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I use Bing (and Edge, and Windows 10...) but for the average HN reader that's not cool enough. Tech is more and more about personal branding and following the h

by 1996 6y ago

I use Bing (and Edge, and Windows 10...) but for the average HN reader that's not cool enough. Tech is more and more about personal branding and following the hype train. DDG is in. Bing is not. Also, for the older crowd who came from slashdot (and still says 'Micro$oft') it'd be morally unacceptable to use Bing directly. They prefer either a rebrand, or to directly give all their data to Google (maybe because they still see it as fresh and new?) So close, but no cigar.

not2b 6y ago
DDG isn't just a rebrand of Bing (and wouldn't be even if they did all searches via Bing); they don't pass personal information along to Bing that would allow Microsoft to track the user.
- Dahoon 6y ago
  So just like Qwant except no ties to the US.
  - 1996 6y ago
    For now, the french Qwant has as litle ties to the US as the swiss Crypto AG had a few years ago. But since that country is part of 9-eyes IIRC, I wouldn't place a lot of faith on that
- 1996 6y ago
  Do you really think that makes any serious difference if the sites you're visiting serves google ad or uses google analytics? You think you are doing something, but I have strong reservations it achieves anything except making you feel better and more in control.
  - gnufx 6y ago
    > Do you really think that makes any serious difference if the sites you're visiting serves google ad or uses google analytics? Yes, if you block those. You're also not in a search bubble.
- abc-xyz 6y ago
  We don’t know that. I mean all they have to show for it is a privacy policy and a few articles saying “we value privacy”. If they truly cared about privacy then why wouldn’t they be open source? I feel DDG can be compared to Apple in many ways, but here’s it’s important to look at what Apple is doing to its Chinese users by letting the CCP spy on all their iCloud data (sacrifice all the privacy values to obtain access to China’s market). Perhaps DuckDuckGo have also been forced to sacrifice their users’ privacy to join Microsoft Advertising as well? It’s difficult to tell since they’re closed source, and Microsoft Advertising is a private ad network (anyone besides DDG/Ecosia that’s been invited?) that doesn’t make any API documentation publicly available. At least with Bing’s API we can tell that Microsoft just need the search query for it to work, but how about their Microsoft’s advertising API?

by 1996 6y ago

not2b 6y ago

DDG isn't just a rebrand of Bing (and wouldn't be even if they did all searches via Bing); they don't pass personal information along to Bing that would allow Microsoft to track the user.

Dahoon 6y ago
So just like Qwant except no ties to the US.
- 1996 6y ago
  For now, the french Qwant has as litle ties to the US as the swiss Crypto AG had a few years ago. But since that country is part of 9-eyes IIRC, I wouldn't place a lot of faith on that
1996 6y ago
Do you really think that makes any serious difference if the sites you're visiting serves google ad or uses google analytics? You think you are doing something, but I have strong reservations it achieves anything except making you feel better and more in control.
- gnufx 6y ago
  > Do you really think that makes any serious difference if the sites you're visiting serves google ad or uses google analytics? Yes, if you block those. You're also not in a search bubble.
abc-xyz 6y ago
We don’t know that. I mean all they have to show for it is a privacy policy and a few articles saying “we value privacy”. If they truly cared about privacy then why wouldn’t they be open source? I feel DDG can be compared to Apple in many ways, but here’s it’s important to look at what Apple is doing to its Chinese users by letting the CCP spy on all their iCloud data (sacrifice all the privacy values to obtain access to China’s market). Perhaps DuckDuckGo have also been forced to sacrifice their users’ privacy to join Microsoft Advertising as well? It’s difficult to tell since they’re closed source, and Microsoft Advertising is a private ad network (anyone besides DDG/Ecosia that’s been invited?) that doesn’t make any API documentation publicly available. At least with Bing’s API we can tell that Microsoft just need the search query for it to work, but how about their Microsoft’s advertising API?