-whale 7y ago
On the flipside, Chrome went from being the best browser on the market to a bloated spying machine, and I'm very glad firefox exists to offer an alternative. If on top of that, they manage to do it using Google's dough, I say bravo and hope they'll remain smart enough to feed from the vampire for a long time
- jonathankoren 7y ago
  Chrome was always a spying machine. It was just a spying machine that was fast.
glhaynes 7y ago
I'd guess the intersection of people who will even consider using Firefox, have search engine needs that won't be satisfied by DuckDuckGo, and won't be able to change their search engine is vanishingly small, so I'm not that concerned about the user experience hit. But, yeah, the dip in funding would be brutal in that scenario.
coldpie 7y ago
I'd be happy to support Mozilla financially, but I'm too lazy to go figure out how to do it. Link me to a Patreon, or shove some subscription model more prominently in my face, Mozilla.
- entropicdrifter 7y ago
  https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/?presets=50,30,20,10&amount=30&utm_source=mozilla.org&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=nav&currency=usd https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/?presets=50,30,20,10&amount... There's a monthly option right there
  - coldpie 7y ago
    Yeah but I have to go remember to do it and stuff. Meanwhile at ArsTechnica.com, it shows a big banner telling me to subscribe, and I do. More reminders that I can give money to Mozilla would remind me to do it. Eventually they'd hit me at the right time/place to put in the effort to set up a sub, and I would.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - eitland 7y ago
    > Contributions go to the Mozilla Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization based in Mountain View, California, to be used in its discretion for its charitable purposes. I've read about this before I think, for some reason donations cannot be used for development and has to be used for outreach etc?
    - Kevin_S 7y ago
      All it means is that they can use the funds as they see fit. There should be a breakdown somewhere on their site of what % of funds go toward development verse admin/fundraising as they are a 501c3.
    - dblohm7 7y ago
      This is correct. The best way to support Mozilla products is to use them.
- Vinnl 7y ago
  It sounds like a matter of time before they introduce a paid plan for Firefox Accounts, with e.g. a higher limit on Firefox Send, a VPN service, and the fuzzy feeling of supporting improving the web.
saidajigumi 7y ago
Say all you want about DDG and alternatives, but they still can't hold a candle to Google's search quality. I'm rather torn on this point. On one hand, yes, DDG for example feels some years behind Google in its relevance ranking. On the other, Google itself has been degrading the quality of its own results with ads, etc. so badly that they've seriously degraded their own "above the fold" relevant results.
- byuu 7y ago
  I've always written off Duck Duck Go in the past, but lately after not being able to find relevant info on Google, I've been giving them a go and have been rather impressed. Especially on image results, which are way nicer to use and give you direct image links. Plus they don't obfuscate all the URLs with tracking redirects, so I can copy a link without visiting a page (that might redirect the URL on me again.) There's still some things they miss, and my main complaint with DDG is it's too aggressive in taking the search you asked for and substituting in results it thought you meant. I suspect that problem comes from their upstream providers like Bing, which has similar issues.
  - icebraining 7y ago
    > Especially on image results, which (...) give you direct image links. Google removed that after pressure from the copyright lobby (they got sued by Getty). It'll happen to DDG too if they ever become big enough.
    - byuu 7y ago
      Oh, I wasn't aware of the lawsuit. That's ridiculous. Well in any case, I wrote a Userscript to restore direct links to Google image results, and also to filter out spam site results (cough e...-e...com), if anyone were interested: https://byuu.org/other/script/google https://byuu.org/other/script/google Middle-clicking or control-clicking will load the original images. Bing direct links images as well so they'd probably go after Microsoft well before DDG, so I think we're safe. But I can always do the same for DDG if need be.
  - 7y ago
daveFNbuck 7y ago
I use DDG almost exclusively and I haven't noticed the difference. If having Google as the default search is so important, couldn't they just make it the default without the deal?
- jrochkind1 7y ago
  Sure, but they count on it for significant revenue. If Google didn't want to pay it, but they kept Google, they'd be giving up that revenue from some other potential provider. (Of course, if Google didn't want to pay it, it might cause a crash in the 'market value' of such a placement anyway).
Ididntdothis 7y ago
"Say all you want about DDG and alternatives, but they still can't hold a candle to Google's search quality. " Sadly I agree. I use DDG almost exclusively but when ever I use "!g" I often get better results there.
TheArcane 7y ago
How about startpage as an alternative? It's literally just Google results
yumraj 7y ago
> Say all you want about DDG and alternatives I've been using DDG, finally, for a little less than 1 year. For most part my DDG searches have been sufficient, in the sense that I generally find what I'm looking for and my need is met. On few occasions where my need is not met, I do a !g and sometimes Google gives me what I want, but not in all the cases. I have to refine my search query in many, if not most, of those cases. One area where Google is definitely better than DDG, for obvious reasons, is where Google shows better YouTube videos and I believe also Image results. But for regular searches, DDG has been satisfactory.
- aphextim 7y ago
  I've been enjoying using startpage. https://www.startpage.com https://www.startpage.com
  - yumraj 7y ago
    How does it compare to DDG? In other words, I went from Google to DDG because of privacy. Why should I move from DDG to say StartPage, does it provide any additional benefits? To clarify, I'm totally open to other search engines, just an trying to understand more.
    - aphextim 7y ago
      It is in a sense a google proxy. Better results IMO than DDG, more similar to Google without sending your IP/info to google. I don't understand the stuff too much at a really high level to know which is more private, DDG vs Startpage. >On 29 March 2016, Ixquick.com was officially "merged" with the same company's Startpage search engine[3] (a search engine with the privacy features of Ixquick, but using only Google search results[4]). Users entering ixquick.com are now automatically re-routed to startpage.com. Ixquick had long declared on its sites, that it operated in compliance with European Union privacy standards, and it retained its original European search engine, Ixquick.eu,[8] until about April 2018, when it was also redirected to startpage.com. >Prior to the release of Tor Browser version 4.5, Startpage.com was its default search engine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startpage.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startpage.com
eznoonze 7y ago
Are you sure the season that G gives you "better" results is not a consequence of them tracking you everywhere and know your preferences and habits?
- fauigerzigerk 7y ago
  That's probably true to some degree, but I found that the most effective thing that Google does to improve search results is to connect multiple searches you submit in relatively quick succession. Googling a paper or article, skimming it, then searching for something that's in the text makes Google appear like magic. When I enter the first word of my follow-up question, Google will often suggest a complex 10 word query exactly like I would have entered it. Apparently, many people have the exact same follow-up questions that I have after reading the same text. That doesn't require a whole lot of tracking. It does require a session cookie, but that's not the sort of tracking I'm opposed to at all. Another thing that Google does well is searching for local content. I think this is very difficult to replicate for DDG. But for context free and non-local queries, Google is usually no better than DDG in spite of all the wealth of data they have on me. For some niches DDG is actually better than Google and they don't fill half of their result pages with ads. Sometimes I wonder whether the entire ad targeting thing is a fraud. Maybe Google doesn't actually track us after all ;-)
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > Are you sure the season that G gives you "better" results is not a consequence of them tracking you everywhere and know your preferences and habits? I'm 100% sure that's why they give me better results. The options seem to be: (1) Don't use the web, (2) Give up decent search results and engage in a (probably only with limited success) tedious eternal war to prevent Google from tracking me, (3) Relax and let Google track me, but still give up the good search results, or (4) Take the payment Google is offering in exchange for tracking.
squarefoot 7y ago
"Say all you want about DDG and alternatives, but they still can't hold a candle to Google's search quality." I use DDG as main search engine since a while. It usually works, but occasionally (less than 10% of searches however) I have to repeat the search using Google. The point being that even if I had to revert to Google for half of my searches, this would mean for Google 50% less information about my search habits, and exposure to their injected ads/information, which wouldn't be a trivial figure at all. One doesn't use DDG because it's superior to Google (it's not and won't be for a long while) but rather to send a message to corporations making profits out of user information. I'm convinced Google doesn't give a rat's ass if ten thousands users like me don't use their search engine and services as we're already flagged in their database as users with adblockers, therefore immune to advertising (including ads that manage to defeat the blockers), but they would surely panic in terror should DDG use become somewhat trendy among Joe Users after some media coverage, social media campaign etc. The reason being that "normal", usually non technical, users are the ones providing Google mostly with real numbers because they allow webpages to analyze their habits and don't obfuscate their online behavior. Should a big number of those users make the transition to DDG or alternatives, we would likely hear of flying chairs at Google headquarters.
- smichel17 7y ago
  I use DDG because it's superior to Google. Maybe not in results, but in UX. In particular, I use bangs ALL the time. Given that I can just add !g to quickly search Google in the <5% of the time (based on my history) that I need it, I prefer DDG. (I would still use it for privacy reasons even if it were worse -- it was and I did for several years).
itronitron 7y ago
i have been using DDG exclusively for over a year now with no complaints or need to use Google search
inimino 7y ago
> Say all you want about DDG and alternatives, but they still can't hold a candle to Google's search quality. I prefer DDG and I almost never Google, except out of curiosity, but I see this sentiment a lot.
AriaMinaei 7y ago
> Say all you want about DDG and alternatives, but they still can't hold a candle to Google's search quality I started using DDG, believing that "it shows me inferior results, but privacy-wise, it is worth it." Yet I've come to learn that DDG's results are often on-par or better than Google, and inferior only a small fraction of the time. Often when I "!g" a query, I find that I get pretty much the same results with Google too. There are maybe 10% of cases where the results significantly differ. My perception now is that Google performs better on programming-related queries, and much better on giving me local results (especially results related to my city). But when searching for content that you'd often find on blogs, or looking for reviews of products, DDG almost always beats Google by showing less SEO-heavy, more authentic results. Edit: typo
boomboomsubban 7y ago
>They won't be the default search provider, but that will play to their advantage - Firefox out-of-the-box user experience will take a sharp nose dive...So what Mozilla will end up with is (a) a dip in funding and Right, like from 2014 to 2017 when Google wasn't the default search provider for Firefox. It was such a shame to see their income go from 300 million to 500 million.
liability 7y ago
Google's search quality has been on the decline for a while now. If that trend continues and DDG merely manages to stay the same, it will probably only be a few more years until they're as good as Google...
jldugger 7y ago
> At some point Google will get tired of this and will withdraw from the agreement. AFAICT, the situation is not so different from the days where Microsoft was paying Apple to avoid a defacto finding of monopoly.

ur-whale 7y ago

On the flipside, Chrome went from being the best browser on the market to a bloated spying machine, and I'm very glad firefox exists to offer an alternative. If on top of that, they manage to do it using Google's dough, I say bravo and hope they'll remain smart enough to feed from the vampire for a long time

jonathankoren 7y ago
Chrome was always a spying machine. It was just a spying machine that was fast.

glhaynes 7y ago

I'd guess the intersection of people who will even consider using Firefox, have search engine needs that won't be satisfied by DuckDuckGo, and won't be able to change their search engine is vanishingly small, so I'm not that concerned about the user experience hit. But, yeah, the dip in funding would be brutal in that scenario.

coldpie 7y ago

I'd be happy to support Mozilla financially, but I'm too lazy to go figure out how to do it. Link me to a Patreon, or shove some subscription model more prominently in my face, Mozilla.

entropicdrifter 7y ago
https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/?presets=50,30,20,10&amount=30&utm_source=mozilla.org&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=nav&currency=usd https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/?presets=50,30,20,10&amount... There's a monthly option right there
- coldpie 7y ago
  Yeah but I have to go remember to do it and stuff. Meanwhile at ArsTechnica.com, it shows a big banner telling me to subscribe, and I do. More reminders that I can give money to Mozilla would remind me to do it. Eventually they'd hit me at the right time/place to put in the effort to set up a sub, and I would.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- eitland 7y ago
  > Contributions go to the Mozilla Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization based in Mountain View, California, to be used in its discretion for its charitable purposes. I've read about this before I think, for some reason donations cannot be used for development and has to be used for outreach etc?
  - Kevin_S 7y ago
    All it means is that they can use the funds as they see fit. There should be a breakdown somewhere on their site of what % of funds go toward development verse admin/fundraising as they are a 501c3.
  - dblohm7 7y ago
    This is correct. The best way to support Mozilla products is to use them.
Vinnl 7y ago
It sounds like a matter of time before they introduce a paid plan for Firefox Accounts, with e.g. a higher limit on Firefox Send, a VPN service, and the fuzzy feeling of supporting improving the web.

saidajigumi 7y ago

Say all you want about DDG and alternatives, but they still can't hold a candle to Google's search quality. I'm rather torn on this point. On one hand, yes, DDG for example feels some years behind Google in its relevance ranking. On the other, Google itself has been degrading the quality of its own results with ads, etc. so badly that they've seriously degraded their own "above the fold" relevant results.

byuu 7y ago
I've always written off Duck Duck Go in the past, but lately after not being able to find relevant info on Google, I've been giving them a go and have been rather impressed. Especially on image results, which are way nicer to use and give you direct image links. Plus they don't obfuscate all the URLs with tracking redirects, so I can copy a link without visiting a page (that might redirect the URL on me again.) There's still some things they miss, and my main complaint with DDG is it's too aggressive in taking the search you asked for and substituting in results it thought you meant. I suspect that problem comes from their upstream providers like Bing, which has similar issues.
- icebraining 7y ago
  > Especially on image results, which (...) give you direct image links. Google removed that after pressure from the copyright lobby (they got sued by Getty). It'll happen to DDG too if they ever become big enough.
  - byuu 7y ago
    Oh, I wasn't aware of the lawsuit. That's ridiculous. Well in any case, I wrote a Userscript to restore direct links to Google image results, and also to filter out spam site results (cough e...-e...com), if anyone were interested: https://byuu.org/other/script/google https://byuu.org/other/script/google Middle-clicking or control-clicking will load the original images. Bing direct links images as well so they'd probably go after Microsoft well before DDG, so I think we're safe. But I can always do the same for DDG if need be.
- 7y ago

daveFNbuck 7y ago

I use DDG almost exclusively and I haven't noticed the difference. If having Google as the default search is so important, couldn't they just make it the default without the deal?

jrochkind1 7y ago
Sure, but they count on it for significant revenue. If Google didn't want to pay it, but they kept Google, they'd be giving up that revenue from some other potential provider. (Of course, if Google didn't want to pay it, it might cause a crash in the 'market value' of such a placement anyway).

Ididntdothis 7y ago

"Say all you want about DDG and alternatives, but they still can't hold a candle to Google's search quality. " Sadly I agree. I use DDG almost exclusively but when ever I use "!g" I often get better results there.

TheArcane 7y ago

How about startpage as an alternative? It's literally just Google results

yumraj 7y ago

> Say all you want about DDG and alternatives I've been using DDG, finally, for a little less than 1 year. For most part my DDG searches have been sufficient, in the sense that I generally find what I'm looking for and my need is met. On few occasions where my need is not met, I do a !g and sometimes Google gives me what I want, but not in all the cases. I have to refine my search query in many, if not most, of those cases. One area where Google is definitely better than DDG, for obvious reasons, is where Google shows better YouTube videos and I believe also Image results. But for regular searches, DDG has been satisfactory.

aphextim 7y ago
I've been enjoying using startpage. https://www.startpage.com https://www.startpage.com
- yumraj 7y ago
  How does it compare to DDG? In other words, I went from Google to DDG because of privacy. Why should I move from DDG to say StartPage, does it provide any additional benefits? To clarify, I'm totally open to other search engines, just an trying to understand more.
  - aphextim 7y ago
    It is in a sense a google proxy. Better results IMO than DDG, more similar to Google without sending your IP/info to google. I don't understand the stuff too much at a really high level to know which is more private, DDG vs Startpage. >On 29 March 2016, Ixquick.com was officially "merged" with the same company's Startpage search engine[3] (a search engine with the privacy features of Ixquick, but using only Google search results[4]). Users entering ixquick.com are now automatically re-routed to startpage.com. Ixquick had long declared on its sites, that it operated in compliance with European Union privacy standards, and it retained its original European search engine, Ixquick.eu,[8] until about April 2018, when it was also redirected to startpage.com. >Prior to the release of Tor Browser version 4.5, Startpage.com was its default search engine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startpage.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startpage.com

eznoonze 7y ago

Are you sure the season that G gives you "better" results is not a consequence of them tracking you everywhere and know your preferences and habits?

fauigerzigerk 7y ago
That's probably true to some degree, but I found that the most effective thing that Google does to improve search results is to connect multiple searches you submit in relatively quick succession. Googling a paper or article, skimming it, then searching for something that's in the text makes Google appear like magic. When I enter the first word of my follow-up question, Google will often suggest a complex 10 word query exactly like I would have entered it. Apparently, many people have the exact same follow-up questions that I have after reading the same text. That doesn't require a whole lot of tracking. It does require a session cookie, but that's not the sort of tracking I'm opposed to at all. Another thing that Google does well is searching for local content. I think this is very difficult to replicate for DDG. But for context free and non-local queries, Google is usually no better than DDG in spite of all the wealth of data they have on me. For some niches DDG is actually better than Google and they don't fill half of their result pages with ads. Sometimes I wonder whether the entire ad targeting thing is a fraud. Maybe Google doesn't actually track us after all ;-)
dragonwriter 7y ago
> Are you sure the season that G gives you "better" results is not a consequence of them tracking you everywhere and know your preferences and habits? I'm 100% sure that's why they give me better results. The options seem to be: (1) Don't use the web, (2) Give up decent search results and engage in a (probably only with limited success) tedious eternal war to prevent Google from tracking me, (3) Relax and let Google track me, but still give up the good search results, or (4) Take the payment Google is offering in exchange for tracking.

squarefoot 7y ago

"Say all you want about DDG and alternatives, but they still can't hold a candle to Google's search quality." I use DDG as main search engine since a while. It usually works, but occasionally (less than 10% of searches however) I have to repeat the search using Google. The point being that even if I had to revert to Google for half of my searches, this would mean for Google 50% less information about my search habits, and exposure to their injected ads/information, which wouldn't be a trivial figure at all. One doesn't use DDG because it's superior to Google (it's not and won't be for a long while) but rather to send a message to corporations making profits out of user information. I'm convinced Google doesn't give a rat's ass if ten thousands users like me don't use their search engine and services as we're already flagged in their database as users with adblockers, therefore immune to advertising (including ads that manage to defeat the blockers), but they would surely panic in terror should DDG use become somewhat trendy among Joe Users after some media coverage, social media campaign etc. The reason being that "normal", usually non technical, users are the ones providing Google mostly with real numbers because they allow webpages to analyze their habits and don't obfuscate their online behavior. Should a big number of those users make the transition to DDG or alternatives, we would likely hear of flying chairs at Google headquarters.

smichel17 7y ago
I use DDG because it's superior to Google. Maybe not in results, but in UX. In particular, I use bangs ALL the time. Given that I can just add !g to quickly search Google in the <5% of the time (based on my history) that I need it, I prefer DDG. (I would still use it for privacy reasons even if it were worse -- it was and I did for several years).

itronitron 7y ago

i have been using DDG exclusively for over a year now with no complaints or need to use Google search

inimino 7y ago

> Say all you want about DDG and alternatives, but they still can't hold a candle to Google's search quality. I prefer DDG and I almost never Google, except out of curiosity, but I see this sentiment a lot.

AriaMinaei 7y ago

> Say all you want about DDG and alternatives, but they still can't hold a candle to Google's search quality I started using DDG, believing that "it shows me inferior results, but privacy-wise, it is worth it." Yet I've come to learn that DDG's results are often on-par or better than Google, and inferior only a small fraction of the time. Often when I "!g" a query, I find that I get pretty much the same results with Google too. There are maybe 10% of cases where the results significantly differ. My perception now is that Google performs better on programming-related queries, and much better on giving me local results (especially results related to my city). But when searching for content that you'd often find on blogs, or looking for reviews of products, DDG almost always beats Google by showing less SEO-heavy, more authentic results. Edit: typo

boomboomsubban 7y ago

>They won't be the default search provider, but that will play to their advantage - Firefox out-of-the-box user experience will take a sharp nose dive...So what Mozilla will end up with is (a) a dip in funding and Right, like from 2014 to 2017 when Google wasn't the default search provider for Firefox. It was such a shame to see their income go from 300 million to 500 million.

liability 7y ago

Google's search quality has been on the decline for a while now. If that trend continues and DDG merely manages to stay the same, it will probably only be a few more years until they're as good as Google...

jldugger 7y ago

> At some point Google will get tired of this and will withdraw from the agreement. AFAICT, the situation is not so different from the days where Microsoft was paying Apple to avoid a defacto finding of monopoly.