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No thank you. I appreciate what DDG is trying to do but in the end, a search engine that makes money from selling ads trying to protect me from another search e
by zenincognito 6y ago
No thank you. I appreciate what DDG is trying to do but in the end, a search engine that makes money from selling ads trying to protect me from another search engine that also sells ads is just feeding the ecosystem.
I am going to put my money into FF no matter how annoying some of the things in it are.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mpercy 6y agoFF as in Firefox?
- 11235813213455 6y agoyes
- toastal 6y agoThough the official shorthand is “Fx”
- erdo 6y agoI'm honestly ok with ads, I am not ok with "personalised" ads
- jjbinx007 6y agoIndeed. If I buy a magazine then ads are targeted at readers of the magazine but they don't track me, invade my privacy, follow me around wherever I go or occasionally try to hijack me. If a newspaper or online magazine had traditional ads that were embedded in the page as static images (no distracting video please) then I'd leave my ad blocker off.
- WesolyKubeczek 6y agoCareful what you wish for. I go to a local website for local news, and they display five big banners which you must scroll through — one and a half screen — before you get to see the actual content, headline included. True, those are not targeted ads, they are sponsored content, but I wouldn’t even bother setting up my adblocker, had they made them less annoying.
- ikornaselur 6y agoIt always surprises me when people say that they're fine with personalised ads, even going so far as saying that if they're getting ads they want them to be personalised. I guess I _can_ understand why, they want them to be potentially useful if they're seeing them... To me though, sure, show me ads, fine, whatever, but don't build them around a profile of me to try to manipulate me directly based on my potential interests and behaviour. Any time I can disable any "personalisation" of ads, I do.
- sjwright 6y agoI just don’t like the idea of having my own devices conspire against me to compromise my own privacy.
- zo1 6y agoI would be fine with actual personalized ads. Hell, I'd give them even more data if they needed it to accomplish such a feat. But the best they can do is try sell me washing machines after I've already purchased one, or show me youtube snippets of scenes from Netflix shows I've watched recently (yes this one really did happen. No idea how, still checking).
- Ruthalas 6y agoIs there another search engine you recommend instead?
- dunkeylim 6y agoneeva? maybe brave search in a few months?
- jhoechtl 6y agohttps://www.mojeek.com/ https://www.mojeek.com/
- quickthrower2 6y agoThank you!
- qPM9l3XJrF 6y agoWhy is this preferable?
- owly 6y agoI’d never heard of Mojeek. While their mission is admirable, a few test searches using technical terms resulted in several suspicious sites. DDG search using the same terms provided results from commonly trusted sites. Obviously mojeek is new and will improve, but be careful out there.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 6y agoUnder terms of an agreement, FF sends search bar queries to a "search engine that makes money from selling ads." The search engine belongs to an online ad services company. FF belongs to Mozilla Corporation. The agreement is between the ad services company and Mozilla Corporation. Mozilla Corporation pays the salaries of the developers who maintain FF. Almost all of Mozilla Corporation's income, certainly 100% of their profits, comes from the agreement with the online ad services company. Sadly, donations are not what keeps Mozilla and FF in business. Sure, DDG might be robbing Peter to pay Paul, but so is Mozilla. They sell out every FF user who does not change default settings. This must be a significant number of users, because the online ad services company pays millions to Mozilla for that "service". That means heaps of queries coming from FF are "feeding the ecosystem".
- ArneBab 6y agoThey try to get away from that model, though. Not very successfully (how to get people to pay for a browser?), but they try.
- ronjouch 6y ago> "They try to get away from that model, though. Not very successfully [...], but they try." Honest question: do they? What evidence supports the assertion that they do try? I haven't seen any story suggesting Mozilla is trying to get away from that model of funding Firefox. > "(how to get people to pay for a browser?)" The Thunderbird email client (formerly maintained by Mozilla) switched to being independent from Mozilla and asking for donations; so far they are successful. Donations are now sustaining a team of 15, thanks to yearly 2.3 M$ donations [1], and they keep hiring. "A team of 15 isn't remotely enough to sustain Firefox", you may say, and you'd be right. But then, if Thunderbird is able to find enough donation money for 15, what would Firefox (who is way more popular than Thunderbird) be able to score if it found the courage to make its case to its users, and ask for money? Could it afford a staff of 150? More? [1] https://groups.google.com/g/tb-planning/c/-jbmYvYdX1g https://groups.google.com/g/tb-planning/c/-jbmYvYdX1g , https://www.reddit.com/r/opensource/comments/m9td33/thunderbird_raked_in_23_million_in_donations_in/ https://www.reddit.com/r/opensource/comments/m9td33/thunderb...
- propertymagnate 6y agoReally? I can appreciate not wanting to use DDG for a number of reasons, but because they are pushing for financial legitimacy on the basis that there can be an ad industry but it shouldn't be an arms race? Yes thank you, please make a market out of privacy! edit: I should probably say, please prove that privacy respecting markets are viable, I'm not suggesting the commoditisation of everything, lol.
- simias 6y agoI use DDG as my main search engine but I share the parent's concerns. In the end an ad-driven business model will always pit the interests of its users vs the interests of the advertisers. Should DDG become ultra-successful, how long until they start making concessions to privacy to increase revenue and growth? After all not so long ago Google themselves were "the good guys" and we were willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Turns out that "Do No Evil" only really works until it starts clashing with "Make More Money".
- wayoutthere 6y agoHonestly I use DDG because in most cases the search results returned are more relevant. I’ll go to google if it’s something that could be explained by a YouTube video or Reddit thread or a Pinterest board, but Google really wants to push you toward the larger sites — even if the content is less relevant. If I recall DDG doesn’t even use cookies. So they’re showing ads based solely on the search terms, which personally I’m ok with as long as it doesn’t clutter the page too much. Showing me ads when I’m in a discovery mindset is ok and is less intrusive; it’s way worse when you’re in a consumption mindset and the ads are just obnoxious (I’m looking at you, YouTube ads).
- freebuju 6y agoMy experience with DDG has been the opposite of yours. The results some of the times are just annoying. Mostly because I want it to be good enough to replace Google with it. I click on a second page from results and it turns out to be some dead unattended page. I gave up trying to be too optimistic about DDG and use Google with no javascript and no cookies saved on the domain in my browser. My problem with search is a user one. Not an ethical one. When I search for something I want the best results. I don't care if some cute furry animal had to be sacrificed in the production of this utility. Btw, DDG has a settings button hidden somewhere that allows you to tweak a few settings and save cookies if you wanted.
- dazc 6y agoThere are varying degrees of selling ads though. DDG and Google both sit at opposing ends of this spectrum.
- account42 6y agoAt the moment. Google also used to be known for providing better, mostly text based, ads that didn't spam you with popups or blinking animations. That did not stop them from becoming evil.
- dandellion 6y agoI wish there was a way to donate directly to Firefox. Unfortunately, the only option is to donate to Mozilla and they will likely use the money to fund their other initiatives and continue to neglect Firefox.
- troyvit 6y agoHow should a search engine make money? What are some other models they can try?
- Beached 6y agoI guess the issue is how the ads are generated. adds generated on generic search terms are ok with me as long as they are well marked. ads generated on a deep and creepy level of privacy invasion, completely irrelevant to what I'm searching is not ok. I'm content to live In a search world when I type "how to do xxxxx" an add for a software company that provides xxxxx as a service is the top two or three results. I'm not content with getting cold calls from salesmen 1 to 2 hours after I type in a search for gartner magic quadrant xxxxx. (this happens all the time) if the ads served are keyword based on the current search, and clearly marked as add, I'm ok with it. I even click on the ddg ads if the seem relevant on purpose, because I know it generates them revenue. I go out of my way to click on anything I know is a Google ad.