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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.

by 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.
  - yellowapple 6y ago
    > No one ever says how big [DuckDuckBot] is One complicating matter is that it specializes in DDG's "Instant Answers"; apparently¹ the "source from other search engines" approach really only applies to the traditional results list, while DuckDuckBot is focused specifically on the Instant Answers, effectively optimizing for the absolute most relevant first result possible. So in its current state DuckDuckBot ain't exactly comparable in purpose. Still, I don't see much that'd be stopping DDG from ramping this up and having it generate the traditional list of results, too. Yeah, obviously the results for quite a few queries will be far from ideal, but if the query already hits one of DDG's curated data sources, I suspect the results might already be better if anything. ---- ¹: https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so...
travisporter 6y ago
DuckDuckGo is ddg.gg not ddg.com
- julianlam 6y ago
  However, I believe they are also duck.com

by ISL 6y ago

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.
- yellowapple 6y ago
  > No one ever says how big [DuckDuckBot] is One complicating matter is that it specializes in DDG's "Instant Answers"; apparently¹ the "source from other search engines" approach really only applies to the traditional results list, while DuckDuckBot is focused specifically on the Instant Answers, effectively optimizing for the absolute most relevant first result possible. So in its current state DuckDuckBot ain't exactly comparable in purpose. Still, I don't see much that'd be stopping DDG from ramping this up and having it generate the traditional list of results, too. Yeah, obviously the results for quite a few queries will be far from ideal, but if the query already hits one of DDG's curated data sources, I suspect the results might already be better if anything. ---- ¹: https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so...

travisporter 6y ago

DuckDuckGo is ddg.gg not ddg.com

julianlam 6y ago
However, I believe they are also duck.com