14 ms·

DuckDuckGo, Google, and Android choice screens

390 points by x32n23nr 6y ago

mohan85 6y ago
I am not against the need for data privacy, protection, etc., but got this question when looking at this. How much people got rich from Google - by quickly accessing the relevant blogs, articles or information, finding answers to the questions, code snippets and so on?
- themodelplumber 6y ago
  This is an interesting question. There's an economic value aspect to the issue, in that way. There's also an ethical and emotional aspect. Those who learned about these last two aspects later may feel like they could have done just as well had they explored alternatives. Instead they unknowingly went with the service that was not as transparent with them as it should have been. In this way I think it's fair to say that while individuals may consider the trade-off totally worth it or not worth it, they also have grounds to complain. Just like in society in general, one economic solution does not unmake all the ethical problems. Human culture has been working hard at transcending this dichotomy and people just expect more creativity and ethical intelligence these days. The attention given to DDG is I think a testament to this kind of market voice.
  - mohan85 6y ago
    I also agree that this is a people problem. But moving to DDG is also not a reliable solution according to me. When we imagine DDG at google scale and quality, DDG will need so much resources and money to maintain their service at that scale and there is no guarantee that their current business model will be enough to continue their operations. Between closing out the business Vs increasing revenue, I am sure majority of businesses will choose the later. At least for now we can say it is focused on privacy to take some market share out of Google.
bashallah 6y ago
Ironically DDG was down today about an hour ago
- x32n23nr 6y ago
  Ironically, Bing (powering DDG) is not mentioned in the article at all.
  - SuoDuanDao 6y ago
    Ironically, Bing Rewards is one of very few tools moving towards Lanier's glorious vision of paying people for their data.
  - gen3 6y ago
    Yes it was? “Today, DuckDuckGo combines data from more than 400 sources into its search results: Microsoft’s Bing is predominantly used to surface relevant pages, but Wikipedia, Apple Maps, TripAdvisor and DuckDuckGo’s own web crawler also contribute.”
- itchynosedev 6y ago
  I think it's more coincidental than ironic.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- FillardMillmore 6y ago
  I was wondering why my search queries were returning no results.
Ygg2 6y ago
I fear this is too little, too late. Also Google is defacto a browser monopoly too.
- 1MachineElf 6y ago
  Thankfully the new Microsoft Edge will save us. /s
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  Defacto browser monopoly? What is Chrome's market/usage share?
  - amsully 6y ago
    It looks to be between 60-70% depending on what data is used. https://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php https://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php
  - staplers 6y ago
    Tracker/analytics data won't be correct for Firefox or people using privacy-centric browsers as they inherently block that. I think it'd be hard to get a real number without polling a lot of people. A lot of people assume Chrome has the monopoly based on looking at false analytics.
    - lucasmullens 6y ago
      Firefox definitely sends its user-agent to servers, so wouldn't server-side analytics still work?
      - staplers 6y ago
        Perhaps, and this is likely the case with most users. But there still exists many users with extensions disabling fingerprinting and such.
      - DreadY2K 6y ago
bko 6y ago
I love ddg and use it as my primary search engine, resorting to !g for google queries about 25% of the time. If anyone is curious about how ddg results compare to that of google, check out a site I made Search Compare [0] that shows the results of each side by side. Note that it looks at the html version of ddg results. One downside of ddg is that they do a worse job at filtering our conspiracy theories [0] search-compare.netlify.app
- benbristow 6y ago
  > One downside of ddg is that they do a worse job at filtering our conspiracy theories I'd argue that's not particularly a bad thing as it means there's less censorship going on. Even if most conspiracy theories are completely bonkers
dageshi 6y ago
Google got rich finding the information you wanted.
- hammock 6y ago
  And the insight is that knowing what you want is as much about knowing you as it is about knowing what's on the internet.
- crazyjncsu 6y ago
  And many here are too young to remember the hellscape of competing search engines predating Google: Infoseek, excite, yahoo, altavista, etc. Their poor experience and dubious practices likely spawned Google's internal motto: "don't be evil"
  - na85 6y ago
    >Their poor experience and dubious practices likely spawned Google's internal motto: "don't be evil" Sure, I remember the bad ol' days. But Google has (IMHO) become the thing they set out to disrupt. The quality of Google results has declined dramatically in the last 5 years or so. It's all marketing bullshit now, just as Altavista or whomever was. Finding content I want, as opposed to content advertisers want me to find, is becoming very difficult via Google.
    - v7p1Qbt1im 6y ago
      You could argue that the quality of the web itself has declined in much the same way. SEO is a billion dollar industry with the singular goal of analyzing everything search engines do to push whatever crap they want to run ads on. As Google is the market leader, every website is optimized for its ranking. Much like leading operating systems have the most malware issues. Many people on HN complain that blogs and personal websites aren‘t prioritized in results anymore compared to bigger news sites. I imagine it‘s incredibly difficult to separate legitimate, trustworthy posts from useless blog spam and agenda/conspiracy-pushing crap in a reliable automated way.
skrebbel 6y ago
Does anyone here understand how it is that Bing is powering DDG? Does DDG just generate lots of Bing searches and scrape the result? If so, why wouldn't MS block them? Or did they strike some sort of deal? If so, how can that be in Bing's interest? They're just creating a Bing competitor, right? Given that Bing reasonably wants to be the #2 search engine, supporting a formidable competitor striving for the same spot doesn't sound like a winning strategy for Bing. Right? What am I missing? :-)
- luhn 6y ago
  Microsoft offers a Bing API [1]. So Microsoft is getting paid by DDG for using Bing. Given Google's domination of the search market, I think it makes sense for Microsoft to sell their search API and let other companies help chip away at Google's user base. [1] https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/bing-web-search-api/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-service...
  - chris_f 6y ago
    Correct. The list price for the Bing web search API is $30/10,000 searches. I wouldn't be surprised if DDG was also able to negotiate a volume discount. In addition, DDG serves ads from the Microsoft ad network, so they will also make money there. Also, worth noting that Google provides the same type of service through API. I built a search engine [0] where Google web results are one of many sources used. [0] https://www.runnaroo.com https://www.runnaroo.com
    - lgats 6y ago
      For those curious, "[Google] Custom Search JSON API provides 100 search queries per day for free. ...Additional requests cost $5 per 1000 queries, up to 10k queries per day." It seems runnaroo would therefore be limited to 10k searches/day?
      - x32n23nr 6y ago
        Not necessarily. Startpage uses Google for all of its results. > You can’t beat Google when it comes to online search. So we’re paying them to use their brilliant search results in order to remove all trackers and logs. - https://startpage.com https://startpage.com Does anyone know how one can get whatever deal Startpage has?
benbristow 6y ago
DuckDuckGo is good, I've used it for a few months at a time in the past. Always end up switching back to Google because of local results (I live in the UK, DDG's results are very US-centric even when local results are turned on). Maybe it's gotten better recently. I've seen lots of billboards for DuckDuckGo recently around my hometown in Paisley, Scotland; not a very techie place so they're clearly trying to gain a reach! I've been using Bing for the past few months and been quite happy with it, only switching to use Google for Maps results and the odd very niche query. The bonus of Bing is that it pays you in supermarket shopping vouchers where Google doesn't. Sold!
- kd913 6y ago
  Funny you said that, today I noticed DDG seems to have changed some location thing. At the top bar, it seems to state specifically the UK being the location. Searching for things like amazon seems to also return amazon.co.uk rather than amazon.com.
  - benbristow 6y ago
    Searching Amazon, on DDG, in UK local mode, I get as my first results: - Amazon.co.uk (UK) - Amazon.com (US) - Amazon.in (India) - Amazon.com / prime (US Prime) - Amazon.ca (Canada) On Bing conversely I get: - Amazon.co.uk (with links to sections of the site like books/today's deals etc. etc. underneath) - Amazon.com/uk (US site but redirects to UK site) - Amazon.co.uk Your Account Section - Amazon Prime (UK) - Amazon Deals (UK) Bing's results are clearly more UK centric and therefore more relevant to me as a British citizen. For that reason I can't really make the full-time switch to DDG as I keep !g'ing to get UK results and it becomes a pain.
    - jdmichal 6y ago
      If you're happy with Bing's direct results, you can !b instead of !g also.
      - benbristow 6y ago
chrisco255 6y ago
I've been using DDG for a year now and don't miss Google. I feel like I often get worse results on Google as I have to sift through more ads and click bait. The only thing I worry about, is if DDG gets too big, what stops them from becoming Google-like?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- loufe 6y ago
  If DDG gets big I would argue Google will still be in play, and by that time I think the discussions around search engine options in the general populace will make it such that the space is more competitive.
- antepodius 6y ago
  Nothing, just move on to the next upstart.
whisps 6y ago
I've used DDG as my default search for both desktop and mobile for about a year now. It's good enough in a lot of cases, though I still find myself using Google for a lot of local searches and current events-related searches.
- x32n23nr 6y ago
  If you consider it moral to block first party ads on Google, most adblockers should prevent ads from being loaded. Are you using one?
ta17711771 6y ago
See also: Qwant.com Startpage.com Searx
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- DrPhish 6y ago
  I host my own searx instance and can totally recommend it. I have it set as the default engine on all my devices and I don't miss google at all. Not sure why you'd go to the trouble of avoiding google and just give all your data away to ddg? Anyone other than yourself is liable to become/be acquired by some shady entity
- fsflover 6y ago
  See also: https://yacy.net https://yacy.net.
- abawany 6y ago
  I have been using Qwant almost exclusively for the last year. I am very pleased with the results and my (increasingly) infrequent comparisons with Google on the same string increase my confidence that it provides good results for my needs.
- analyte123 6y ago
  Qwant also uses Bing as a backend, and so their results are usually very similar to DDG. Searx is metasearch so it depends a lot on the particular instance you use. If anyone is interested in exploring alternative search indices, try Yippy, Mojeek, or private.sh (a proxy to Gigablast run by PIA). Yippy is actually pretty OK. The other two are somewhat marginal but will occasionally pop up an interesting result you'd never see on another engine.
- Sami_Lehtinen 6y ago
  Mojeek is independent search engine with their own index: https://mojeek.com/ https://mojeek.com/
- eino 6y ago
throwaway4715 6y ago
How does Duck Duck Go make money? I clicked around their site for a while, but didn't find anything.
- timerol 6y ago
  Ads, but without targeting. They sell the search terms entered in an anonymized way. So you can buy an ad that will display to everyone who searches DuckDuckGo for "vacuum cleaner". You cannot buy an ad that will display to women aged 30-40 who live alone in a zip code where the median income is above $100k when they search "vacuum cleaner".
  - Eli_P 6y ago
    What's interesting, does that strategy end like: less effective ads -> need more of them -> raise ad price + show more of them? Another thing is regarding k-anonymity which I suppose privacy-first guys would use. If I gather user info with a high entropy, I don't have an incentive to sell it to anybody and create a competitor, and it'd probably illegal to do that. But if I anonymize the data set into a k-anon data it's now less restrictive to sell from legal point, also I'll probably sell that data to third parties just to make ends meet.
- joekrill 6y ago
  From a Forbes interview[1]: > Weinberg: We make money the same way other search engines make money. When you type in “car,” you get a car ad. We syndicate Microsoft and Yahoo ads through the Microsoft Yahoo Search Alliance. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestreptalks/2016/02/19/the-founder-of-duckduckgo-explains-how-to-get-customers-before-you-have-a-product-and-why-challenging-google-isnt-insane https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestreptalks/2016/02/19/the-...
- chris_f 6y ago
  Context based ads from the Microsoft ad network, and affiliate links. https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/company/advertising-and-affiliates/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/company/ad...
- deleted 6y ago
memexy 6y ago
> The sheet of paper led to the creation of I’ve Got a Fang, a crowd-sourced site where people could contribute authoritative URLs on particular subjects. Weinberg, who lives in Philadelphia, believed the knowledge from people’s heads could be better than Google’s algorithms. Google initially was bootstrapped by crawling such curated lists. Now that people are relying on search instead of curating their own lists search quality is starting to decline. So I'm going to make a prediction. Federated knowledge bases with curated links are going to make a comeback because only humans can create semantically meaningful content for other humans.
- slim 6y ago
  I think it's already solved by social networks. You could consider twitter for example a curated list.
  - memexy 6y ago
    Social networks only allow very constrained forms of knowledge engineering. When I mentioned knowledge bases with links I meant in the sense of a programmable memex where the documents can be connected, annotated, and presented in arbitrary ways.
mrgreenfur 6y ago
I like DDG as much as the next person, but does anyone else think that Mozilla should offer a privacy-friendly search engine? I know it's a big part of their revenue model, but it seems like a core piece of internet infrastructure that should not be so open to monetization.
- osamagirl69 6y ago
  I would rather Mozilla sticks to making a browser that works well and respects privacy. Generally their explorations outside of Firefox (Pocket, the Dr. Robot fiasco, etc) have been regressions of the aforementioned goals.
  - wolco 6y ago
    Mr Robot to you. Some saw that as a success.
- tehjoker 6y ago
  I'd be inclined to agree, but building a new competitive search engine is a big ask. O.o
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- GuB-42 6y ago
  No! Mozilla had enough failures already as it tried to do things that are not Firefox. A search engine is a huge endeavor, and I'd rather have them focus on Firefox. Firefox is, after all, the only real alternative to Chrome, others are just different Chromium front-ends, it is important. Or they can do like everyone else: an somewhat anonymized front-end for Bing, but what's the point? We already have DDG and a few others.
- abc-xyz 6y ago
  People should get behind an open source solution, such as Searx (https://searx.space/ https://searx.space/) or Ask.Moe (https://ask.moe/ https://ask.moe/). I love DDG, but at the end of the day they’re for-profit, US-based and closed source.
shadowgovt 6y ago
I'd love to read this article, but this website apparently uses cookies to vend information about me to advertisers.
- badRNG 6y ago
  Here you go: https://outline.com/S7vXVy https://outline.com/S7vXVy In the future, it may be worthwhile to download some plugins like Cookie Autodelete, uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, etc.
Taylor_OD 6y ago
I have used DDG for the last few years as my search engine and phone browser. I'd like to move off chrome on the desktop as well but it feels like the changeover costs of losing some small chrome extensions that I love would be too high.
- 51Cards 6y ago
  I'm curious what those extentions are as Firefox has a fairly roboust extension environment.
- bconnorwhite 6y ago
  Brave can use Chrome extensions as it is built on Chromium. Highly recommend the Brave + DDG combo, better experience than Chrome + Google imo
Nasrudith 6y ago
To be frank the rhetoric in the headline is just plain incredibly fucking stupid, to put it more precisely the notion is downright illiterate technically and economically. A website which doesn't take your data is just an error code. The data is generated by transactions on their computer based upon what you give them. The economics insinuates theft of the universal value fallacy. The "medievil economics by bored feudalists who stay far away from any merchants and conclude water in a desert is the same price as by a river and the only way any merchant can make money is fraud". Trivially false and yet the bad ideas were believed by people for centuries anyway.
- ryanianian 6y ago
  What?
  - DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
    I'm guessing that the OP is arguing against the phrase "from your data". It tacitly assumes that data can be owned, and that the end-user is the rightful owner. But I can't make any sense of the second part of the OP.
    - petargyurov 6y ago
      It reads like bot-generated content.
- bananamerica 6y ago
  Isn’t the expression used rhetorically device and therefore should be interpreted in a non-literal fashion?
- tmpz22 6y ago
  This is straight from /r/iamverysmart
  - thehappypm 6y ago
    Almost feels like it was written by a bot.
Semaphor 6y ago
It’s funny. I’m currently having some hardware problems, figuring out what the problem is, I reinstalled windows. A lot. And every time FF defaulted to google (because apparently Search Engines are not synced). And holy hell. Google Germany results are utterly unusable. For anything I searched that had an original download site, google gives me some scammy German site that either relinks the original site after several (ad-riddled) clicks or even worse, has their own installer, presumably bundling the original with adware. I always read here about people complaining about how bad DDG’s localized results are. Considering they usually talk about switching back to google, I can’t comprehend that.
- BiteCode_dev 6y ago
  I am one of the complainers about the bad ddg localized results, espacially for french ones. But one day, I experienced what it was to use Google without ublock origin, by mistake. It was a horrible mess. Then it hit me: the main benefit of DDG is that it's clean, even if you don't know anything about ad blockers.
  - scaryclam 6y ago
    Funnily enough, the clean thing is what really kick-started google (at least for the group of people I know). Going from the unholy mess of links on Yahoo! to google with their single search box and a couple of links was a giant step forward.
    - eitland 6y ago
      Even more funny they had a decade of my searches and online activity before I started adblocking and supposedly some of the sharpest minds of our time employeed to make me click on ads and I can't recall buying a single thing from a Google ad, mostly because the ads where ridiculously misplaced. Facebook on the other hand, a company where I only have a minimal profile since I utterly distrust them[0] manages to serve me not only less annoying but sometimes actual useful ads (as: I've bought things from Instagram or Facebook ads that have saved me money and improved my quality of life). [0]: Google I just dislike and treat with caution. They seem competent with data security and obsessed with protecting all their juicy data even if - at least to me - they seem so utterly incompetent at uskng it to match ads to profiles that I have suggested it might be some sort of scam against ad buyers ;-)
random3 6y ago
I understand the monopoly concern, but disagree with the title. Somehow the fact that a company got rich by using your data is the problem and most important aspect to put in the title, not the monopoly?
jessriedel 6y ago
Data about me is not the same thing as my data.
- crawlcrawler 6y ago
  Why not?
  - jessriedel 6y ago
    In this case, "my" is being used to denote some sort of ownership (in the sense of "my bike") rather than mere association ("my mom"). It's being used to convince the reader that they should feel that something that is rightfully theirs has been taken/exploited by someone else. But insofar as we have (formal and informal) notions of information ownership, we (sensibly) assign ownership of that info based on who collects/computes that info, not the person about whom that info refers. If I collect information about how many cars go down the highway each day, the only entity who might be the owner of that data is me, not the driver's of the cars or the city through which the highway runs. If Google collects and exploits information about you (e.g., how many web searches per month you make), there certainly may be privacy principles they are violating, but not ownership issues. If Google were taking information you had generated/collected (e.g., if they sold illegal copies of the novel you wrote on Google Docs), that would be an ownership issue, but that is usually not the sort of thing people are worried about.
viach 6y ago
Competing with Google is hard and DDG serves very specific niche trying to do it. With this niche growing big enough both Bing and Yandex share it, in a way. Imagine a successful business which is built solely on your API. I think the real problem DDG solves is the need of independent brand for Bing and Yandex, fitting this niche.
carterklein13 6y ago
It's interesting seeing DDG trying to break into a larger space. In my experience, the only people I know that know DDG are also people in tech. I live in NYC and I'm seeing lots of billboards in the city and on highways in NJ surrounding the city as I have family that regularly travels in/out. I've seen a lot of whack billboards in my day but it really caught me by surprise seeing them try and make this push. It's exciting, and hope it'll gain some traction. However, I think the vast majority of people will still just use whatever browser and whatever search comes bundled with their machine.
bla3 6y ago
I like DDG, but this is strange rhetoric. DDG is as much for-profit as Google. It's not *fighting back", it's trying to make a profit by trying to position itself in a way that's different from Google and in a way that it's hoping is compelling. So far, it's mostly failing at that and only serves a niche population. A growing one, though.
- crawlcrawler 6y ago
  >> it's trying to make a profit by trying to position itself in a way that's different from Google and in a way that it's hoping is compelling Looks like DDG is "fighting back" the right for people to have privacy online.
  - godelski 6y ago
    This is what is compelling, to me, about DDG. It isn't the profit that bugs me about Google, it is the data collection. It isn't even that I think Google is doing anything nefarious with that data, but the difference is that I'm giving something to Google and not to DDG and DDG's results are good enough to not warrant giving Google anything (i.e. DDG works great for >90% of my searches).
- catacombs 6y ago
  I'd rather have two companies fighting for search results instead of one. There's a sense of choice. > It's not *fighting back", it's trying to make a profit by trying to position itself in a way that's different from Google and in a way that it's hoping is compelling. In that case, please start a Google/DDG competitor that's just as good and uses a non-profit model. I'll happily use your service.
- koheripbal 6y ago
  Agreed - although we should still heavily support the alternatives because a healthy ecosystem for search does not mean having one near-monopoly.
leephillips 6y ago
“we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.” -- Sergey Brin and Larry Page: http://www.zdnet.com/article/google-advertising-and-search-engine-bias/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/google-advertising-and-search-e...
- sidibe 6y ago
  How is DuckDuckGo funded?
  - jvolkman 6y ago
    Ads.
  - rement 6y ago
    Ads. However, DuckDuckGo does not run their own ad network. The ads you are shown are only based on the current keyword from your search. edit: Here is a quora answer from the CEO at DuckDuckGo posted a couple years ago talking about how the company is funded. [0] [0]: https://www.quora.com/How-is-DuckDuckGo-funded?share=1 https://www.quora.com/How-is-DuckDuckGo-funded?share=1
paulcole 6y ago
DuckDuckGo has been absolutely atrocious for me. Searches that Google can absolutely nail, DDG returns results where the right thing isn't even on the front page. I tried to pretend like I cared more about privacy than results but the god's honest truth is I don't. I want the results I want and Google provides them.
- WalterSear 6y ago
  This has been my experience. It's particularly egregious when looking for anything in the academic literature.
- TheJoeMan 6y ago
  Well say you're learning Swift programming. On google, the 12th search for "override init" will assume you mean Swift. On DDG, you need to make each search self-contained, so "Swift override init"
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ed25519FUUU 6y ago
From their open positions: > A fundamental understanding of complex data structures and algorithms, which enables you to develop and apply new solutions and confidently navigate and improve existing code (ours is mostly written with Perl). Would love to hear more about this. That kind of surprised (frightened?) me to be honest.
telaelit 6y ago
I use DDG for all my general searching, but I've found that Google is better for searching for technical things. So I haven't stopped using Google Search completely :(
tictok4 6y ago
I like DDG but always seem to get Russian localized results. I am in the USA.
dang 6y ago
I couldn't find any representative phrase [1] in the article that would make a better (less baity, more accurate and neutral) title, so have taken a crack at making something up. If someone has a better suggestion we can change it again. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20representative%20title&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
TheJoeMan 6y ago
I would be more worried about Google's auction process. It's cleverly evil, because the bid price to be on the start screen will asymptotically approach the phone owner's lifetime value from search ads. Then Google couldn't give two farts which search engine you use because they get paid either way.
- s17n 6y ago
  The point is to prevent Google from getting paid for the work that the put into Android, the point is to foment competition in the search space.
surround 6y ago
I wish that DuckDuckGo would focus more on their search engine. DuckDuckHack was responsible for instant answers, but they discontinued it in favor of developing their browser extension. https://duckduckhack.com/ https://duckduckhack.com/ Their browser extension sucks. It’s just a bunch of different privacy extensions (Privacy Badger, HTTPS Everywhere, TOSDR) which have been watered down and mashed together. And it automatically changes your default search engine to DDG, which was the real intent for developing the extension all along. Instant answers are important. Ever search for the definition of a word (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=assonance https://duckduckgo.com/?q=assonance), or want to set a timer (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=timer https://duckduckgo.com/?q=timer)? These were made possible by DuckDuckHack. Now they are stuck; they cannot be changed, and no new ones can be created.
wdn 6y ago
I used DDG until I've searched for "PDF watermark remover free" and the top result is watermarkremoveronline.com, a scam site. Probably with malware as well. I did the same search on Bing and Google and the scam site is not part of the search result. DDG emphasizes on privacy. Yet, allow scamming site returned as top result.
mattlondon 6y ago
Hopefully this will allow me to change the hard-coded Google search box on pixel home screens! I have the DDG search widget, but I cannot remove the Google search box that appears to be hard-coded to the home screen with no way to remove it or change the search provider (... unless someone knows otherwise?) So now I have two search widgets... I can use a separate launcher I guess, but it would be nice if I could just configure this without resorting to that.
compsciphd 6y ago
hah, I was going to write a Ask HN but never got around to it that I had noticed that bing and DDG has the exact same results for many of my searches.
gagahpangeran 6y ago
I've been using DDG for almost two years. I often search the error message of my code as keyword and then there's a box that show the best solution (mostly from stackoverflow). I use that solution and mostly it works and made my work faster.
gundmc 6y ago
I'm surprised that there are nearly zero comments about the subject of the article - the choice screens and associated auction. It seems like a reasonable implementation to me. Maybe the number of choices can be upped from 3 to 5 to help drive prices down. But surely there has to be some upper bound of the number of options?

390 points by x32n23nr 6y ago

I am not against the need for data privacy, protection, etc., but got this question when looking at this. How much people got rich from Google - by quickly accessing the relevant blogs, articles or information, finding answers to the questions, code snippets and so on?

themodelplumber 6y ago
This is an interesting question. There's an economic value aspect to the issue, in that way. There's also an ethical and emotional aspect. Those who learned about these last two aspects later may feel like they could have done just as well had they explored alternatives. Instead they unknowingly went with the service that was not as transparent with them as it should have been. In this way I think it's fair to say that while individuals may consider the trade-off totally worth it or not worth it, they also have grounds to complain. Just like in society in general, one economic solution does not unmake all the ethical problems. Human culture has been working hard at transcending this dichotomy and people just expect more creativity and ethical intelligence these days. The attention given to DDG is I think a testament to this kind of market voice.
- mohan85 6y ago
  I also agree that this is a people problem. But moving to DDG is also not a reliable solution according to me. When we imagine DDG at google scale and quality, DDG will need so much resources and money to maintain their service at that scale and there is no guarantee that their current business model will be enough to continue their operations. Between closing out the business Vs increasing revenue, I am sure majority of businesses will choose the later. At least for now we can say it is focused on privacy to take some market share out of Google.

bashallah 6y ago

Ironically DDG was down today about an hour ago

x32n23nr 6y ago
Ironically, Bing (powering DDG) is not mentioned in the article at all.
- SuoDuanDao 6y ago
  Ironically, Bing Rewards is one of very few tools moving towards Lanier's glorious vision of paying people for their data.
- gen3 6y ago
  Yes it was? “Today, DuckDuckGo combines data from more than 400 sources into its search results: Microsoft’s Bing is predominantly used to surface relevant pages, but Wikipedia, Apple Maps, TripAdvisor and DuckDuckGo’s own web crawler also contribute.”
itchynosedev 6y ago
I think it's more coincidental than ironic.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
FillardMillmore 6y ago
I was wondering why my search queries were returning no results.

Ygg2 6y ago

I fear this is too little, too late. Also Google is defacto a browser monopoly too.

1MachineElf 6y ago
Thankfully the new Microsoft Edge will save us. /s
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
Defacto browser monopoly? What is Chrome's market/usage share?
- amsully 6y ago
  It looks to be between 60-70% depending on what data is used. https://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php https://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php
- staplers 6y ago
  Tracker/analytics data won't be correct for Firefox or people using privacy-centric browsers as they inherently block that. I think it'd be hard to get a real number without polling a lot of people. A lot of people assume Chrome has the monopoly based on looking at false analytics.
  - lucasmullens 6y ago
    Firefox definitely sends its user-agent to servers, so wouldn't server-side analytics still work?
    - staplers 6y ago
      Perhaps, and this is likely the case with most users. But there still exists many users with extensions disabling fingerprinting and such.
    - DreadY2K 6y ago

bko 6y ago

I love ddg and use it as my primary search engine, resorting to !g for google queries about 25% of the time. If anyone is curious about how ddg results compare to that of google, check out a site I made Search Compare [0] that shows the results of each side by side. Note that it looks at the html version of ddg results. One downside of ddg is that they do a worse job at filtering our conspiracy theories [0] search-compare.netlify.app

benbristow 6y ago
> One downside of ddg is that they do a worse job at filtering our conspiracy theories I'd argue that's not particularly a bad thing as it means there's less censorship going on. Even if most conspiracy theories are completely bonkers

dageshi 6y ago

Google got rich finding the information you wanted.

hammock 6y ago
And the insight is that knowing what you want is as much about knowing you as it is about knowing what's on the internet.
crazyjncsu 6y ago
And many here are too young to remember the hellscape of competing search engines predating Google: Infoseek, excite, yahoo, altavista, etc. Their poor experience and dubious practices likely spawned Google's internal motto: "don't be evil"
- na85 6y ago
  >Their poor experience and dubious practices likely spawned Google's internal motto: "don't be evil" Sure, I remember the bad ol' days. But Google has (IMHO) become the thing they set out to disrupt. The quality of Google results has declined dramatically in the last 5 years or so. It's all marketing bullshit now, just as Altavista or whomever was. Finding content I want, as opposed to content advertisers want me to find, is becoming very difficult via Google.
  - v7p1Qbt1im 6y ago
    You could argue that the quality of the web itself has declined in much the same way. SEO is a billion dollar industry with the singular goal of analyzing everything search engines do to push whatever crap they want to run ads on. As Google is the market leader, every website is optimized for its ranking. Much like leading operating systems have the most malware issues. Many people on HN complain that blogs and personal websites aren‘t prioritized in results anymore compared to bigger news sites. I imagine it‘s incredibly difficult to separate legitimate, trustworthy posts from useless blog spam and agenda/conspiracy-pushing crap in a reliable automated way.

skrebbel 6y ago

Does anyone here understand how it is that Bing is powering DDG? Does DDG just generate lots of Bing searches and scrape the result? If so, why wouldn't MS block them? Or did they strike some sort of deal? If so, how can that be in Bing's interest? They're just creating a Bing competitor, right? Given that Bing reasonably wants to be the #2 search engine, supporting a formidable competitor striving for the same spot doesn't sound like a winning strategy for Bing. Right? What am I missing? :-)

luhn 6y ago
Microsoft offers a Bing API [1]. So Microsoft is getting paid by DDG for using Bing. Given Google's domination of the search market, I think it makes sense for Microsoft to sell their search API and let other companies help chip away at Google's user base. [1] https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/bing-web-search-api/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-service...
- chris_f 6y ago
  Correct. The list price for the Bing web search API is $30/10,000 searches. I wouldn't be surprised if DDG was also able to negotiate a volume discount. In addition, DDG serves ads from the Microsoft ad network, so they will also make money there. Also, worth noting that Google provides the same type of service through API. I built a search engine [0] where Google web results are one of many sources used. [0] https://www.runnaroo.com https://www.runnaroo.com
  - lgats 6y ago
    For those curious, "[Google] Custom Search JSON API provides 100 search queries per day for free. ...Additional requests cost $5 per 1000 queries, up to 10k queries per day." It seems runnaroo would therefore be limited to 10k searches/day?
    - x32n23nr 6y ago
      Not necessarily. Startpage uses Google for all of its results. > You can’t beat Google when it comes to online search. So we’re paying them to use their brilliant search results in order to remove all trackers and logs. - https://startpage.com https://startpage.com Does anyone know how one can get whatever deal Startpage has?

benbristow 6y ago

DuckDuckGo is good, I've used it for a few months at a time in the past. Always end up switching back to Google because of local results (I live in the UK, DDG's results are very US-centric even when local results are turned on). Maybe it's gotten better recently. I've seen lots of billboards for DuckDuckGo recently around my hometown in Paisley, Scotland; not a very techie place so they're clearly trying to gain a reach! I've been using Bing for the past few months and been quite happy with it, only switching to use Google for Maps results and the odd very niche query. The bonus of Bing is that it pays you in supermarket shopping vouchers where Google doesn't. Sold!

kd913 6y ago
Funny you said that, today I noticed DDG seems to have changed some location thing. At the top bar, it seems to state specifically the UK being the location. Searching for things like amazon seems to also return amazon.co.uk rather than amazon.com.
- benbristow 6y ago
  Searching Amazon, on DDG, in UK local mode, I get as my first results: - Amazon.co.uk (UK) - Amazon.com (US) - Amazon.in (India) - Amazon.com / prime (US Prime) - Amazon.ca (Canada) On Bing conversely I get: - Amazon.co.uk (with links to sections of the site like books/today's deals etc. etc. underneath) - Amazon.com/uk (US site but redirects to UK site) - Amazon.co.uk Your Account Section - Amazon Prime (UK) - Amazon Deals (UK) Bing's results are clearly more UK centric and therefore more relevant to me as a British citizen. For that reason I can't really make the full-time switch to DDG as I keep !g'ing to get UK results and it becomes a pain.
  - jdmichal 6y ago
    If you're happy with Bing's direct results, you can !b instead of !g also.
    - benbristow 6y ago

chrisco255 6y ago

I've been using DDG for a year now and don't miss Google. I feel like I often get worse results on Google as I have to sift through more ads and click bait. The only thing I worry about, is if DDG gets too big, what stops them from becoming Google-like?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
loufe 6y ago
If DDG gets big I would argue Google will still be in play, and by that time I think the discussions around search engine options in the general populace will make it such that the space is more competitive.
antepodius 6y ago
Nothing, just move on to the next upstart.

whisps 6y ago

I've used DDG as my default search for both desktop and mobile for about a year now. It's good enough in a lot of cases, though I still find myself using Google for a lot of local searches and current events-related searches.

x32n23nr 6y ago
If you consider it moral to block first party ads on Google, most adblockers should prevent ads from being loaded. Are you using one?

ta17711771 6y ago

See also: Qwant.com Startpage.com Searx

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
DrPhish 6y ago
I host my own searx instance and can totally recommend it. I have it set as the default engine on all my devices and I don't miss google at all. Not sure why you'd go to the trouble of avoiding google and just give all your data away to ddg? Anyone other than yourself is liable to become/be acquired by some shady entity
fsflover 6y ago
See also: https://yacy.net https://yacy.net.
abawany 6y ago
I have been using Qwant almost exclusively for the last year. I am very pleased with the results and my (increasingly) infrequent comparisons with Google on the same string increase my confidence that it provides good results for my needs.
analyte123 6y ago
Qwant also uses Bing as a backend, and so their results are usually very similar to DDG. Searx is metasearch so it depends a lot on the particular instance you use. If anyone is interested in exploring alternative search indices, try Yippy, Mojeek, or private.sh (a proxy to Gigablast run by PIA). Yippy is actually pretty OK. The other two are somewhat marginal but will occasionally pop up an interesting result you'd never see on another engine.
Sami_Lehtinen 6y ago
Mojeek is independent search engine with their own index: https://mojeek.com/ https://mojeek.com/
eino 6y ago

throwaway4715 6y ago

How does Duck Duck Go make money? I clicked around their site for a while, but didn't find anything.

timerol 6y ago
Ads, but without targeting. They sell the search terms entered in an anonymized way. So you can buy an ad that will display to everyone who searches DuckDuckGo for "vacuum cleaner". You cannot buy an ad that will display to women aged 30-40 who live alone in a zip code where the median income is above $100k when they search "vacuum cleaner".
- Eli_P 6y ago
  What's interesting, does that strategy end like: less effective ads -> need more of them -> raise ad price + show more of them? Another thing is regarding k-anonymity which I suppose privacy-first guys would use. If I gather user info with a high entropy, I don't have an incentive to sell it to anybody and create a competitor, and it'd probably illegal to do that. But if I anonymize the data set into a k-anon data it's now less restrictive to sell from legal point, also I'll probably sell that data to third parties just to make ends meet.
joekrill 6y ago
From a Forbes interview[1]: > Weinberg: We make money the same way other search engines make money. When you type in “car,” you get a car ad. We syndicate Microsoft and Yahoo ads through the Microsoft Yahoo Search Alliance. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestreptalks/2016/02/19/the-founder-of-duckduckgo-explains-how-to-get-customers-before-you-have-a-product-and-why-challenging-google-isnt-insane https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestreptalks/2016/02/19/the-...
chris_f 6y ago
Context based ads from the Microsoft ad network, and affiliate links. https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/company/advertising-and-affiliates/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/company/ad...
deleted 6y ago

memexy 6y ago

> The sheet of paper led to the creation of I’ve Got a Fang, a crowd-sourced site where people could contribute authoritative URLs on particular subjects. Weinberg, who lives in Philadelphia, believed the knowledge from people’s heads could be better than Google’s algorithms. Google initially was bootstrapped by crawling such curated lists. Now that people are relying on search instead of curating their own lists search quality is starting to decline. So I'm going to make a prediction. Federated knowledge bases with curated links are going to make a comeback because only humans can create semantically meaningful content for other humans.

slim 6y ago
I think it's already solved by social networks. You could consider twitter for example a curated list.
- memexy 6y ago
  Social networks only allow very constrained forms of knowledge engineering. When I mentioned knowledge bases with links I meant in the sense of a programmable memex where the documents can be connected, annotated, and presented in arbitrary ways.

mrgreenfur 6y ago

I like DDG as much as the next person, but does anyone else think that Mozilla should offer a privacy-friendly search engine? I know it's a big part of their revenue model, but it seems like a core piece of internet infrastructure that should not be so open to monetization.

osamagirl69 6y ago
I would rather Mozilla sticks to making a browser that works well and respects privacy. Generally their explorations outside of Firefox (Pocket, the Dr. Robot fiasco, etc) have been regressions of the aforementioned goals.
- wolco 6y ago
  Mr Robot to you. Some saw that as a success.
tehjoker 6y ago
I'd be inclined to agree, but building a new competitive search engine is a big ask. O.o
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
GuB-42 6y ago
No! Mozilla had enough failures already as it tried to do things that are not Firefox. A search engine is a huge endeavor, and I'd rather have them focus on Firefox. Firefox is, after all, the only real alternative to Chrome, others are just different Chromium front-ends, it is important. Or they can do like everyone else: an somewhat anonymized front-end for Bing, but what's the point? We already have DDG and a few others.
abc-xyz 6y ago
People should get behind an open source solution, such as Searx (https://searx.space/ https://searx.space/) or Ask.Moe (https://ask.moe/ https://ask.moe/). I love DDG, but at the end of the day they’re for-profit, US-based and closed source.

shadowgovt 6y ago

I'd love to read this article, but this website apparently uses cookies to vend information about me to advertisers.

badRNG 6y ago
Here you go: https://outline.com/S7vXVy https://outline.com/S7vXVy In the future, it may be worthwhile to download some plugins like Cookie Autodelete, uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, etc.

Taylor_OD 6y ago

I have used DDG for the last few years as my search engine and phone browser. I'd like to move off chrome on the desktop as well but it feels like the changeover costs of losing some small chrome extensions that I love would be too high.

51Cards 6y ago
I'm curious what those extentions are as Firefox has a fairly roboust extension environment.
bconnorwhite 6y ago
Brave can use Chrome extensions as it is built on Chromium. Highly recommend the Brave + DDG combo, better experience than Chrome + Google imo

Nasrudith 6y ago

To be frank the rhetoric in the headline is just plain incredibly fucking stupid, to put it more precisely the notion is downright illiterate technically and economically. A website which doesn't take your data is just an error code. The data is generated by transactions on their computer based upon what you give them. The economics insinuates theft of the universal value fallacy. The "medievil economics by bored feudalists who stay far away from any merchants and conclude water in a desert is the same price as by a river and the only way any merchant can make money is fraud". Trivially false and yet the bad ideas were believed by people for centuries anyway.

ryanianian 6y ago
What?
- DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
  I'm guessing that the OP is arguing against the phrase "from your data". It tacitly assumes that data can be owned, and that the end-user is the rightful owner. But I can't make any sense of the second part of the OP.
  - petargyurov 6y ago
    It reads like bot-generated content.
bananamerica 6y ago
Isn’t the expression used rhetorically device and therefore should be interpreted in a non-literal fashion?
tmpz22 6y ago
This is straight from /r/iamverysmart
- thehappypm 6y ago
  Almost feels like it was written by a bot.

Semaphor 6y ago

It’s funny. I’m currently having some hardware problems, figuring out what the problem is, I reinstalled windows. A lot. And every time FF defaulted to google (because apparently Search Engines are not synced). And holy hell. Google Germany results are utterly unusable. For anything I searched that had an original download site, google gives me some scammy German site that either relinks the original site after several (ad-riddled) clicks or even worse, has their own installer, presumably bundling the original with adware. I always read here about people complaining about how bad DDG’s localized results are. Considering they usually talk about switching back to google, I can’t comprehend that.

BiteCode_dev 6y ago
I am one of the complainers about the bad ddg localized results, espacially for french ones. But one day, I experienced what it was to use Google without ublock origin, by mistake. It was a horrible mess. Then it hit me: the main benefit of DDG is that it's clean, even if you don't know anything about ad blockers.
- scaryclam 6y ago
  Funnily enough, the clean thing is what really kick-started google (at least for the group of people I know). Going from the unholy mess of links on Yahoo! to google with their single search box and a couple of links was a giant step forward.
  - eitland 6y ago
    Even more funny they had a decade of my searches and online activity before I started adblocking and supposedly some of the sharpest minds of our time employeed to make me click on ads and I can't recall buying a single thing from a Google ad, mostly because the ads where ridiculously misplaced. Facebook on the other hand, a company where I only have a minimal profile since I utterly distrust them[0] manages to serve me not only less annoying but sometimes actual useful ads (as: I've bought things from Instagram or Facebook ads that have saved me money and improved my quality of life). [0]: Google I just dislike and treat with caution. They seem competent with data security and obsessed with protecting all their juicy data even if - at least to me - they seem so utterly incompetent at uskng it to match ads to profiles that I have suggested it might be some sort of scam against ad buyers ;-)

random3 6y ago

I understand the monopoly concern, but disagree with the title. Somehow the fact that a company got rich by using your data is the problem and most important aspect to put in the title, not the monopoly?

jessriedel 6y ago

Data about me is not the same thing as my data.

crawlcrawler 6y ago
Why not?
- jessriedel 6y ago
  In this case, "my" is being used to denote some sort of ownership (in the sense of "my bike") rather than mere association ("my mom"). It's being used to convince the reader that they should feel that something that is rightfully theirs has been taken/exploited by someone else. But insofar as we have (formal and informal) notions of information ownership, we (sensibly) assign ownership of that info based on who collects/computes that info, not the person about whom that info refers. If I collect information about how many cars go down the highway each day, the only entity who might be the owner of that data is me, not the driver's of the cars or the city through which the highway runs. If Google collects and exploits information about you (e.g., how many web searches per month you make), there certainly may be privacy principles they are violating, but not ownership issues. If Google were taking information you had generated/collected (e.g., if they sold illegal copies of the novel you wrote on Google Docs), that would be an ownership issue, but that is usually not the sort of thing people are worried about.

viach 6y ago

Competing with Google is hard and DDG serves very specific niche trying to do it. With this niche growing big enough both Bing and Yandex share it, in a way. Imagine a successful business which is built solely on your API. I think the real problem DDG solves is the need of independent brand for Bing and Yandex, fitting this niche.

carterklein13 6y ago

It's interesting seeing DDG trying to break into a larger space. In my experience, the only people I know that know DDG are also people in tech. I live in NYC and I'm seeing lots of billboards in the city and on highways in NJ surrounding the city as I have family that regularly travels in/out. I've seen a lot of whack billboards in my day but it really caught me by surprise seeing them try and make this push. It's exciting, and hope it'll gain some traction. However, I think the vast majority of people will still just use whatever browser and whatever search comes bundled with their machine.

bla3 6y ago

I like DDG, but this is strange rhetoric. DDG is as much for-profit as Google. It's not *fighting back", it's trying to make a profit by trying to position itself in a way that's different from Google and in a way that it's hoping is compelling. So far, it's mostly failing at that and only serves a niche population. A growing one, though.

crawlcrawler 6y ago
>> it's trying to make a profit by trying to position itself in a way that's different from Google and in a way that it's hoping is compelling Looks like DDG is "fighting back" the right for people to have privacy online.
- godelski 6y ago
  This is what is compelling, to me, about DDG. It isn't the profit that bugs me about Google, it is the data collection. It isn't even that I think Google is doing anything nefarious with that data, but the difference is that I'm giving something to Google and not to DDG and DDG's results are good enough to not warrant giving Google anything (i.e. DDG works great for >90% of my searches).
catacombs 6y ago
I'd rather have two companies fighting for search results instead of one. There's a sense of choice. > It's not *fighting back", it's trying to make a profit by trying to position itself in a way that's different from Google and in a way that it's hoping is compelling. In that case, please start a Google/DDG competitor that's just as good and uses a non-profit model. I'll happily use your service.
koheripbal 6y ago
Agreed - although we should still heavily support the alternatives because a healthy ecosystem for search does not mean having one near-monopoly.

leephillips 6y ago

“we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.” -- Sergey Brin and Larry Page: http://www.zdnet.com/article/google-advertising-and-search-engine-bias/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/google-advertising-and-search-e...

sidibe 6y ago
How is DuckDuckGo funded?
- jvolkman 6y ago
  Ads.
- rement 6y ago
  Ads. However, DuckDuckGo does not run their own ad network. The ads you are shown are only based on the current keyword from your search. edit: Here is a quora answer from the CEO at DuckDuckGo posted a couple years ago talking about how the company is funded. [0] [0]: https://www.quora.com/How-is-DuckDuckGo-funded?share=1 https://www.quora.com/How-is-DuckDuckGo-funded?share=1

paulcole 6y ago

DuckDuckGo has been absolutely atrocious for me. Searches that Google can absolutely nail, DDG returns results where the right thing isn't even on the front page. I tried to pretend like I cared more about privacy than results but the god's honest truth is I don't. I want the results I want and Google provides them.

WalterSear 6y ago
This has been my experience. It's particularly egregious when looking for anything in the academic literature.
TheJoeMan 6y ago
Well say you're learning Swift programming. On google, the 12th search for "override init" will assume you mean Swift. On DDG, you need to make each search self-contained, so "Swift override init"

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ed25519FUUU 6y ago

From their open positions: > A fundamental understanding of complex data structures and algorithms, which enables you to develop and apply new solutions and confidently navigate and improve existing code (ours is mostly written with Perl). Would love to hear more about this. That kind of surprised (frightened?) me to be honest.

telaelit 6y ago

I use DDG for all my general searching, but I've found that Google is better for searching for technical things. So I haven't stopped using Google Search completely :(

tictok4 6y ago

I like DDG but always seem to get Russian localized results. I am in the USA.

dang 6y ago

I couldn't find any representative phrase [1] in the article that would make a better (less baity, more accurate and neutral) title, so have taken a crack at making something up. If someone has a better suggestion we can change it again. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20representative%20title&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

TheJoeMan 6y ago

I would be more worried about Google's auction process. It's cleverly evil, because the bid price to be on the start screen will asymptotically approach the phone owner's lifetime value from search ads. Then Google couldn't give two farts which search engine you use because they get paid either way.

s17n 6y ago
The point is to prevent Google from getting paid for the work that the put into Android, the point is to foment competition in the search space.

surround 6y ago

I wish that DuckDuckGo would focus more on their search engine. DuckDuckHack was responsible for instant answers, but they discontinued it in favor of developing their browser extension. https://duckduckhack.com/ https://duckduckhack.com/ Their browser extension sucks. It’s just a bunch of different privacy extensions (Privacy Badger, HTTPS Everywhere, TOSDR) which have been watered down and mashed together. And it automatically changes your default search engine to DDG, which was the real intent for developing the extension all along. Instant answers are important. Ever search for the definition of a word (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=assonance https://duckduckgo.com/?q=assonance), or want to set a timer (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=timer https://duckduckgo.com/?q=timer)? These were made possible by DuckDuckHack. Now they are stuck; they cannot be changed, and no new ones can be created.

wdn 6y ago

I used DDG until I've searched for "PDF watermark remover free" and the top result is watermarkremoveronline.com, a scam site. Probably with malware as well. I did the same search on Bing and Google and the scam site is not part of the search result. DDG emphasizes on privacy. Yet, allow scamming site returned as top result.

mattlondon 6y ago

Hopefully this will allow me to change the hard-coded Google search box on pixel home screens! I have the DDG search widget, but I cannot remove the Google search box that appears to be hard-coded to the home screen with no way to remove it or change the search provider (... unless someone knows otherwise?) So now I have two search widgets... I can use a separate launcher I guess, but it would be nice if I could just configure this without resorting to that.

compsciphd 6y ago

hah, I was going to write a Ask HN but never got around to it that I had noticed that bing and DDG has the exact same results for many of my searches.

gagahpangeran 6y ago

I've been using DDG for almost two years. I often search the error message of my code as keyword and then there's a box that show the best solution (mostly from stackoverflow). I use that solution and mostly it works and made my work faster.

gundmc 6y ago

I'm surprised that there are nearly zero comments about the subject of the article - the choice screens and associated auction. It seems like a reasonable implementation to me. Maybe the number of choices can be upped from 3 to 5 to help drive prices down. But surely there has to be some upper bound of the number of options?