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In 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 un

by Imnimo 6y ago

In 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 ago
Aren'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 ago
  There 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 ago
  The 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
    Can you send the Q4 winner list, or where we can find it? I'm interested in seeing the list. Maybe one of these small search engines will be better in some way.
    - sct202 6y ago
      https://www.android.com/choicescreen-winners/ https://www.android.com/choicescreen-winners/ I'm kind of very curious about some of the small names on it. Like how do they have more money than DDG. PirvacyWall seems to be using the Bing API like DDG, so I just don't see how they'd be about to outspend DDG so easily.
      - MiroF 6y ago
        > PirvacyWall seems to be using the Bing API like DDG, so I just don't see how they'd be about to outspend DDG so easily. They probably are private-equity/venture-funded and are a bet on trying to capture some of the market which they can monetize for more than they spent on the auction. e: well they appear to be a class B corp, so actually perhaps not
      - vin047 6y ago
        Some more info on info.com and PrivacyWall https://qz.com/1783096/what-are-info-com-and-privacywall/ https://qz.com/1783096/what-are-info-com-and-privacywall/
        lgats 6y ago
        further reading https://campaignforaccountability.org/watchdog-calls-on-ftc-to-investigate-privacywall-for-using-google-ads-to-lure-citizens-into-paying-to-register-to-vote/ https://campaignforaccountability.org/watchdog-calls-on-ftc-...
- ehsankia 6y ago
  There's only two solution that come to mind 1. Give it to the highest bidders (current method) 2. Give it to the highest ranking sites From what I see, #2 is even worse for newcomers. Do you have a different suggestion that's better?
  - z3t4 6y ago
    Randomize the order. Mark the highest ranking as "popular".
    - josefx 6y ago
      Enter Microsofts browser ballot screen that they were required to show in Europe. Broken randomness and half a dozen IE skins to game the requirement. Main requirements should be: do not let the fox guard the hen house.
    - rrobukef 6y ago
      Reverse the order, mark the lowest ranking as popular!
    - ehsankia 6y ago
      Is there some threshold? Can any fork of Chromium make it on there? Can a company make 10 different forks to increase their chance? What if someone gets a really bad roll and sees 5 really shitty ones they don't know or like? How is that putting the user first?
      - MiroF 6y ago
        > Can any fork of Chromium make it on there? Chromium is a browser.
        ehsankia 6y ago
        Wow, for a second I really blanked there and I was totally thinking of the Microsoft ballot. Good catch.
  - 6y ago
drivebycomment 6y ago
I don't think it's that simple. It's not as simple as DDG makes it out to be. As a society, what do we want to see for the default search choice box on your smartphone ? DDG's proposal is: > 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. Do we want to cram that with hundreds of random sites that want to be ? That amounts to a meaningless choice (nobody has really time to look through them all and compare). If people are willing to suffer that much through, they can certainly customize after the initial setup to pick whatever they want. So I think beyond the first screen is probably not a good idea - just put a search box or something. Then, do we just put top N ? What would that N be ? Do we let the screen size dictate the number ? Do we use some fixed N ? If you picked some fixed N, what the order should be ? From purely immediate utilitarian perspective, you'd want it to be according to the market share - to minimize the effort for people to pick what they want (with the assumption that the market share reflects the user's choice). DDG supports "random" order on the first screen - random would put them as the top choice more often than their current market share. This is not an unreasonable choice if you want to take advantage of "nudge" (of putting as the first choice) to "even out" the market share. As far as nudges go, this isn't THAT obstructive when looking from the lens of a single user, but this would still be a very direct intervention on people's choice and what companies can do - it's roughly equivalent to mandating grocery stores to pick top 5 soft drinks and display them in a random order on the top shelf. Generally we're bad at writing laws and regulations at this level of detail, so we try to rely on market to sort this kind of things out. But this question arises due to monopoly concerns in the first place, which is exactly about market distortion, so maybe this kind of intervention is OK ? DDG also implies other search engines can bid more because they have higher profit margin due to sacrificing privacy. But this ignores two important aspects: 1) people are willing to trade off privacy for more "return" in the form of more features and free services (companies with higher profit tend to develop more, better stuff than companies with less profit) 2) companies who can't auction higher might be fundamentally less efficient than competitors, thus has higher cost structure. In that case, as a society we do generally want to use more efficient one. So, at least part of DDG's request is not unreasonable, and does merit some discussion, but it's not as straightforward, and the answer likely will depend on how comfortable you are with how deep and detailed intervention you're willing to have the government / regulatory body decide.
harry8 6y ago
Who is being paid in this "auction"? What percentage of customers of search know precisely what they are paying? The latter I'm putting at "so close to zero as makes no difference" which makes "price competitive" outcome a little on the absurd side. I'd phrase it as "DDG claim they unwilling to rob their customers as much as industry norms to be able to afford the fee" (a fee they're paying to who?) to be on the list. Customers are not consulted at any point. Customers are largely unaware of what Google have done to them via surveillance. Customers never agreed in any meaningful way to what google have done with their massively succesful surviellance bait and switch strategy. Controlling the sales infrastructure and selling in that infrastructure is a thing that would be exceedingly difficult for it not to be anti-competitive. It's been a problem in this industry at least since Microsoft were known as the death star and anyone successful in software found out they had just done microsoft's market reseach for them. Maybe longer? Doesn't matter how long, it's gotta go. Beyond a small size you do distribution and nothing else or you use that distrubution to get sales. You got big? Splin off one of those parts and sell it while counting the money from your immense success. There's no way the current system is better for anyone other than those that want market power rather than producing high quality stuff.
- notriddle 6y ago
  > Who is being paid in this "auction"? What percentage of customers of search know precisely what they are paying? The latter I'm putting at "so close to zero as makes no difference" which makes "price competitive" outcome a little on the absurd side. Honestly, most of the people I've talked with know about Google's business model. They give answers ranging around here abouts: * I don't care about privacy; I have nothing to hide. * DuckDuckGo are probably a honeypot; they gather as much or more information as Google, and lie about it. * Even if I switch search engine, they'll probably get all my info some other way anyhow, and I don't have the skill or time to try to find everything that could be leaking information. * Google supplies a better search engine, so it's worth it. * Using DuckDuckGo as my search engine, when I'm using Android as my OS, seems like a waste of time, and I'm not buying a new phone.
  - harry8 6y ago
skratlo 6y ago
This is such an excellent, textbook example of BULLSHIT. Of course Google is abusing its dominance in mobile OS market to benefit their search product. > But if your position... without the advertising that money buys Yeah dude, but the advertising is controlled by the very same party, did you forgot about that? And we are talking for profit advertising, as opposed to objective journalism. It's as if for running in some election, you're required to win some auction, what kind of sick society is that?
ssorallen 6y ago
+1 I have tried multiple times to use DuckDuckGo over the years but used !g so often for programming queries that I questioned why I was forcing myself to use a plainly underperforming (for my use case) product. In other David vs. Goliath stories like Firefox vs. Chrome the competing product had verifiable advantages for me. For DDG the only edge is an unverifiable claim that the company doesn’t track me? Other than that I am resolving myself to a product that performs less well for my use case.
- dtrailin 6y ago
  Would be interested in what that salary range is. I assume a larger part of their comp is RSU and options.
- maxekman 6y ago
  It can also be that employees are willing to have a lower salary because they are feeling they contribute to something meaningful.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- rv-de 6y ago
  When using DDG I also tend to fall back on !g but in my idealistic fantasy I imagine this to be okay because I provide DDG with search terms they can use to optimize their engine.
- nottorp 6y ago
  > used !g so often for programming queries Funny, I find google useless for programming queries lately. Although, if you go past the beginner questions, all searches become useless. You want something exotic and android specific? Good luck wading through 3000 pages explaining you how to use Android. Even though you specified 'programmatically' or 'in code'. And 90% of the rest are SEO "tutorial" pages that don't answer your question either.
  - 6y ago
Barrin92 6y ago
it's an entirely circular argument because the basis for a service like DDG to be able to compete on product quality is having more users in the first place. It's a classic case of network effects, one of the main reasons for Google's accurate results is the amount of data they have available, and that in turn depends on their userbase. Quality of the product and popularity are correlated when it comes to most internet firms, so just appealing to consumer choice means little. Do we need to argue if Facebook without ads and more privacy would be better? Of course it'd be better, did anyone ever go "gosh I miss my Facebook ads"? The damn issue is that the value isn't in the product, but in the users already on the platform.
Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
I absolutely agree with your comment. Every time I set DDG as my default search engine, I return back to Google after two weeks because I get fed up of using !g to get proper search results. If I know the site where I can get what I seek e.g. Reddit, SO, HN then bangs on DDG are useful but when I don't know which site would get me the information I seek, DDG fails me 9/10 times in giving me a proper result and I have to resort to !g. DDG needs to be a better search engine first than anything else if it needs to survive, just advertising Privacy wouldn't cut it, Hypothetically If Apple announces a search engine tomorrow most of DDG customer base would shift even if Apple had a poor search engine just because 'Apple sells Privacy better'.
- giomasce 6y ago
  Really? In my experience, when DDG doesn't find what I need it rarely happens that Google does.
  - Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
    Perhaps it has to do with search behaviour, perhaps what I search for has better results on Google (even though the quality of search results on Google have degraded extensively over past several years in favour of sites hosting large volume of content). Every time I don't get a result I seek from a search engine, I think about making note of it for a 'search engine wall of shame', but I never acted upon that as the urge to solve problem at hand takes precedence. I will try to start making it a habit here on, so that I can provide some facts for such future discussions.
- inetsee 6y ago
  My experience has been that DDG produces satisfactory results 95+ percent of the time and Google produces more ads that crowd out the results 100 percent of the time.
  - tasuki 6y ago
    I've been using DDG for a couple of years. It produces satisfactory results as long as I describe what I'm searching for thoroughly. Google knows me well and is able to surmise a lot from a much shorter query. In the same vein, if I want unbiased results, DDG is strictly superior to Google.
toper-centage 6y ago
Private search engines, by definition, must make less money than others. The ads are less targeted and worth less, and user data and search habits are not sold. To be outbit by other smaller players, you have to wonder: what is their business model. And then you have non profits like Ecosia. Is it fair that Ecosia has to pay untold amounts in a secret auction to Google? That money could have gone to pay trees but instead is going to line Google's pockets and strengthen their dominance...
doublesCs 6y ago
> 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 you're very sympathetic to anti-trust measures, then this shouldn't be decided in an auction. Obviously the most profitable companies will win the auction. And those are the same companies that you should be taking measures against (not because they're profitable in itself, but because by being profitable they can kill competitors). So saying: "search engines should compete on a lawless free market" vs "search engines have to compete on an auction for users" is more or less the same thing. Anti-trust measures try to make the outcome slightly less sensitive to profitability.
jariel 6y ago
"I'm undecided about DDG with regard to its relevance for my search behaviour. " This is a misunderstanding of the economics. Every dollar you spend on something is a dollar of value taken away from you in value - 'low price' means more surplus and value to the consumer, all other things being equal. A crapy search engine with 10 000 customers will make more money than a great search engine that is essentially free - but which one is better? There are other factors at play here, especially concerning scale, whereupon a smaller upstart, with a product 10x better would never be able to compete just on the basis of the cost of customer acquisition, which is arbitrary. And of course, that search is free, it's a strategic investment on everyone's part to begin with. 'In Other Words' - the search engine with the most, crappiest ads, is going to get top place, but the search engine with 0 ads, supported by open source ... nobody would find out about? They need to remove the auction, it makes the whole exercise pointless.
roenxi 6y ago
I see a slightly different argument here for why this is an antitrust issue. The DDG position is that they have lower ability to bid because they are offering a cheaper but superior (in terms of privacy) user experience. If Google's only priority was the best outcome for the Android platform they'd probably consider cutting DDG a deal. However, because Google also gets the top slot by default they have an incentive to fill the rest of the list with poor-user-experience search engines. So the antitrust issue would be Google freezing out DDG from the exposure, giving it instead to search engines that Google doesn't feel threatened by. This situation only exists because Google has technical control of both the list of search engines and the first search engine that appears on the list. I'm not a huge fan of antitrust, being a hardened capitalist. But I can see why if antitrust is a thing then this is a case where it would apply. The market maker also being the major competitor in the market is pretty seedy.
- toper-centage 6y ago
  DDG's User research on 9k users in 3 main markets shows people don't mind scrolling through a long list of search options. Most people will still pick Google even if it's the last option. But their research also shows that about 20% of Google users would choose a different provider if given a chance. Google created fake scarcity by limiting the number of search providers to 4.
mlindner 6y ago
I used to like DuckDuckGo but that was because it used Bing which was relatively uncensored at the time. Bing has become heavily censored now in it's search results (similar to Google) and now DuckDuckGo doesn't find accurate search results for many terms on more edgy or politically incorrect or risque topics.
- aembleton 6y ago
  What do you use instead?
- Zenbit_UX 6y ago
  I find it shocking people want more Bing results in DDG. If it was 100% Google I wouldn't have ditched it.
  - chris_f 6y ago
    Runnaroo and Startpage are both privacy focused and use Google as the base for organic web results. I am the creator of Runnaroo.
mtgx 6y ago
If people already like Google, why does Google need the "free advertising" by shoving it in Chrome, which is also shoved into all Android devices? This is similar to their recent move of mandating all Play Store apps use your payment APIs, when according to them "97% of apps already use it". And before you say "but it's Google's own product!" -- Yeah, and that's exactly the point of antitrust laws - you shouldn't abuse your power in one market to promote your product against competitors/your own platform users in another market. > DuckDuckGo needs to stand on its own two feet The Android market is already rigged in favor of Google all through out. All Android contracts with OEMs are written so that Google's apps are favored. That was the whole point of the EU antitrust investigations, too. Also, why didn't Google let Chrome "stand on its own feet" by allowing users to install it if they wanted to and not include it by default in Android? Again, double standards. > cannot compete without the advertising that money buys You mean the advertising for which Google gets paid, further strengthening its own position? Google is kind of like a casino here, the house always wins in this situation. Either you are not allowed to compete or you "pay for the privilege". Honestly, I'm very surprised the EU accepted this as a "solution" for Google's antitrust issues, especially after they mandated that Microsoft needs to include all major browser options for free in Windows before.
appleflaxen 6y ago
I am unable to follow your line of argument. What does your position on privacy have to do with fighting a monopoly?
52-6F-62 6y ago
While I generally think Google can do as it pleases here, I don't think > 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. is really true. A free option not taking in great amounts of money, but offering substantial privacy just won't be as visible—especially when it's actively being drowned out by companies with for-profit motives.
- pb7 6y ago
  If substantial privacy was as valuable as you suggest, it would be more popular. People love getting something for nothing, so why isn’t it happening more easily?
  - 52-6F-62 6y ago
    The most valuable things are not always the most popular. I wouldn't conflate the two.

by Imnimo 6y ago

MiroF 6y ago

Aren'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 ago
There 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 ago
The 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
  Can you send the Q4 winner list, or where we can find it? I'm interested in seeing the list. Maybe one of these small search engines will be better in some way.
  - sct202 6y ago
    https://www.android.com/choicescreen-winners/ https://www.android.com/choicescreen-winners/ I'm kind of very curious about some of the small names on it. Like how do they have more money than DDG. PirvacyWall seems to be using the Bing API like DDG, so I just don't see how they'd be about to outspend DDG so easily.
    - MiroF 6y ago
      > PirvacyWall seems to be using the Bing API like DDG, so I just don't see how they'd be about to outspend DDG so easily. They probably are private-equity/venture-funded and are a bet on trying to capture some of the market which they can monetize for more than they spent on the auction. e: well they appear to be a class B corp, so actually perhaps not
    - vin047 6y ago
      Some more info on info.com and PrivacyWall https://qz.com/1783096/what-are-info-com-and-privacywall/ https://qz.com/1783096/what-are-info-com-and-privacywall/
      - lgats 6y ago
        further reading https://campaignforaccountability.org/watchdog-calls-on-ftc-to-investigate-privacywall-for-using-google-ads-to-lure-citizens-into-paying-to-register-to-vote/ https://campaignforaccountability.org/watchdog-calls-on-ftc-...
ehsankia 6y ago
There's only two solution that come to mind 1. Give it to the highest bidders (current method) 2. Give it to the highest ranking sites From what I see, #2 is even worse for newcomers. Do you have a different suggestion that's better?
- z3t4 6y ago
  Randomize the order. Mark the highest ranking as "popular".
  - josefx 6y ago
    Enter Microsofts browser ballot screen that they were required to show in Europe. Broken randomness and half a dozen IE skins to game the requirement. Main requirements should be: do not let the fox guard the hen house.
  - rrobukef 6y ago
    Reverse the order, mark the lowest ranking as popular!
  - ehsankia 6y ago
    Is there some threshold? Can any fork of Chromium make it on there? Can a company make 10 different forks to increase their chance? What if someone gets a really bad roll and sees 5 really shitty ones they don't know or like? How is that putting the user first?
    - MiroF 6y ago
      > Can any fork of Chromium make it on there? Chromium is a browser.
      - ehsankia 6y ago
        Wow, for a second I really blanked there and I was totally thinking of the Microsoft ballot. Good catch.
- 6y ago

drivebycomment 6y ago

I don't think it's that simple. It's not as simple as DDG makes it out to be. As a society, what do we want to see for the default search choice box on your smartphone ? DDG's proposal is: > 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. Do we want to cram that with hundreds of random sites that want to be ? That amounts to a meaningless choice (nobody has really time to look through them all and compare). If people are willing to suffer that much through, they can certainly customize after the initial setup to pick whatever they want. So I think beyond the first screen is probably not a good idea - just put a search box or something. Then, do we just put top N ? What would that N be ? Do we let the screen size dictate the number ? Do we use some fixed N ? If you picked some fixed N, what the order should be ? From purely immediate utilitarian perspective, you'd want it to be according to the market share - to minimize the effort for people to pick what they want (with the assumption that the market share reflects the user's choice). DDG supports "random" order on the first screen - random would put them as the top choice more often than their current market share. This is not an unreasonable choice if you want to take advantage of "nudge" (of putting as the first choice) to "even out" the market share. As far as nudges go, this isn't THAT obstructive when looking from the lens of a single user, but this would still be a very direct intervention on people's choice and what companies can do - it's roughly equivalent to mandating grocery stores to pick top 5 soft drinks and display them in a random order on the top shelf. Generally we're bad at writing laws and regulations at this level of detail, so we try to rely on market to sort this kind of things out. But this question arises due to monopoly concerns in the first place, which is exactly about market distortion, so maybe this kind of intervention is OK ? DDG also implies other search engines can bid more because they have higher profit margin due to sacrificing privacy. But this ignores two important aspects: 1) people are willing to trade off privacy for more "return" in the form of more features and free services (companies with higher profit tend to develop more, better stuff than companies with less profit) 2) companies who can't auction higher might be fundamentally less efficient than competitors, thus has higher cost structure. In that case, as a society we do generally want to use more efficient one. So, at least part of DDG's request is not unreasonable, and does merit some discussion, but it's not as straightforward, and the answer likely will depend on how comfortable you are with how deep and detailed intervention you're willing to have the government / regulatory body decide.

harry8 6y ago

Who is being paid in this "auction"? What percentage of customers of search know precisely what they are paying? The latter I'm putting at "so close to zero as makes no difference" which makes "price competitive" outcome a little on the absurd side. I'd phrase it as "DDG claim they unwilling to rob their customers as much as industry norms to be able to afford the fee" (a fee they're paying to who?) to be on the list. Customers are not consulted at any point. Customers are largely unaware of what Google have done to them via surveillance. Customers never agreed in any meaningful way to what google have done with their massively succesful surviellance bait and switch strategy. Controlling the sales infrastructure and selling in that infrastructure is a thing that would be exceedingly difficult for it not to be anti-competitive. It's been a problem in this industry at least since Microsoft were known as the death star and anyone successful in software found out they had just done microsoft's market reseach for them. Maybe longer? Doesn't matter how long, it's gotta go. Beyond a small size you do distribution and nothing else or you use that distrubution to get sales. You got big? Splin off one of those parts and sell it while counting the money from your immense success. There's no way the current system is better for anyone other than those that want market power rather than producing high quality stuff.

notriddle 6y ago
> Who is being paid in this "auction"? What percentage of customers of search know precisely what they are paying? The latter I'm putting at "so close to zero as makes no difference" which makes "price competitive" outcome a little on the absurd side. Honestly, most of the people I've talked with know about Google's business model. They give answers ranging around here abouts: * I don't care about privacy; I have nothing to hide. * DuckDuckGo are probably a honeypot; they gather as much or more information as Google, and lie about it. * Even if I switch search engine, they'll probably get all my info some other way anyhow, and I don't have the skill or time to try to find everything that could be leaking information. * Google supplies a better search engine, so it's worth it. * Using DuckDuckGo as my search engine, when I'm using Android as my OS, seems like a waste of time, and I'm not buying a new phone.
- harry8 6y ago

skratlo 6y ago

This is such an excellent, textbook example of BULLSHIT. Of course Google is abusing its dominance in mobile OS market to benefit their search product. > But if your position... without the advertising that money buys Yeah dude, but the advertising is controlled by the very same party, did you forgot about that? And we are talking for profit advertising, as opposed to objective journalism. It's as if for running in some election, you're required to win some auction, what kind of sick society is that?

ssorallen 6y ago

+1 I have tried multiple times to use DuckDuckGo over the years but used !g so often for programming queries that I questioned why I was forcing myself to use a plainly underperforming (for my use case) product. In other David vs. Goliath stories like Firefox vs. Chrome the competing product had verifiable advantages for me. For DDG the only edge is an unverifiable claim that the company doesn’t track me? Other than that I am resolving myself to a product that performs less well for my use case.

dtrailin 6y ago
Would be interested in what that salary range is. I assume a larger part of their comp is RSU and options.
maxekman 6y ago
It can also be that employees are willing to have a lower salary because they are feeling they contribute to something meaningful.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
rv-de 6y ago
When using DDG I also tend to fall back on !g but in my idealistic fantasy I imagine this to be okay because I provide DDG with search terms they can use to optimize their engine.
nottorp 6y ago
> used !g so often for programming queries Funny, I find google useless for programming queries lately. Although, if you go past the beginner questions, all searches become useless. You want something exotic and android specific? Good luck wading through 3000 pages explaining you how to use Android. Even though you specified 'programmatically' or 'in code'. And 90% of the rest are SEO "tutorial" pages that don't answer your question either.
- 6y ago

Barrin92 6y ago

it's an entirely circular argument because the basis for a service like DDG to be able to compete on product quality is having more users in the first place. It's a classic case of network effects, one of the main reasons for Google's accurate results is the amount of data they have available, and that in turn depends on their userbase. Quality of the product and popularity are correlated when it comes to most internet firms, so just appealing to consumer choice means little. Do we need to argue if Facebook without ads and more privacy would be better? Of course it'd be better, did anyone ever go "gosh I miss my Facebook ads"? The damn issue is that the value isn't in the product, but in the users already on the platform.

Abishek_Muthian 6y ago

I absolutely agree with your comment. Every time I set DDG as my default search engine, I return back to Google after two weeks because I get fed up of using !g to get proper search results. If I know the site where I can get what I seek e.g. Reddit, SO, HN then bangs on DDG are useful but when I don't know which site would get me the information I seek, DDG fails me 9/10 times in giving me a proper result and I have to resort to !g. DDG needs to be a better search engine first than anything else if it needs to survive, just advertising Privacy wouldn't cut it, Hypothetically If Apple announces a search engine tomorrow most of DDG customer base would shift even if Apple had a poor search engine just because 'Apple sells Privacy better'.

giomasce 6y ago
Really? In my experience, when DDG doesn't find what I need it rarely happens that Google does.
- Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
  Perhaps it has to do with search behaviour, perhaps what I search for has better results on Google (even though the quality of search results on Google have degraded extensively over past several years in favour of sites hosting large volume of content). Every time I don't get a result I seek from a search engine, I think about making note of it for a 'search engine wall of shame', but I never acted upon that as the urge to solve problem at hand takes precedence. I will try to start making it a habit here on, so that I can provide some facts for such future discussions.
inetsee 6y ago
My experience has been that DDG produces satisfactory results 95+ percent of the time and Google produces more ads that crowd out the results 100 percent of the time.
- tasuki 6y ago
  I've been using DDG for a couple of years. It produces satisfactory results as long as I describe what I'm searching for thoroughly. Google knows me well and is able to surmise a lot from a much shorter query. In the same vein, if I want unbiased results, DDG is strictly superior to Google.

toper-centage 6y ago

Private search engines, by definition, must make less money than others. The ads are less targeted and worth less, and user data and search habits are not sold. To be outbit by other smaller players, you have to wonder: what is their business model. And then you have non profits like Ecosia. Is it fair that Ecosia has to pay untold amounts in a secret auction to Google? That money could have gone to pay trees but instead is going to line Google's pockets and strengthen their dominance...

doublesCs 6y ago

> 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 you're very sympathetic to anti-trust measures, then this shouldn't be decided in an auction. Obviously the most profitable companies will win the auction. And those are the same companies that you should be taking measures against (not because they're profitable in itself, but because by being profitable they can kill competitors). So saying: "search engines should compete on a lawless free market" vs "search engines have to compete on an auction for users" is more or less the same thing. Anti-trust measures try to make the outcome slightly less sensitive to profitability.

jariel 6y ago

"I'm undecided about DDG with regard to its relevance for my search behaviour. " This is a misunderstanding of the economics. Every dollar you spend on something is a dollar of value taken away from you in value - 'low price' means more surplus and value to the consumer, all other things being equal. A crapy search engine with 10 000 customers will make more money than a great search engine that is essentially free - but which one is better? There are other factors at play here, especially concerning scale, whereupon a smaller upstart, with a product 10x better would never be able to compete just on the basis of the cost of customer acquisition, which is arbitrary. And of course, that search is free, it's a strategic investment on everyone's part to begin with. 'In Other Words' - the search engine with the most, crappiest ads, is going to get top place, but the search engine with 0 ads, supported by open source ... nobody would find out about? They need to remove the auction, it makes the whole exercise pointless.

roenxi 6y ago

I see a slightly different argument here for why this is an antitrust issue. The DDG position is that they have lower ability to bid because they are offering a cheaper but superior (in terms of privacy) user experience. If Google's only priority was the best outcome for the Android platform they'd probably consider cutting DDG a deal. However, because Google also gets the top slot by default they have an incentive to fill the rest of the list with poor-user-experience search engines. So the antitrust issue would be Google freezing out DDG from the exposure, giving it instead to search engines that Google doesn't feel threatened by. This situation only exists because Google has technical control of both the list of search engines and the first search engine that appears on the list. I'm not a huge fan of antitrust, being a hardened capitalist. But I can see why if antitrust is a thing then this is a case where it would apply. The market maker also being the major competitor in the market is pretty seedy.

toper-centage 6y ago
DDG's User research on 9k users in 3 main markets shows people don't mind scrolling through a long list of search options. Most people will still pick Google even if it's the last option. But their research also shows that about 20% of Google users would choose a different provider if given a chance. Google created fake scarcity by limiting the number of search providers to 4.

mlindner 6y ago

I used to like DuckDuckGo but that was because it used Bing which was relatively uncensored at the time. Bing has become heavily censored now in it's search results (similar to Google) and now DuckDuckGo doesn't find accurate search results for many terms on more edgy or politically incorrect or risque topics.

aembleton 6y ago
What do you use instead?
Zenbit_UX 6y ago
I find it shocking people want more Bing results in DDG. If it was 100% Google I wouldn't have ditched it.
- chris_f 6y ago
  Runnaroo and Startpage are both privacy focused and use Google as the base for organic web results. I am the creator of Runnaroo.

mtgx 6y ago

If people already like Google, why does Google need the "free advertising" by shoving it in Chrome, which is also shoved into all Android devices? This is similar to their recent move of mandating all Play Store apps use your payment APIs, when according to them "97% of apps already use it". And before you say "but it's Google's own product!" -- Yeah, and that's exactly the point of antitrust laws - you shouldn't abuse your power in one market to promote your product against competitors/your own platform users in another market. > DuckDuckGo needs to stand on its own two feet The Android market is already rigged in favor of Google all through out. All Android contracts with OEMs are written so that Google's apps are favored. That was the whole point of the EU antitrust investigations, too. Also, why didn't Google let Chrome "stand on its own feet" by allowing users to install it if they wanted to and not include it by default in Android? Again, double standards. > cannot compete without the advertising that money buys You mean the advertising for which Google gets paid, further strengthening its own position? Google is kind of like a casino here, the house always wins in this situation. Either you are not allowed to compete or you "pay for the privilege". Honestly, I'm very surprised the EU accepted this as a "solution" for Google's antitrust issues, especially after they mandated that Microsoft needs to include all major browser options for free in Windows before.

appleflaxen 6y ago

I am unable to follow your line of argument. What does your position on privacy have to do with fighting a monopoly?

52-6F-62 6y ago

While I generally think Google can do as it pleases here, I don't think > 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. is really true. A free option not taking in great amounts of money, but offering substantial privacy just won't be as visible—especially when it's actively being drowned out by companies with for-profit motives.

pb7 6y ago
If substantial privacy was as valuable as you suggest, it would be more popular. People love getting something for nothing, so why isn’t it happening more easily?
- 52-6F-62 6y ago
  The most valuable things are not always the most popular. I wouldn't conflate the two.