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Google’s Search Preference Menu Eliminates DuckDuckGo
- anoncareer0212 6y agoVery unpopular opinion, please engage with it on the facts, not their popular perception on HN: After a decade and flipping from Apple services & DDG-only to Google over time: I'm really annoyed by DDG's histrionics about Google, from the silly domain fight they imagined, to having blinkered arguments about how they just need a free spot in the Android setup wizard and their market share would be 20%, and they should be the one blessed search engine who doesn't have to pay.
- justicezyx 6y agoThey are the underdog anyway. What do you suppose them to do? To somehow magically grab the surveillance capitalism profit with just a search engine? Without that profit, they'll have to play some silly moves. For anyone who has even just superficial understanding of the market mechanism behind google, you'll see that there is no space of another search engine, as long as Google still needs a search engine.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- gkoberger 6y agoHmm, I wouldn't call them histrionics. It's their marketing. David v Goliath. You don't use DDG because it's better than Google. You use it because it's not Google. So of course they remind people of that constantly. And... Google can take it. I do think it's fair to complain that duck.com redirects to google.com if you're DDG. It's also fair for Google to do it anyway! Both sides are playing their part and that's okay. (Google did sell it to DDG, though, so good on them.) I used to work at Mozilla, and it's crazy how easily a large company can crush you by... just existing. Google can funnel people to Google Search from Android, Chrome, Gmail, etc. Google is the defacto default, and DDG has to fight desperately for anyone to care.
- leephillips 6y agoI use DDG because it’s better than Google. Any search engine that actually allows me to use it is better than one that doesn’t: https://lee-phillips.org/byeGoogle/ https://lee-phillips.org/byeGoogle/
- zucked 6y agoI set my default search to DDG and I find myself using G! in my queries a lot more than I want to.
- RedShift1 6y agoWhat does that do?
- krimpenrik 6y agoA google search
- tejtm 6y agowith less bubble/tracking I think. but I only !g a few times a year so not an expert on it
- chinathrow 6y agoWhy would there be less tracking? It's a regular google search, accessed directly from within your browser window.
- gkoberger 6y agoRedirects you to a Google search (try it here: https://duck.com?q=!g%20test https://duck.com?q=!g%20test)
- AnonHP 6y agoIt’s called a “bang command”, [1] and DDG redirects that search to another site. You can set DDG as your default search engine but rely on these commands to search on other sites. Just put the bang command anywhere in your search term or phrase. In this case, “!g” means search on google.com. So you get redirected to Google for that search. You can search on Startpage with !s, Wikipedia with !w, IMDB with !imdb, Amazon with !a, Google Images with !gi and so on. There are thousands of bang commands. [1]: https://duckduckgo.com/bang https://duckduckgo.com/bang
- macspoofing 6y agoI was slightly annoyed and impressed that their 'histrionics' managed to finagle a high-value domain, for zero cost, from Google. When you're a fiesty up-and-comer, you do what you can. On the other hand, Google seems to be now playing the old Microsoft game of keeping competitors alive so as to keep the regulators at bay.
- addicted 6y agoYou are right. Why wouldn’t they just die out quietly so we can all continue to be beholden to the one true choice in every area of our online lives. What they are doing is very little different than what Google did when Google was the plucky underdog. But I guess the whole “don’t be evil” branding is having an effect even after google doesn’t even use it anymore.
- wyxuan 6y agoYou imply that google did the same when they were the underdog, but I don't see any clear parallels between their practices.
- superasn 6y ago> What they are doing is very little different than what Google did when Google was the plucky underdog. I don't remember to be the case. Google won because the existing search engines at the time (altavista, excite, etc) paled in comparison to its search results. Same for its other services like Gmail that offered 1gb space when Hotmail offered only 2mb. I can understand the Google hate but they did many things right also to capture the top spots.
- cortesoft 6y agoWhat did google do when they were the underdog?
- markmark 6y agoLaunched a clearly better product that everyone flocked to because it worked so much better than the competition. I'm not sure how that relates to DDG though.
- robertlagrant 6y agoThey ranked based on relevance, not who paid the most. That was new.
- philistine 6y agoHow can you implore to argue on the facts when you’re lying yourself? Their statement couldn’t be more clear. They want to eliminate the pay-for-play to replace it with a system without money exchanging hands. I say you forfeit your right to ask only to speak on facts when you’re that wrong.
- dang 6y agoPlease don't break the site guidelines like this, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dkobran 6y agoI appreciate the sentiment about having a fact-based debate but it’s difficult to engage in an argument about the facts when the issue you raised is that you’re annoyed about something. What exactly would we be debating here?
- anoncareer0212 6y agoWe can start at why this is filed under 'Privacy Research' - pure FUD.
- eitland 6y ago> how they just need a free spot in the Android setup wizard and their market share would be 20%, and they should be the one blessed search engine who doesn't have to pay. It worked when Microsoft had to implement browser choice. No reason why the spots should need to be auctioned this time.
- deadalus 6y agoGoogle has recently banned YouTube Competitor "LBRY.tv" From Play Store. https://www.lacortenews.com/n/google-bans-youtube-competitor-from-play-store https://www.lacortenews.com/n/google-bans-youtube-competitor...
- microcolonel 6y agoI like Googlers but a lot of the time when Google loses in court, I feel like the court did the right thing.
- causality0 6y agoLooking at what trust-busting cases were like a few decades ago, I can't help but think that if Google had existed and behaved as it does today at any other time in the last century it would've already been smashed into tiny, non-evil pieces by the government.
- Barrin92 6y agoThat's because ever since the 80s the US has switched to an anti-trust regime that essentially focusses on consumer price and nothing else. Lisa Khan's long but very good piece on the issue is worth a read. https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-parado...
- chrisco255 6y agoI think the political winds are shifting. Both conservatives and progressives are pushing for it. Big tech is rapidly losing any political base it could have.
- judge2020 6y agoOnly because Google doesn't budge on filtering search results for political benefit. If Google dropped this and removed all anti-trump results, there would be no possibility for anti-trust litigation.
- summerlight 6y agohttps://spreadprivacy.com/search-preference-menu-auctions/ https://spreadprivacy.com/search-preference-menu-auctions/ FYI, DDG's point is that they cannot win the auction because they are less profitable relative to other search engines. They proposed a new way to determine the set of default candidates by search engine market share rather than running auctions.
- paxys 6y agoIt's a chicken and egg problem though. You can't get marketshare unless you are included as a default option. DDG themselves wouldn't be in favor of this criteria a few years ago when they weren't popular.
- chrisco255 6y agoWhy not treat both as valid criteria?
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y agoThey are both valid criteria, depending on your perspective. But the perspective that matters here is the perspective of the owner of the Android OS. The EU's ruling was that Google needed to defuse the situation where their market position of Android was furthering their search engine dominance. The EU did not demand that Google give up the economic benefits of developing a popular phone OS. So Google even though Google must offer choice of defaults, it still has the right to sell spots on the list, so long as there is choice. So the perspective that matters in choosing spots on the list is Google's, subject to obeying the EU ruling to offer alternative choices. Google's economic interests are aligned with getting the highest price for the spot. There is no reason why DDG ought to get the spot for free.
- wraptile 6y agoWhy not use weighted market share scale then? In other words if you're not on the default option list you are weighted more for normalizations.
- joobus 6y agoWhat is "Google's search preference menu"? Where does it exist?
- greenyoda 6y agoIt exists on Android devices, in the E.U. The article has a link to this page, which describes it: https://www.android.com/choicescreen https://www.android.com/choicescreen
- Imnimo 6y agoIn other words, people are not willing to pay enough money for the service DuckDuckGo provides to afford a spot on the list, and also DuckDuckGo's service is unable to attract as many users as they would like without the aid of the list. I'm generally very sympathetic to anti-trust measures, but this strikes me as a situation where DuckDuckGo needs to stand on its own two feet. If your position is that privacy is more valuable to consumers, then you should compete in the auction. If your position is that it's not about the money, and privacy is an inherent good even if it can't compete monetarily, then you should be able to attract and retain your users without free advertising. But if your position is that your product cannot compete monetarily and also cannot compete without the advertising that money buys, then it might just be that you don't have as desirable a product as you think you do.
- MiroF 6y agoAren't anti-trust laws meant to benefit the consumer? I fail to see how the remedy proposed by the EU (this bidding/auction method) is benefiting me, the consumer, when the most popular Google alternative is eliminated from the options because they don't monetize as aggressively.
- paxys 6y agoThere are two different problems at play. The anti-trust one (Google using its dominance in mobile to boost its own search product) is solved by forcing them to offer alternative defaults. The other problem you are alluding to (user privacy I assume?) is unrelated to this, and there are already laws like GDPR in place to address that.
- sct202 6y agoThe winners of the Q4 auction has a lot of companies I've never heard of like PrivacyWall, info.com, and GMX mixed in with Bing, Yandex and DDG, so it does seem like the way it's set up does introduce some variety. Like Yahoo is the #3 search engine, but doesn't even show up in the list.
- crazypython 6y ago
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ballenf 6y agoI don’t think the article makes it clear that the issue here is the use of an auction to decide what choices users have in search engine. Instead of just looking at user preference or market share. That method naturally favors the bottom feeders in terms of privacy. It’s like awarding school lunch contracts to the company with the largest marketing budget. Probably not going to be many vegetables on that menu. But I think google is making a long term strategic error here. They are feeding the privacy advocates free ammunition. Google could easily comply with the law and still have at least a token search provider that understands privacy.
- agustif 6y ago> It’s like awarding school lunch contracts to the company with the largest marketing budget. Probably not going to be many vegetables on that menu. In Madrid, Spain, Ayuso (The autonomous community leader) gave a contract for feeding the kids during the pandemic, to Telepizza, LOL. https://www.publico.es/sociedad/menus-telepizza-ayuso-mes-medio-menu-telepizza-ayuso-dejado-paro-cocineros-hijos-comiendo-basura.html https://www.publico.es/sociedad/menus-telepizza-ayuso-mes-me... So yeah, not much vegetables on that menu!
- erikpukinskis 6y agoAs an adult I can see the hazard, but as a kid I would have been so down for this.
- ricardo81 6y agoI can't fault their logic on the bidding system and the RoI of "users" when being privacy centric or not. They are quite outspoken about it, maybe forgetting that they are a meta search engine! Perhaps the search menu should have "Google based search engines", "Bing based search engines" etc with sub-menus. searchenginemap.com is handy to indicate the "brands" of alt-search people are using are just really Bing results re-skinned, though DDG are quite clever into having folk believe their crawler is for indexing more new pages. Often see comments about how people done a search for X on DDG and compare to Google, surely part of the taste test is to go look at Bing as well. FWIW I think the search preference menu should not be a bidding system and perhaps free, but unsure how to keep the size of the list of entrants small.
- on_and_off 6y agoIs there some context explaining why this is based on an auction ? If the goal is to prevent Google from using its Android dominance to also dominate search engines, a random sort of the most popular search engines in a given country sounds like a better option.
- aembleton 6y agoWhy does Google use an auction to determine the search providers that appear in the choice screen? An auction is a fair and objective method to determine which search providers are included in the choice screen. It allows search providers to decide what value they place on appearing in the choice screen and to bid accordingly. The auction revenues help us to continue to invest in developing and maintaining the Android platform. Source: https://www.android.com/choicescreen/ https://www.android.com/choicescreen/
- on_and_off 6y agoI mean : why are they allowed to make it an auction ? If the goal is to break their stronghold on Android, it sounds like it should be mandated as free ?
- FandangoRanger 6y agoJust set your new tab page to some searx instance, it's quite a lot better than Google at this stage especially when it comes to filtering SEO'd results. SEO is the cancer that killed the web.
- BLKNSLVR 6y agoBetter yet, run your own searx instance.
- piyush_soni 6y agoSo the whining about money has started, as I guessed long back. Gradually, they'd start doing things that were originally 'against' their idea of how DDG should have been, "but as you know the other people are so evil, we have to do it". I had liked the idea behind their search engine (and keep coming back to try it), but never liked the kind of promotion that they have carried out so far (which mostly includes criticizing a single other competitor and that's all). That type of advertising is never sustainable in my opinion.
- ricardo81 6y agoI agree that competitors should be standing on their own two feet and not spend energy knocking down competitors. To be fair to them, elaborating on the privacy conundrum in respect to monetisation is a good thing and difficult to put into an elevator pitch to the casual user. Naturally Bing has outbid them considering DDG are serving Bing ads minus Bing's cut. They were always going to be in that position.
- eitland 6y agoNah, this is legitimate, even more than Operas complaints against Microsoft for bundling IE. I try to not be biased here but Googles move here is brilliant from a bullys perspective. And besides: The whole idea that they should be allowed to extract any money from this deal is questionable IMO.
- binaryjay 6y agoWait, how is this possible? 99% of the people on HN use DDG. Oh, that's right, HN isn't even remotely representative of the general population.
- judge2020 6y ago> In our proposal, there is no auction. Alternative search engines with the most market share in each market are shown on the first screen, randomly ordered. Not a perfect solution since the small search providers still end up left out of almost all preference selections by users, but it's definitely better than the auction model (and ofc perfection is the enemy of progress). I think a slightly better model is an infinitely scrolling list, with the first 5 or so (or effectively 75% of the first page) being the randomly-listed high-marketshare providers and the rest being random low-marketshare providers. The UI should also require the height be set so that it indicates that more search options are available by scrolling by cutting off the bottom result halfway.
- piyush_soni 6y agoI don't think the auction model is "fundamentally flawed". A law has to be fair to both the consumers and at least in some part (depending on the country) the businesses. Why would someone give them a free spot when other businesses are willing to pay big amount in a fair fashion, on a platform that Google has invested so much money for years to reach to this place?
- eitland 6y ago> on a platform that Google has invested so much money for years to reach to this place? Because it is meant as a punishment for Googles abusive practices. It is less of a punishment if Google can extract money from it.
- piyush_soni 6y agoI don't see it as a punishment. I actually see it as a fair practice ruling. So they can't ask a company to bear all the costs of raising and maintaining platform so huge and just "give it away" for free because some users think that's a better option for them and thus for the world as well. Why would they even run a business if that's the case?
- FeepingCreature 6y agoThey're free not to. They're not free to monetize by any means. If they can't monetize without breaking monopoly laws, they're free to not exist. Nobody is owed a business model.
- sratner 6y agoThis isn't the punitive part - that's what fines are for. I see this particular requirement more as a corrective action - to actually give back to users the choice that Google took away through abuse of their market position. Users don't particularly care who is making money in the process, while their rights are not infringed. I am perfectly fine with the corrective action being dollar-neutral for Google, or even slightly positive. There is nothing wrong with incentivising good behaviour, as long as those incentives themselves don't become abused. If the right thing to do by your users is also the better thing to do from a business perspective, we might not have to wait for a court decision next time.
- LdSGSgvupDV 6y agoThe problem I got when using duckduckgo is the icon at top left. That makes me feel inconsistent in style. Is it possible to remove the background color in icon? The icon is so colorful.
- aembleton 6y agoJust add duckduckgo.com##.header__logo to your uBlock filters
- maple3142 6y agoIn case someone wants to know what are the winners of the auction: https://www.android.com/choicescreen-winners/ https://www.android.com/choicescreen-winners/
- exikyut 6y agoThanks! Googling, ironically, didn't work. But that's because I was keying off of "clearing price", which appears not to be published(?).
- Oricle 6y agoJewgle! What do you expect! I stopped with main stream media 2 decades ago, and I've never used Google. That's why your all brainwashed (and the schooling system). I know, hard pill swallow but look at the world today, educate yourself! This war has been raging between gentiles and isralites since 0ad!when they killed the King of the Jews, jesus! His crime? Teaching all the gentiles! Which the Jews hated and killed him for. But alas, you've all been made to think they are nothing but myth lol. 'even in a minority of one, the truth is still the truth'
- sakex 6y agoI think that companies like duckduckgo who make a product in the consumer's interest are a bit dubious as long as their product is not open source.
- anaganisk 6y agoBut somehow people trust telegram and thousands of other apps. No its not about open source
- paxys 6y agoFYI - https://telegram.org/apps#source-code https://telegram.org/apps#source-code. People trust Telegram because their source code has been independently audited by security researchers.
- vin047 6y agoOn that site, they mention the code/crypto protocol has been independently verified, but I can't seem to find any independent reports, aside from Telegrams own article explaining the technical details of their protocol. Aside from Telegrams own insistence that their crypto protocol has been independently verified, do you have another source? My understanding was that nobody has actually bothered to verify telegrams source code: https://security.stackexchange.com/a/49802 https://security.stackexchange.com/a/49802
- paxys 6y agoDoes anyone have any context on PrivacyWall.org? They use the same privacy-first language as DuckDuckGo in their marketing, are a B Corp, and somehow bid enough to be included in the default set in most countries.
- ricardo81 6y agoNew to me also. Their FAQ gives some clues to what they're doing. https://www.privacywall.org/faq.html https://www.privacywall.org/faq.html Not sure who is providing their results but I would assume Bing. Their Google Play app has 10K installs so it appears people are using it. Not much chatter about them on the web.
- Yoric 6y agoMight be investing VC money in that auction.
- Angeo34 6y agoDDG is based in the US. It doesn't matter what the company says wishes or hopes. It is by nature not private. Also Mr. Weinberg (DDG owner) who has built himself a reputation for abusing user privacy for profit (his previous company just bulk seller private information it got from unsuspecting users).
- Angeo34 6y ago>That EU users most want I have spoken to a huge range of socioeconomic classes and the people that knew what DDG was explicitly said they could not care less. Obviously my sample size is minuscule but in EU generally people are perfectly aware of the spying yet don't really care (which I disagree with but that's how it is). This just goes to show how suspicious DDG is acting which isn't surprising considering Mr. Weinbergs previous business.
- mad182 6y agoI'm from the EU and this is pretty much how I feel. Also I kind of trust huge companies like Google more than smaller ones. Yes, I know Google is collection lots of info on me, and I know they will show me ads and try to sell me something or get me to use more of their services, but I don't feel like it's such a big issue, and I don't think it's in their self interest to abuse this data or that anyone there cares about me personally. What is some smaller company going to do with my data and who are they going to sell it to? Who knows. Can I really trust they are not collecting any data? Who knows.
- Yoric 6y agoI'm in the EU and my sample is probably biased, too, but most of the people I know either don't use Google or use it but dislike using it. I'm personally alternating between DDG and Ecosia. I do use Google Images, once in a while, in a private tab.
- ryanSrich 6y agoDDG in theory is great. I would love to use a service that does what DDG wants to do for privacy. In practice though, their search is mostly unusable. Google’s results are 99% more accurate for me, even without being logged in. Anecdotal, but I’ve heard similar feedback.
- CameronNemo 6y agoI can use DDG for one to three word phrases, or just a general unordered keyword search. But any time I need to search for exact sequences of strings (usually error messages), then DDG fails miserably and Google comes through. Here is a recent example: https://www.google.com/search?q=u-boot+%22unable+to+select+a+mode%22+sdcard https://www.google.com/search?q=u-boot+%22unable+to+select+a... https://duckduckgo.com/?q=u-boot+"unable+to+select+a+mode"+sdcard https://duckduckgo.com/?q=u-boot+"unable+to+select+a+mode"+s...
- chris_f 6y agoOr try: https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=u-boot+unable+to+select+a+mode+sdcard https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=u-boot+unable+to+select... Your query (even without the quotes).
- c06n 6y agoFor me it's weird. It has worked well sometime in the past, but in the last half year or so it became close to unusable again. For instance, if I search something related Pandas (the Python package), it consistently gives me the doc on Pandas 0.23 instead of the current one. I am switching back to Google, I've had enough for now.
- toper-centage 6y agoThat's basically false. There is a learning curve that people seem to ignore when using search engines. It's not obvious, but Google vs Bing work a bit different and the type of queries each one likes are different. I use a Bing based engine as my daily driver and when I'm working, 9/10 searches are successful in the first couple results. When I'm out and about searching for something casual on my phone, that's usually 10/10.
- reportgunner 6y agoHa, I also eliminate Google search from my browsers' search bar options.
- tester34 6y agoI believe that if you don't really like Google, then you shouldnt use other Search Engines than Google like DDG, just let them be very tiny.
- bloudermilk 6y agoThe linked page[0] on the Android website explaining the choice screen has some interesting information on the auction, including: > Google will use a fourth-price auction to select the other general search providers that appear in the choice screen. ... The three highest bidders will appear in the choice screen for that country. The provider that is selected by the user will pay the amount of the fourth-highest bid. My gut reaction to this auction system is that it would be vulnerable to abuse by a small number of bad actors. For example, what is to stop a company from bidding an artificially high amount in order to win the auction, knowing that they will most likely end up paying a more reasonable sum by the other fair bidders? [0]: https://www.android.com/choicescreen/ https://www.android.com/choicescreen/
- gundmc 6y agoThat strategy quickly falls apart if more than one company bids an "artifically high amount". It's a pretty well-studied format that incentivizes bidders to bid the true value. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalized_second-price_auction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalized_second-price_aucti...
- tylerhou 6y ago> My gut reaction to this auction system is that it would be vulnerable to abuse by a small number of bad actors. For example, what is to stop a company from bidding an artificially high amount in order to win the auction, knowing that they will most likely end up paying a more reasonable sum by the other fair bidders? Because there is no incentive to bid higher than your true value. Suppose you derive $N value from acquiring a user on the search screen. If you bid $N + x (where x > 0), then there are three cases: 1. Others bid more than $N + x, so you lose the action. In this case, the price was above the value you would derive, so not paying is the best choice. 2. Others bid between $N and $N + x. Let's call the action price $N + y. Then you win the auction. You pay $N + y for the user, but you only derive $N value, so you lose $y. This is a bad result; you shouldn't have paid. 3. Others bid less than $N. Let's call the auction price $N - z (where z > 0). Since you derive $N from the user, you gain $z, by paying, which is the best choice. As a bidder, you want to avoid scenario 2. The best way to do this is to minimize the value of $x — that is; set $x = 0. So it's optimal to bid no higher than your true value, $N. By analogy, you can also prove that it's suboptimal to bid below your true value by considering the three cases when you bid $N - x (where x > 0).
- Neil44 6y agoFirst they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
- compsciphd 6y agomy experience using DDG is that its simply returning the same results as Bing. Is the only value they bring that one trusts them more with our data than microsoft?
- rv-de 6y agoI'm undecided about DDG with regard to its relevance for my search behaviour. It seems that it requires reevaluation on at least a yearly basis. Practically speaking I rarely use it despite being very data privacy conscious and sympathetic with its goals. But what I can say is that I turn to Bing and Yandex on a regular basis because they are simply better for some searches. Bing is great for image search. Yandex is great for finding streamed movies, p* and reverse image search. Generally speaking Google seems to handicap itself by two forces: censoring content (for moral and legal reasons) and monetary optimization (like preferring click bait content over actually useful content). Over the years my approach towards protecting my data moved away from aiming for anonymity (DDG, Tor, OSM) towards pseudonymity and data distribution over competitors. F.x. neither Fastmail, nor Dropbox, nor Telegram, nor Firefox, nor Office 365 etc are perfect but at least I don't have all my data on Google and the rest of it on Facebook. Sadly Google is rolling out or maintaining mostly unrivalled products like Search, Maps, Android, Youtube. I try to mitigate this by using separate fake Google accounts for youtube.com and google.com (via Firefox Containers) and LOS. Also I add an obstacle into the mix with uBlock Origin. Of course they can figure that out but if everybody does it then this would significantly increase costs. Also it's completely transparent for me - not adding any effort. So, at the end of the day it seems that the fight for my data became some sort of guerrilla war fare.
- dx034 6y ago> Generally speaking Google seems to handicap itself by two forces: censoring content (for moral and legal reasons) and monetary optimization (like preferring click bait content over actually useful content). Not sure if promoting click bait is Google's intent. But pretty much all SEO is geared towards Google. No one really targets SEO towards Bing and Yandex so it's easier for them to rank by other parameters. Monetization certainly is Google's intent but I don't think pure click bait pages are beneficial to Google in the end.
- rv-de 6y agoThere are several large sites which are famous for poor UX and content quality which consistently rank high on Google. Like Pinterest, w3schools to name a few. That has been talked about here on HN also many times. Those are too prominent and obnoxious to assume Google Search isn't aware of it.
- jariel 6y agoThe idea of having an 'auction' is completely ridiculous. The price being paid is company revenue, which is a function of how much value is not going to the consumer! Imagine the best search engine in the world, that was maybe free (!) or provided by some government, it wouldn't be there! Every dollar in profit a company makes, could be in the pocket of consumers in terms of lower price or better features. Ergo - you literally get the scammiest winner. If all search engines were free and low-profit, the winners of this contest would be McDonald's and GM, merely interested in talking about their brands all the time. This is really bad, the EU needs to track a list of classes of search engines (i.e. A, B, C rating) and have Google organize them so A's appear before B's.
- ernie24 6y agoI've been using DuckDuckGo exclusively for several years now. But while privacy is a nice thing it has never been the No.1 reason. I just prefer their search result page design much better. I love customization options. I like !bang searches. And I almost never have been unhappy from search results. I think if your main value is privacy and nothing more, you're lost. Most users would value privacy, but it's almost like pie in the sky thing, that's vague, hard to define, hard/impossible to prove and most importantly you don't "feel it" right away. Quite contrary, using google will give you "better" ads. But some small annoyances (like design flaws) are provable and feelable immediately and will mostly win or loose you an user.
- jld89 6y agoWhat about Ecosia
- soco 6y agoOkay last straw for me, I switched my default searches to DDG. I hope that won't make Google go bankrupt :)
- krn 6y ago> In our proposal, there is no auction. Alternative search engines with the most market share in each market are shown on the first screen, randomly ordered. The remaining alternative search engines are available by scrolling, also randomly ordered. I agree, that this would be the best solution from the end-user point of view. But Google is not an NGO. Android is a free product that is being developed and maintained using revenue that comes from ad sales. It seems logical for Google, or any other company in a similar situation, to expect a compensation for giving up even a tiny percentage of its revenue. Otherwise, from the business perspective it would mean that Google is simply subsidising its own competition. Also, as unlikely as it sounds, having an auction system a kind of democratizes the entire search engine market for new players: now anyone can build a search engine for their own country and make it the top option for all local Android users.
- amadeuspagel 6y agoThe title makes it sound like google specifically eliminated DuckDuckGo, when in fact DuckDuckGo simply lost an auction. They demand that rather then using an auction, google should determine who gets a place on the choice screen by market share. Obviously self-serving, would make it harder for new competitors to enter the market.
- x87678r 6y agoIf you search DDG in Chrome surely Google sees what you're doing anyway?
- nhumrich 6y agoCorrect, but they don't get to advertise to you.
- sascha_sl 6y agoThis is upsetting. I just checked the results for Germany and decided to visit PrivacyWall. I was greeted by a banner of a pixelated Microsoft Logo (presumably because I use edge) next to an extremely broken translation of "make us your default search engine" in German. So that localization criteria is... just not enforced?
- t0mmyb0y 6y agoJesus christ, when will the ddg crying end?
- 1023bytes 6y agoWhat’s curious is that info.com, who won many of the auctions doesn’t even work. It gives me no results at all