4 ms·
When Google pays Apple $10B a year to be the default search engine on iOS it's "business". But when a no-name Chinese company redirects searches to Bing sudden
by soup10 7y ago
When Google pays Apple $10B a year to be the default search engine on iOS it's "business".
But when a no-name Chinese company redirects searches to Bing suddenly its "fraud" and "search hijacking" and a "national security threat".
All this really shows is the ridiculous amount of revenue search has that such a simple scheme is making 100M+
- RHSeeger 7y agoYes? They're completely different scenarios. One is setting the default search engine, the other is actively subverting the user's intention.
- chrischen 7y agoThe user’s intention is to proxy the search results so it is anonymized. Based on their chrome extension description it seems to do that. It works not unlike duckduckgo. Spinning it as some Anti-Chinese national security thing is probably unnecessary.
- z3t4 7y agoI don't think they anonymize the search, they just send it directly to Bing or Google. Anonymizing the search wouldn't earn them any money.
- computerex 7y agoHow does it earn them any money to begin with? I know the article claimed they have a revenue of $250 million a year, but unless they are somehow injecting their own ads, how does a simple redirection result in any revenue for them?
- stef25 7y agoThey do inject their own ads > [...] a search for “airpods” on Bing leads to a Search Encrypt search results page that has more ads than search results. A user would have to have the stamina to scroll through 10 text ads from Microsoft and then 5 image ads before coming to an organic search result
- Railsify 7y agoSo is there an ad bidding system and marketplace they run with a separate user interface that requires ad buyers to login and purchase ads?
- endsofinvention 7y agoThey use Bing for their search results and ads. Microsoft does all the work to onboard advertisers.
- powerapple 7y agoThey kind of do. They are a proxy service, so your IP and browsers are hidden I assume. The search results are coming from Bing and Google.
- fnord77 7y agothe searches are logged to a server in China. They're not private
- chrischen 7y agoI can’t seem to access the article anymore but I recall it saying their concern was the potential for the privacy policy to be changed at any time. This concern would be true for any company. Just having servers in China is not really much different from having servers in the US. The NSA probably logs more than it lets on.
- codeproject 7y agoit is clickbait with contemporary characteristics.