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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 blo

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?
      - mintplant 6y ago
        Startpage is descended from Ixquick (launched 1998). I believe they have an old, uniquely favorable contract with Google as a result.
    - abdullahkhalids 6y ago
      If I am willing to write a wrapper for this API, I can avoid all the ads (but not tracking)? Does this API still return paid results near the top?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - luckylion 6y ago
      That sentence could also mean "$5/1000 applies up to 10k queries per day (and you get to talk to a sales rep if you do more than 10k queries per day)".
  - fenesiistvan 6y ago
    Like your search engine!
  - glitchc 6y ago
    If DDG gains sufficient marketshare, MS may just buy them out, for a steal perhaps since they have the ability to tighten the screws. So DDG is little more than an MS proxy aimed at Google’s search business. It’s not really an underdog, just two behemoths fighting for control of the search business. Sounds more like “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”
    - ISL 6y ago
      This is only true if DDG isn't investing into its own backend as it grows. If all the users go to DDG.com, it won't matter if Bing has a great backend or not. I've recently lived this experience in another context. We built a great backend for a partner that was good at publicity. When they redirected users to their internal backend, we were dead in the water. It didn't matter that the partner struggled with their backend and ours was better. We hadn't invested resources in independent publicity, so users couldn't find us. It was a hard lesson to learn.
      - yellowapple 6y ago
        And to that point, DDG does have its own crawler, and I believe leverages other third-parties as well (I know Yandex was historically in the mix, for example). So if Microsoft did try to strongarm DuckDuckGo, DDG would have other options, even if less-than-ideal.
        skinnymuch 6y ago
        There’s no one close to Google in the US. After a big drop, there’s no one REMOTELY close to Bing for 2nd best results. Bing dropping DDG in 2020 or 2021 would be a death kneel for them for US search results. Probably many other countries too. Yandex is too far off right now to be a replacement. I haven’t checked Yandex in a bit of time though. Perhaps they drastically improved. People in tech circles always say DDG has a crawler. I know they do. No one ever says how big it is. I have a hard time believing it’s crawling more than a couple percent what Bing is crawling.
        6y ago
  - ulfw 6y ago
    So Bing results plus Bing ads. Why does no one use Bing then? Just the branding? Microsoft uncool?
    - fenwick67 6y ago
      DDG doesn't collect personal info, and the ads aren't based on your ad profile, they're based on just the search terms. This is DDG's differentiator.
      - wolco 6y ago
        Plus hashbangs and the results are not exactly bing for every term.
    - skinnymuch 6y ago
      Some people do. I do. On places with vocal minority (or in general sometimes) like HN, reddit, Twitter, you’ll see many more people tout the trendy/cool DDG. As you said Bing/Microsoft aren’t cool. I’m talking about the majority of these people who outside of basic ad/tracker blocking and using DDG, don’t stick to caring about privacy above most other things. A lot of what I’m saying doesn’t count for HN’s crowd as much as other bigger sites. I don’t have any backing for this statement. Just what i believe from common sense looking around.
  - Quaranqi 6y ago
    https://www.dogpile.com/ https://www.dogpile.com/
    - cglace 6y ago
      I remember that being my favorite search engine over 20 years ago. . . Crazy it's still around.
  - kempbellt 6y ago
    $30/10,000 Bing searches seems like a lot of money for DDG to pay, and from what I read below, Google is even more so. Would ad revenue for 10,000 interactions actually offset this cost for DDG?
    - rbritton 6y ago
      Can't answer that question, but it's worth mentioning they also add their affiliate tag to Amazon product links and possibly others to get some revenue.
  - dirkc 6y ago
    Now I'm curious, how many search queries does the average person make per month? I've been more and more dissatisfied with results I'm getting and would happily pay $10-20 per month for search. Especially if that means I'm not getting tracked and not seeing ads. Or maybe just seeing ads that aren't being in-lined.
  - sizzle 6y ago
    That's news to me, wouldn't Microsoft's hacky JavaScript ads be able to snoop on DDG users browsing habits?
  - ab_testing 6y ago
    Just wondering, are you a one man show running a search engine. That is extremely impressive. I did some relevant local searches and was able to find what I was looking for in the first page.
    - chris_f 6y ago
      Right now, it is just me. Thank you. For the local search it is pulling from Yelp.
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  It's a pretty great deal for Microsoft, because they get paid twice. Once in dollar value for access to their API, and once in user queries. Even anonymized user queries have value in terms of learning what users are interested in for search purposes in general.
benbristow 6y ago
I assume they use the official Bing Search API and have a deal cut with Microsoft. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cognitive-services/bing-web-search/ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cognitive-services/bi... DuckDuckGo also have their own indexer/crawler too. Yahoo Search does a similar thing AFAIK.
- chris_f 6y ago
  Yahoo Search does a similar thing AFAIK. Yeah, Yahoo used to have their own search index, and very developer friendly search API called Yahoo Boss. That was actually the main source of DDG results originally. Yahoo has since given up on Search, shut down the Boss search API, and is now also fed by Microsoft Bing.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ocdtrekkie 6y ago
My guess is the companies DDG partners with (I believe Yandex and a couple others, in addition to Bing) need the revenue from such a deal, and probably consider the enemy of their enemy their friend. Google having a search monopoly hurts all search engines that aren't Google. So any search engine that cuts into Google's share is helpful to all of them. I imagine Microsoft and friends are also still getting some idea what queries people making on DDG, if those queries are being forwarded to them to get results. Not user-correlated, and hence, nowhere near as valuable as if someone searched on Bing while signed into their Microsoft account. But it's probably got some general value to them on search behavior.
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  Well, not user-correlated via traditional means. DDG is proxying user queries over to MS, but unless they're taking steps to actively fuzz the queries, there's all kinds of secondary signal MS could possibly be sampling out by correlating queries across time (especially since DDG also vends Microsoft-provided ads in the sidebar; it's unclear what signals MS is receiving about a user's session from DDG via server-to-server communication, or how MS might correlate that data. If MS vends an ad and the user clicks through, and MS gets signal that the user clicked on the ad from DDG, MS can correlate that the user who saw ad Y did search X).
andrenotgiant 6y ago
I'm pretty sure DDG is just using Bing's Web Search API https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/bing-web-search-api/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-service... I think they also use Bing to serve (and earn a commission on) Bing ADS too, but I don't see that documented in the Search API so it may be separate.
marcinzm 6y ago
Presumably DDG either pays MS for the search feed or has some sort of ad sharing agreement. So MS makes money either way and is banking on DDG cutting more into Google than Bing market share. Strategically I suspect MS cares more about Google not having a search monopoly than the money Bing makes them.
smitop 6y ago
DuckDuckGo pays money to Bing to use their API [1], presumably enough to outweigh any loss of revenue. DDG also uses Bing's ad network, so Bing makes money regardless of what engine a search is made on. Also, there's speculation that Microsoft is starting to give up on getting wide adoption for Bing among consumers [2], and given Bing's low market share, Microsoft has probably determined that Bing is never going to get widely adopted enough to the point where having a deal with DDG would be a bad idea. [1] https://help.duckduckgo.com/results/sources/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/results/sources/ [2] https://futurism.com/the-byte/microsoft-giving-up-people-using-bing https://futurism.com/the-byte/microsoft-giving-up-people-usi...
DylanDmitri 6y ago
Revenue isn't Bing's only goal. Bing also gives Microsoft: - a relational knowledge graph - a way to annoy Google "Annoy Google" is a "commoditize the complement" play. Bing (and the Bing powered Yahoo + DDG) create a viable alternative where otherwise there is none. Google now has to constantly spend to keep their search tech ahead, and Mozilla and Apple can now threaten to switch default search engines forcing Google to pay protection money. Altogether, Bing forces Google to burn around 15-20 billion per year. This is money Google can't use to poach Microsoft engineers, or push G-Suite against Office, or Chromebooks against Windows, or Google Cloud against Azure. Microsoft already has open sourced many key Bing technologies, and actively pays consumers to search with Bing. The primary goal isn't revenue, it's commoditizing search.
- kkaranth 6y ago
  Do you have a source for the "15 - 20 billion" number?
  - gaogao 6y ago
    $12 billion for Safari is the main component of this - https://fortune.com/2018/09/29/google-apple-safari-search-engine/ https://fortune.com/2018/09/29/google-apple-safari-search-en...
    - alexandros 6y ago
      ...wouldn't that be $12 billion that Apple has to poach MS engineers with, then?
      - _jal 6y ago
        Sure. Which tells you which company M$ considers the more central threat.
      - kortilla 6y ago
        Yep, but with the msft focus on the cloud, their priority is to take from goog. Additionally, people buying OSX computers isn’t really a bad scenario for Microsoft. MS office is quite popular on OSX and iOS and people spend more on that than they do on operating systems.
jameshush 6y ago
I work in the search engine space. Pretty much everyone is either Google or Bing under the hood, including DuckDuckGo. Deals are made on ad revenue shares generally. If I recall correctly DuckDuckGo just monetizes on product affiliate links though. Fun fact: DuckDuckGo used to use Yahoo, but Yahoo just has a deal with Bing. In other words, DuckDuckGo paid Yahoo, to pay Bing, to deliver Bing search results. :)
JJMcJ 6y ago
DDG started out using Bing. Now they use other resources as well, and also have their own internal web search. Yahoo search is largely powered by Bing, as well. That's kind of funny since MSFT wanted to buy Yahoo at one point. Also, there is the concept of dependent competitors. In old days, GM sold transmissions to American Motors, for example. So American Motors was a dependent competitor of GM.
- kube-system 6y ago
  That kind of stuff still happens with automakers -- maybe even more so these days. Heck, sometimes competitors buy an entire platform from another manufacturer and put their own branding on it.
- Kiro 6y ago
  The majority of results still comes from Bing: > We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we also source from multiple partners, though most commonly from Bing (and none from Google). https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so... Note that their own crawler is only mentioned in the context of Instant Answers so it doesn't seem it's actually used for any regular search results.
solso 6y ago
You are missing the entire point, "search" is sadly about advertising, not about the search itself :-) Bing is interested serving DDG, Qwant, Ecosia and a lot of other unknown search engines because of the aggregated reach they provide for their ad network. Ad-networks only work if the aggregated audiences are massive, otherwise advertisers do not bother putting their ads there, only the top-3/5 ad networks get to see any action. So Bing wants/needs a bigger audience just to be on the game. They can grow in 2 paths: 1) increase Bing search reach (difficult), or 2) use partners with different value propositions. Bing charges little for 1K query, 1USD officially but it gets cheaper, to zero :-) The real thing though, is that if you display Bing ads, you get a 70%-90% rev-share of the ad-revenue, which varies from country to country, something between $5 to $20 per 1K queries. So, DDG basically gets around 5$ to 10$ net for each 1K, and can spend all that money on distribution and marketing so that they get even more users. Bing gets the rest, money, and what's more important, their ad-network continues to be competitive. Everybody wins, right? :-/ Search is so cheap 1$/1K queries and people makes 2/3 queries per day, so $1/year/user (average). It makes no economic sense to build an alternative. Unless of course, you are building out of "ideals".

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?
    - mintplant 6y ago
      Startpage is descended from Ixquick (launched 1998). I believe they have an old, uniquely favorable contract with Google as a result.
  - abdullahkhalids 6y ago
    If I am willing to write a wrapper for this API, I can avoid all the ads (but not tracking)? Does this API still return paid results near the top?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - luckylion 6y ago
    That sentence could also mean "$5/1000 applies up to 10k queries per day (and you get to talk to a sales rep if you do more than 10k queries per day)".
- fenesiistvan 6y ago
  Like your search engine!
- glitchc 6y ago
  If DDG gains sufficient marketshare, MS may just buy them out, for a steal perhaps since they have the ability to tighten the screws. So DDG is little more than an MS proxy aimed at Google’s search business. It’s not really an underdog, just two behemoths fighting for control of the search business. Sounds more like “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”
  - ISL 6y ago
    This is only true if DDG isn't investing into its own backend as it grows. If all the users go to DDG.com, it won't matter if Bing has a great backend or not. I've recently lived this experience in another context. We built a great backend for a partner that was good at publicity. When they redirected users to their internal backend, we were dead in the water. It didn't matter that the partner struggled with their backend and ours was better. We hadn't invested resources in independent publicity, so users couldn't find us. It was a hard lesson to learn.
    - yellowapple 6y ago
      And to that point, DDG does have its own crawler, and I believe leverages other third-parties as well (I know Yandex was historically in the mix, for example). So if Microsoft did try to strongarm DuckDuckGo, DDG would have other options, even if less-than-ideal.
      - skinnymuch 6y ago
        There’s no one close to Google in the US. After a big drop, there’s no one REMOTELY close to Bing for 2nd best results. Bing dropping DDG in 2020 or 2021 would be a death kneel for them for US search results. Probably many other countries too. Yandex is too far off right now to be a replacement. I haven’t checked Yandex in a bit of time though. Perhaps they drastically improved. People in tech circles always say DDG has a crawler. I know they do. No one ever says how big it is. I have a hard time believing it’s crawling more than a couple percent what Bing is crawling.
        6y ago
- ulfw 6y ago
  So Bing results plus Bing ads. Why does no one use Bing then? Just the branding? Microsoft uncool?
  - fenwick67 6y ago
    DDG doesn't collect personal info, and the ads aren't based on your ad profile, they're based on just the search terms. This is DDG's differentiator.
    - wolco 6y ago
      Plus hashbangs and the results are not exactly bing for every term.
  - skinnymuch 6y ago
    Some people do. I do. On places with vocal minority (or in general sometimes) like HN, reddit, Twitter, you’ll see many more people tout the trendy/cool DDG. As you said Bing/Microsoft aren’t cool. I’m talking about the majority of these people who outside of basic ad/tracker blocking and using DDG, don’t stick to caring about privacy above most other things. A lot of what I’m saying doesn’t count for HN’s crowd as much as other bigger sites. I don’t have any backing for this statement. Just what i believe from common sense looking around.
- Quaranqi 6y ago
  https://www.dogpile.com/ https://www.dogpile.com/
  - cglace 6y ago
    I remember that being my favorite search engine over 20 years ago. . . Crazy it's still around.
- kempbellt 6y ago
  $30/10,000 Bing searches seems like a lot of money for DDG to pay, and from what I read below, Google is even more so. Would ad revenue for 10,000 interactions actually offset this cost for DDG?
  - rbritton 6y ago
    Can't answer that question, but it's worth mentioning they also add their affiliate tag to Amazon product links and possibly others to get some revenue.
- dirkc 6y ago
  Now I'm curious, how many search queries does the average person make per month? I've been more and more dissatisfied with results I'm getting and would happily pay $10-20 per month for search. Especially if that means I'm not getting tracked and not seeing ads. Or maybe just seeing ads that aren't being in-lined.
- sizzle 6y ago
  That's news to me, wouldn't Microsoft's hacky JavaScript ads be able to snoop on DDG users browsing habits?
- ab_testing 6y ago
  Just wondering, are you a one man show running a search engine. That is extremely impressive. I did some relevant local searches and was able to find what I was looking for in the first page.
  - chris_f 6y ago
    Right now, it is just me. Thank you. For the local search it is pulling from Yelp.
shadowgovt 6y ago
It's a pretty great deal for Microsoft, because they get paid twice. Once in dollar value for access to their API, and once in user queries. Even anonymized user queries have value in terms of learning what users are interested in for search purposes in general.

benbristow 6y ago

I assume they use the official Bing Search API and have a deal cut with Microsoft. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cognitive-services/bing-web-search/ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cognitive-services/bi... DuckDuckGo also have their own indexer/crawler too. Yahoo Search does a similar thing AFAIK.

chris_f 6y ago
Yahoo Search does a similar thing AFAIK. Yeah, Yahoo used to have their own search index, and very developer friendly search API called Yahoo Boss. That was actually the main source of DDG results originally. Yahoo has since given up on Search, shut down the Boss search API, and is now also fed by Microsoft Bing.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ocdtrekkie 6y ago

My guess is the companies DDG partners with (I believe Yandex and a couple others, in addition to Bing) need the revenue from such a deal, and probably consider the enemy of their enemy their friend. Google having a search monopoly hurts all search engines that aren't Google. So any search engine that cuts into Google's share is helpful to all of them. I imagine Microsoft and friends are also still getting some idea what queries people making on DDG, if those queries are being forwarded to them to get results. Not user-correlated, and hence, nowhere near as valuable as if someone searched on Bing while signed into their Microsoft account. But it's probably got some general value to them on search behavior.

shadowgovt 6y ago
Well, not user-correlated via traditional means. DDG is proxying user queries over to MS, but unless they're taking steps to actively fuzz the queries, there's all kinds of secondary signal MS could possibly be sampling out by correlating queries across time (especially since DDG also vends Microsoft-provided ads in the sidebar; it's unclear what signals MS is receiving about a user's session from DDG via server-to-server communication, or how MS might correlate that data. If MS vends an ad and the user clicks through, and MS gets signal that the user clicked on the ad from DDG, MS can correlate that the user who saw ad Y did search X).

andrenotgiant 6y ago

I'm pretty sure DDG is just using Bing's Web Search API https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/bing-web-search-api/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-service... I think they also use Bing to serve (and earn a commission on) Bing ADS too, but I don't see that documented in the Search API so it may be separate.

marcinzm 6y ago

Presumably DDG either pays MS for the search feed or has some sort of ad sharing agreement. So MS makes money either way and is banking on DDG cutting more into Google than Bing market share. Strategically I suspect MS cares more about Google not having a search monopoly than the money Bing makes them.

smitop 6y ago

DuckDuckGo pays money to Bing to use their API [1], presumably enough to outweigh any loss of revenue. DDG also uses Bing's ad network, so Bing makes money regardless of what engine a search is made on. Also, there's speculation that Microsoft is starting to give up on getting wide adoption for Bing among consumers [2], and given Bing's low market share, Microsoft has probably determined that Bing is never going to get widely adopted enough to the point where having a deal with DDG would be a bad idea. [1] https://help.duckduckgo.com/results/sources/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/results/sources/ [2] https://futurism.com/the-byte/microsoft-giving-up-people-using-bing https://futurism.com/the-byte/microsoft-giving-up-people-usi...

DylanDmitri 6y ago

Revenue isn't Bing's only goal. Bing also gives Microsoft: - a relational knowledge graph - a way to annoy Google "Annoy Google" is a "commoditize the complement" play. Bing (and the Bing powered Yahoo + DDG) create a viable alternative where otherwise there is none. Google now has to constantly spend to keep their search tech ahead, and Mozilla and Apple can now threaten to switch default search engines forcing Google to pay protection money. Altogether, Bing forces Google to burn around 15-20 billion per year. This is money Google can't use to poach Microsoft engineers, or push G-Suite against Office, or Chromebooks against Windows, or Google Cloud against Azure. Microsoft already has open sourced many key Bing technologies, and actively pays consumers to search with Bing. The primary goal isn't revenue, it's commoditizing search.

kkaranth 6y ago
Do you have a source for the "15 - 20 billion" number?
- gaogao 6y ago
  $12 billion for Safari is the main component of this - https://fortune.com/2018/09/29/google-apple-safari-search-engine/ https://fortune.com/2018/09/29/google-apple-safari-search-en...
  - alexandros 6y ago
    ...wouldn't that be $12 billion that Apple has to poach MS engineers with, then?
    - _jal 6y ago
      Sure. Which tells you which company M$ considers the more central threat.
    - kortilla 6y ago
      Yep, but with the msft focus on the cloud, their priority is to take from goog. Additionally, people buying OSX computers isn’t really a bad scenario for Microsoft. MS office is quite popular on OSX and iOS and people spend more on that than they do on operating systems.

jameshush 6y ago

I work in the search engine space. Pretty much everyone is either Google or Bing under the hood, including DuckDuckGo. Deals are made on ad revenue shares generally. If I recall correctly DuckDuckGo just monetizes on product affiliate links though. Fun fact: DuckDuckGo used to use Yahoo, but Yahoo just has a deal with Bing. In other words, DuckDuckGo paid Yahoo, to pay Bing, to deliver Bing search results. :)

JJMcJ 6y ago

DDG started out using Bing. Now they use other resources as well, and also have their own internal web search. Yahoo search is largely powered by Bing, as well. That's kind of funny since MSFT wanted to buy Yahoo at one point. Also, there is the concept of dependent competitors. In old days, GM sold transmissions to American Motors, for example. So American Motors was a dependent competitor of GM.

kube-system 6y ago
That kind of stuff still happens with automakers -- maybe even more so these days. Heck, sometimes competitors buy an entire platform from another manufacturer and put their own branding on it.
Kiro 6y ago
The majority of results still comes from Bing: > We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we also source from multiple partners, though most commonly from Bing (and none from Google). https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so... Note that their own crawler is only mentioned in the context of Instant Answers so it doesn't seem it's actually used for any regular search results.

solso 6y ago

You are missing the entire point, "search" is sadly about advertising, not about the search itself :-) Bing is interested serving DDG, Qwant, Ecosia and a lot of other unknown search engines because of the aggregated reach they provide for their ad network. Ad-networks only work if the aggregated audiences are massive, otherwise advertisers do not bother putting their ads there, only the top-3/5 ad networks get to see any action. So Bing wants/needs a bigger audience just to be on the game. They can grow in 2 paths: 1) increase Bing search reach (difficult), or 2) use partners with different value propositions. Bing charges little for 1K query, 1USD officially but it gets cheaper, to zero :-) The real thing though, is that if you display Bing ads, you get a 70%-90% rev-share of the ad-revenue, which varies from country to country, something between $5 to $20 per 1K queries. So, DDG basically gets around 5$ to 10$ net for each 1K, and can spend all that money on distribution and marketing so that they get even more users. Bing gets the rest, money, and what's more important, their ad-network continues to be competitive. Everybody wins, right? :-/ Search is so cheap 1$/1K queries and people makes 2/3 queries per day, so $1/year/user (average). It makes no economic sense to build an alternative. Unless of course, you are building out of "ideals".