6 ms·

I liked DDG a lot .. but when I discovered that it is effectively an UI over Bing (Yahoo?), I am a lot less impressed. Is there any search engine which is NOT

I liked DDG a lot .. but when I discovered that it is effectively an UI over Bing (Yahoo?), I am a lot less impressed. Is there any search engine which is NOT backed by an extremely heavyweight player?

okraszo 7y ago
Where did you find information it is really a "proxy" to Bing? I couldn't find such information. BTW, there is also similar private search that proxies queries to google - https://www.startpage.com/ https://www.startpage.com/
- mkl 7y ago
  From two days ago: Startpage is now owned by an advertising company https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/di5rn3/startpage_is_now_owned_by_an_advertising_company/ https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/di5rn3/startpage_i... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21371577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21371577
hnarn 7y ago
Your claim desperately needs a citation.
- mda 7y ago
  Logic. Creating and maintaining a half decent search engine requires a billion dollar worth of infrastructure and talent. They have neither.
  - sveme 7y ago
    That's circular. They don't have it because they could not? Alas, it's using bing as one source, it's more than just a proxy to bing. And they seem to have their own crawler as well.
    - sct202 7y ago
      I don't think I've ever seen DDG show up in my logs, and I found this article from a web host that listed out their top crawler traffic and DDG doesn't even register (but something called Sogou is): https://deviceatlas.com/blog/most-active-bots-and-crawlers-web https://deviceatlas.com/blog/most-active-bots-and-crawlers-w... It might be that DDG sticks to the to X thousand sites or something like that, so I would imagine that Bing must be providing the majority of the index, but maybe not for more popular queries.
nemasu 7y ago
Seems people can't find your source, so I did some digging and found this: "We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we also source from a variety of partners, including Verizon Media (formerly Yahoo) and Bing."[0] [0]https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so...
- mda 7y ago
  But what percentage of it comes from which partner? They never say this.
  - hnarn 7y ago
    And more importantly, what percentage does not come from any partner.
- Vinnl 7y ago
  ...so the order of results is still determined by DDG, right?
microcolonel 7y ago
They also use Yandex, I don't see the problem exactly. > Is there any search engine which is NOT backed by an extremely heavyweight player? Global search of most web pages worth finding is a heavyweight task.
s5ma6n 7y ago
Are you sure you are not confusing DDG with Ecosia? Ecosia is also an UI to Bing.
- mda 7y ago
  My guess is DDG mostly depends on bing technology, at least for anything that is non trivial. There is a lot of smoke and mirrors on what actually DDG is, i would be happy to learn about details of their deals, technology, etc.
laumars 7y ago
This comment is made a lot but it's only half true. DDG does use Bing to source some of it's results but it does have it's own crawlers too. In practice this means that it isn't "effectively a UI over Bing".
- sepeek 7y ago
  Here's an old but interesting SO post that if true would indicate otherwise https://stackoverflow.com/a/24089393 https://stackoverflow.com/a/24089393
gandalfian 7y ago
A service that combined yandex and google would probably cancel out most of the worlds censorship. I'm not sure where you would be allowed to run such a service from though...
- jhoechtl 7y ago
  In Russia DDG uses Yandex
  - tulunsutao 7y ago
    in Soviet Union...?
    - yellowapple 7y ago
      ...DuckDuckGo searches you?
rkangel 7y ago
As siblings have covered - it is a proxy for some search results. That's ok though - a privacy respecting proxy to a decent search engine is a useful thing. You get all the search results and they don't get to track you.
Sami_Lehtinen 7y ago
https://www.mojeek.com/ https://www.mojeek.com/

okraszo 7y ago

Where did you find information it is really a "proxy" to Bing? I couldn't find such information. BTW, there is also similar private search that proxies queries to google - https://www.startpage.com/ https://www.startpage.com/

mkl 7y ago
From two days ago: Startpage is now owned by an advertising company https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/di5rn3/startpage_is_now_owned_by_an_advertising_company/ https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/di5rn3/startpage_i... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21371577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21371577

hnarn 7y ago

Your claim desperately needs a citation.

mda 7y ago
Logic. Creating and maintaining a half decent search engine requires a billion dollar worth of infrastructure and talent. They have neither.
- sveme 7y ago
  That's circular. They don't have it because they could not? Alas, it's using bing as one source, it's more than just a proxy to bing. And they seem to have their own crawler as well.
  - sct202 7y ago
    I don't think I've ever seen DDG show up in my logs, and I found this article from a web host that listed out their top crawler traffic and DDG doesn't even register (but something called Sogou is): https://deviceatlas.com/blog/most-active-bots-and-crawlers-web https://deviceatlas.com/blog/most-active-bots-and-crawlers-w... It might be that DDG sticks to the to X thousand sites or something like that, so I would imagine that Bing must be providing the majority of the index, but maybe not for more popular queries.

nemasu 7y ago

Seems people can't find your source, so I did some digging and found this: "We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we also source from a variety of partners, including Verizon Media (formerly Yahoo) and Bing."[0] [0]https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so...

mda 7y ago
But what percentage of it comes from which partner? They never say this.
- hnarn 7y ago
  And more importantly, what percentage does not come from any partner.
Vinnl 7y ago
...so the order of results is still determined by DDG, right?

microcolonel 7y ago

They also use Yandex, I don't see the problem exactly. > Is there any search engine which is NOT backed by an extremely heavyweight player? Global search of most web pages worth finding is a heavyweight task.

s5ma6n 7y ago

Are you sure you are not confusing DDG with Ecosia? Ecosia is also an UI to Bing.

mda 7y ago
My guess is DDG mostly depends on bing technology, at least for anything that is non trivial. There is a lot of smoke and mirrors on what actually DDG is, i would be happy to learn about details of their deals, technology, etc.

laumars 7y ago

This comment is made a lot but it's only half true. DDG does use Bing to source some of it's results but it does have it's own crawlers too. In practice this means that it isn't "effectively a UI over Bing".

sepeek 7y ago
Here's an old but interesting SO post that if true would indicate otherwise https://stackoverflow.com/a/24089393 https://stackoverflow.com/a/24089393

gandalfian 7y ago

A service that combined yandex and google would probably cancel out most of the worlds censorship. I'm not sure where you would be allowed to run such a service from though...

jhoechtl 7y ago
In Russia DDG uses Yandex
- tulunsutao 7y ago
  in Soviet Union...?
  - yellowapple 7y ago
    ...DuckDuckGo searches you?

rkangel 7y ago

As siblings have covered - it is a proxy for some search results. That's ok though - a privacy respecting proxy to a decent search engine is a useful thing. You get all the search results and they don't get to track you.

Sami_Lehtinen 7y ago

https://www.mojeek.com/ https://www.mojeek.com/