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Now DuckDuckGo is building its own desktop browser

269 points by waldekm 5y ago

hestefisk 5y ago
The web really needs a truly cleansheet, non-invasive, open source browser written in a modern language. It’s disheartening to see the consolidation in the web space on Chrome. We need an alternative. There has to be someone who can counter Chrome’s dominance with a modern, fast browser engine. (PS - I am and have been a Firefox user for many many years)
- heresaPizza 5y ago
  And I think you should stick to Firefox (just as I’ll do). It will be built on top of the system web view, so chromium on Windows and WebKit on macOS. It will be minimal and lack extensions, and I can’t imagine living without extensions. And if you don’t use any I recommend you to try some. I see no point in this browser, as it will basically be a Firefox Focus for desktop.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  The web has become so overdesigned and complicated that I just don't see that happening. No open source group has the kind of funds to take on google. Firefox is barely in there but only just because they were around before google's engine became dominant and google gives them a half billion dollars a year.
cebert 5y ago
Instead of building another Chromium-based browser, I’d love to see if it were possible for Mozilla and DuckDuckGo to form a partnership that potently helps both firms. I’m concerned we will end up with a monolithic browser stack controlled by Google unless Firefox gains more adoption and support. I believe multiple parties and players help us build a more open and standards based web. I use Firefox as my daily driver primarily for privacy concerns and control, and secondarily to avoid monolithic browser stacks controlled by Google. Firefox isn’t perfect, but I enjoy the experience and have no issue browsing the web with it.
- dkdbejwi383 5y ago
  It’s not (necessarily) Chromium: > "Instead of forking Chromium or anything else, we're building our desktop app around the OS-provided rendering engines (like on mobile), allowing us to strip away a lot of the unnecessary cruft and clutter that's accumulated over the years in major browsers," explains Weinberg.
  - Comevius 5y ago
    The OS-provided rendering engine is Chromium's engine on Android and Windows, and Safari's on iOS and macOS.
    - isodev 5y ago
      "Safari" refers to the browser app built on top of the WebKit engine. Browsers on iOS use the WebKit engine (and not the Safari browser itself). The same engine (WebKit) is available on all Apple platforms. One can also build a desktop browser on top of WebKit like DuckDuckGo suggests it may do on macOS. This approach has a tremendous advantage for solid platform integration and allows them to focus on building a good user experience (and, in this case, secure* good user experience).
      - smoldesu 5y ago
        WebKit is also fully usable on other platforms too, but I seldom ever reach for it unless I'm forced to by the OS.
      - cma 5y ago
        > This approach has a tremendous advantage for solid platform integration and allows them to focus on building a good user experience It basically only lets them do a bit more than skinning it. No deep plugin architectures like you see with Android Firefox, allowing real ad blockers.
        isodev 5y ago
pndy 5y ago
The only thing that bugs me with ddg is that every search inquiry is being processed by improving.duckduckgo.com and it's not possible disable it in search options. You can do block it manually in few ways if you wish but I think that should be an option user can control, in an easy way. I'm bit concerned how things may look like after Manifest v3 will arrive, when it comes to privacy, ads and tracking. Another Chromium-based browser? Why not, I won't mind it but everything comes to what Google does thru Chromium project people hands. And I don't think it can be anything else but Chromium - despite what he says. If not immediately then they later switch to it - just like Microsoft abandon EdgeHTML in favor of Chromium and Blink.
drcongo 5y ago
I wish they'd focus on fixing the various things that have broken in their search over the last couple of years, like literal string searching and negation.
- szszrk 5y ago
  Thanks for confirming this, negation is screwed up somehow. I ended up using !g for redirection for google instead, when I need to negate. But in general I think result quality went off the roof recently, while google's went down for me. I really find it more effective to search on ddg now, for any matter, technical and personal. Google still has a huge database of businesses and integration with maps is awesome, but that advantage is so small that I switch to google less then a few times a month.
IceWreck 5y ago
They're using OS provided rendering engines. So Chromium based Edge Webview on windows, Webkit on Safari and what exactly on Linux ? QTWebengine ? Gecko ? No linux support ? Who knows.
- chupasaurus 5y ago
  Lynx/links as a dependency. /s
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- up6w6 5y ago
  Taking from Tauri [1], which tries to use native rendering engines too, it's WebKitGTK [2]. I thought that only OSX and mobile OS had an integrated rendering engine to call it native, though. [1] https://github.com/tauri-apps/tauri#introduction https://github.com/tauri-apps/tauri#introduction [2] https://webkitgtk.org/ https://webkitgtk.org/
  - khimaros 5y ago
    this is also what epiphany (GNOME Web) uses for rendering.
  - chupasaurus 5y ago
    Which isn't there outside GTK-based environments.
    - jmnicolas 5y ago
      It's not like it can't be installed. I use KDE at home, but I have quite a few GTK apps installed.
    - stjohnswarts 5y ago
      You're joking right? GTK apps work just fine outside of "gtkbased environments". They have since the beginning. Some may not have the styling of their DE but they run just fine. I use Gimp and Meld all over the place, including on windows without any issues.
deleted 5y ago
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anoplus 5y ago
If improving DDG - or any privacy respecting search engine - would require extra funding, I just want to say I would be happy to pay subscription fees for a good service.
cloudengineer94 5y ago
Can't wait to see what they offer I have been using Safari and Brave for quite some time now. For work I use strictly Edge as it keeps everything from o365 together.
MrAlex94 5y ago
This raises a few questions: * Will this be open source? * Will this support WebExtensions? Assuming they'll have to develop their own implementation since they are using the operating system's own rendering engines, so they will most likely have to have their own implementation. * Will this allow ad-blocking and tracking protection? Once again, seems they will have to develop this feature themselves. Will the ad-blocking whitelist their own properties or does the user have granular control? * Will this allow usage of other search engines within the browser, or are you locked in to DDG only? (Of course, ignoring actually navigating directly to the relevant search engines own website). Interestingly enough, from their blog post[1]: > Instead of forking Chromium or anything else, we’re building our desktop app around the OS-provided rendering engines (like on mobile), allowing us to strip away a lot of the unnecessary cruft and clutter that’s accumulated over the years in major browsers. On macOS, Safari is probably the most anaemic "major" web browser out there. Interested to see how it compares to that. I'm not convinced a more minimalist browser compared to Safari is actually useful? [1] https://spreadprivacy.com/duckduckgo-2021-review/ https://spreadprivacy.com/duckduckgo-2021-review/
- deleted 5y ago
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- gwbas1c 5y ago
  I interviewed for the position. (They regularly posted the position in the "Who's hiring" threads for awhile.) It's going to be an extremely simple browser. Their strategy is to use the HTML rendering component built into each OS. The way I interpreted it was that they're trying to make a browser that's simple enough to develop with a small team, "good enough" for most people, and doesn't have every feature under the kitchen sink. > Will this be open source? Doubtful. It also doesn't "make sense" to open source, as they're basically using the same rendering engine as Edge / Safari, with a different UI around it. (Side note: If you want something like this that's open source, it's probably easier to clone it than to fork it. Every few years I write an experimental browser based on these rendering engines, and I frequently come across "simple" open-source browsers that provide great examples of how to use these components.) > Will this support WebExtensions? No. They are building ad-blocking and privacy functionality into the browser. To paraphrase what they told me, most people only install ad-blocking and privacy extensions. > Will this allow ad-blocking and tracking protection? Yes, that is the major feature they are trying to build. They have extensive blacklists already, as they already ship privacy-focused plugins for Chrome. (Their take-home assessment involved using a well-known privacy list published on Github.) > Will this allow usage of other search engines within the browser, or are you locked in to DDG only? We didn't discuss that. This is speculation on my part, but I think their motivations are to "keep it simple" instead of offer every feature under the sun.
jokethrowaway 5y ago
I really hope they end up using servo. If you're ignoring established engines, it's a pretty good first step I don't think the web is fixable as it is though. Performances are going to be terrible no matter what unless we pick a subset of functionality and provide native code to handle that. EDIT: ooh, they're going to use the native engine on each platform! Wow! This is a non news.
dartharva 5y ago
From the official blog: >Instead of forking Chromium or anything else, we’re building our desktop app around the OS-provided rendering engines (like on mobile), allowing us to strip away a lot of the unnecessary cruft and clutter that’s accumulated over the years in major browsers. With our clean and simple interface combined with the beloved Fire Button from our mobile app, DuckDuckGo for desktop will be ready to become your new everyday browsing app. It seems they are making the desktop equivalent of Firefox Focus.
yawaworht1978 5y ago
A mix of Firefox , opera(I kinda like some features), safari without the proprietary issues and the chromium parts minus the tracking would be amazing. Rooting for the team, everyone used to say it's too hard to create a new browser from scratch, the monopoly is too overwhelming etc. But we got brave, at least it's something fresh. And it appears duck has generated money or investments for following googles path. Next they could go for an email client, a good copy of the Ms suite and a video platform and google might become dethroned some day.
- xigoi 5y ago
  They're not going to create a new browser from scratch, unfortunately.
jdpedrie 5y ago
There seems to be a growing consensus around the idea that alternative search engines aren't viable without their own browser. Cliqz (acquired by Brave), DDG (obviously successful by some metrics, but not a real threat to Google), Kagi (pops up from time to time here)[0]. Given that Google considers it worth tens of billions of dollars a year to remain the default on Apple devices and Firefox, the default search advantage is clearly quite important. I'm not sold on the idea that convincing people to install a different browser will be easier than teaching them to install an extension or choose a different default search provider, but clearly the latter isn't paying off. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28799049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28799049
- toper-centage 5y ago
  They are viable, but growth is significantly hindered by GOOGLE. When you install a search engine extension, that is explicitly labeled as such, Google will still "warn" users that an extention has "hijacked" their default search provider, and recommend to revert back. This is obviously anti-conpetitive but governments are too slow to react. Furthermore, extensions are at the mercy of extension stores' obscure policies, and are often dropped on a whim by "reviewers". With that said, tens of millions of users is hardly "unviable". There are several profitable search engines.
pleb_nz 5y ago
As I read I was thinking Please don't use chromium Please don't use chromium Please don't use chromium Please don't use chromium Then I found it... Yes Then I saw 'building or own'... I thought. Why oh why.... sigh... At least consider Firefox
- jmnicolas 5y ago
  You didn't read enough: they will be using the default os webview so Edge on Windows, Chrome on Android and Webkit on Apples.
  - Yizahi 5y ago
    Edge = Chrome
    - speedgoose 5y ago
      The Google trackers are replaced by Microsoft trackers. It's a bit different.
      - stjohnswarts 5y ago
        totally different.
  - toper-centage 5y ago
    So I suppose... No Linux support? I assume a significant share of their users are Linux users.
    - stjohnswarts 5y ago
      If they're using webkit on Apple it's safe to assume they could use QtWebkit or GtkWebkit on linux. Linux will be lower priority probably strictly from a numbers game though.
  - pleb_nz 5y ago
    Oh I read that alrigt. I think you may have missed my point...
Yizahi 5y ago
Yet another Google Chrome clone with privacy mods. How many of those we have already? Four? Five? Good job cementing Googleopoly of internet.
9387367 5y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29316022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29316022
azangru 5y ago
How many web developers get peeved when they see news of another prospective web browser, I wonder?
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  We don't care we'll just continue to test in Safari and Chrome and then ship it. You're on your own if you use something else, change the UA and hope for the best.
waweic 5y ago
It's very important to understand that, other than Blink, Gecko is incredibly hard to integrate into other software. That's why, for example, there is no Firefox-based Electron or Qutebrowser equivalent. This is only due to the failure (and unwillingness) of Mozilla to build a truly modular, expandable browser. Mozilla isn't even trying to compete with Google anymore at this point. They are only implementing new features into Firefox that Google has first built into Chrome (and firing developers working on features that could actually set Firefox apart from Chrome). Also, they are quick to implement most "features" Google implements, no matter how user-unfriendly it may be. An example for this is Mozilla implementing Manifest V3: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/11/manifest-v3-open-web-politics-sheeps-clothing https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/11/manifest-v3-open-web-p...
- mariusor 5y ago
  I just posted a top level comment before seeing yours, and basically I have started to think (with my obligatory tinfoil hat on) that it's not just the lack of vision on the part of Mozilla's board, but actually external influence and intentional sabotage which led to this.
- 8K832d7tNmiQ 5y ago
  The reason behind the nonexistense of firefox-based electron is mainly rooted in the fact that FIrefox does not offer any embedded framework like webkit did with webkit2gtk and chromium with CEF. They used to have one, but just largely forgotten and abandoned.
- gruez 5y ago
  >Also, they are quick to implement most "features" Google implements, no matter how user-unfriendly it may be. >An example for this is Mozilla implementing Manifest V3: I fail to see how "implementing manifest v3" is user-unfriendly. I can see how people think that way, because "implementing manifest v3" is being conflated with "removing blocking webRequest API". However, there really isn't any indication that mozilla is doing the latter. For instance, you could implement manifest v3 but still supporting v2, or drop v2 but still keep the blocking webRequest API as a vendor specific API. There are good reasons to do the former, to allow firefox to work with extensions built for chrome, so I don't see any issues with mozilla implementing v3.
mwcampbell 5y ago
> we’re building our desktop app around the OS-provided rendering engines I'm skeptical that this will give them enough control to fully customize all browser behavior. The platform-provided browser engine APIs (WebKit, the new WebView2 on Windows) are designed for simple HTML embedding scenarios, not a full web browser. I struggled with this when developing a browser based on the IE engine several years ago. I think Electron would be a better bet. Does anyone disagree
- heresaPizza 5y ago
  I 1000% percent disagree. Firstly as a user I see no point in this browser at all. They should have partnered with Mozilla to stick to their commitment to privacy and to their effort to support open source projects. Imho they don’t aim to customize the UX that much. They’ll build something like their mobile browser and push for their search engine, mail protection and whatever they’ll try to sell in the future. And we should just not trust them. So many people use browsers as they are (which I find impossible nowadays with all the ads and popups) and reading that DuckDuckGo magically protected them will be enough for them. Instead of Electron they could have just used Chromium but that is ethically terrible and an un useful effort for them (given what I said about their intentions).
quiet_cool 5y ago
Couldn't find it in the article but I'm assuming it will only run on current officially supported Win and Mac OS
foxfluff 5y ago
Now DuckDuckGo is building a new skin for someone else's old browser engine.
mariusor 5y ago
The more I see how Mozilla does nothing to allow Firefox/Gecko/Servo to be a base for other browsers, the more I start to believe that it's not just a problem of not having it prioritized on their road map, but it's actually undue influence from outside the company. It's impossible that in the 10 or so years since people manifested desires to have a way to embed a browser engine which is not Google controlled in applications, nobody at Mozilla actually realized how good of an idea that is for their popularity, influence, and why not, monetization capabilities.
- whywhywhywhy 5y ago
  > but it's actually undue influence from outside the company I mean we’ve all seen how Mozilla execs behave. I’d say it’s likely an influence inside the company.
- mook 5y ago
  10 years or so? Try 20. https://web.archive.org/web/20000815063229/http://www.mozilla.org/projects/embedding/ https://web.archive.org/web/20000815063229/http://www.mozill... Yeah, they used to support embedding. But it kept being under resourced, with bug reports and patches often being ignored.
arendtio 5y ago
Most people here probably know it, but for those who don't: The key point 'Chromium fork vs. OS provided Webview' is somewhat non-relevant, because they aren't very different. Chromiums rendering engine 'Blink' is a fork of WebKit and most OS provided Webviews are either Blink or WebKit based. The last major rendering engine that is different is Gecko/Quantum which is being developed by Mozilla for Firefox. Everything else is based on WebKit nowadays. The only fun thing about the situation is that WebKit is a fork of KHTML which was developed by the KDE developers for their browser Konqueror for Linux.
- TingPing 5y ago
  The WebKit fork was a while ago and the two behave quite different.
ravenstine 5y ago
As much as I prefer DDG over Google in terms of search, and perhaps other services of DDG provided them, I'd beware of allowing them to take on the all-encompassing nature that Google imposes. I can see it now... it's the year 2525 and there's DDG search, DDG browser, DDG email, DDG video chat, DDG social network... and they announce the addition of personalization features based on user behavior, restriction of ad-blocking for "helpful ads", and then they just get bought by Google anyway.
- spicybright 5y ago
  I always use this argument: If you wanted to make a big honey pot to collect people's data, how would you market it to get the most users? Exactly how DDG is marketed. While there's no evidence of it happening, it's entirely possible they sell data to people on the hush hush.
- ausbah 5y ago
  that's kinda how most successful businesses work? you succeed in one area, move into another related area, repeat ad infinitum
- timbit42 5y ago
  Up to the point it reaches parity with Google, it's a win for users.
yosito 5y ago
Alternative title: "DuckDuckGo is joining the band wagon and releasing another white labeled variant of Chrome"
- tristan957 5y ago
  Or you could read the article.
hestefisk 5y ago
Btw it’s total non-news that they are building a browser. It’s just a repackaging of the existing OS browser control in a new GUI. So still Chromium / Edge behind the scenes on Windows.
ac130kz 5y ago
They seem to oversold "engine" things to the journalists, the article itself even states that it's simply a thin wrapper to WebViews aka Chromium/Webkit. Yes, it's not a fork, yet it uses only already available engines.
shmerl 5y ago
May be they can turn Servo into a complete engine.
sam0x17 5y ago
Would be cool if they, ya know, built a search engine first. They just serve bing results with a few sponsored things thrown in.

269 points by waldekm 5y ago

The web really needs a truly cleansheet, non-invasive, open source browser written in a modern language. It’s disheartening to see the consolidation in the web space on Chrome. We need an alternative. There has to be someone who can counter Chrome’s dominance with a modern, fast browser engine. (PS - I am and have been a Firefox user for many many years)

heresaPizza 5y ago
And I think you should stick to Firefox (just as I’ll do). It will be built on top of the system web view, so chromium on Windows and WebKit on macOS. It will be minimal and lack extensions, and I can’t imagine living without extensions. And if you don’t use any I recommend you to try some. I see no point in this browser, as it will basically be a Firefox Focus for desktop.
stjohnswarts 5y ago
The web has become so overdesigned and complicated that I just don't see that happening. No open source group has the kind of funds to take on google. Firefox is barely in there but only just because they were around before google's engine became dominant and google gives them a half billion dollars a year.

cebert 5y ago

Instead of building another Chromium-based browser, I’d love to see if it were possible for Mozilla and DuckDuckGo to form a partnership that potently helps both firms. I’m concerned we will end up with a monolithic browser stack controlled by Google unless Firefox gains more adoption and support. I believe multiple parties and players help us build a more open and standards based web. I use Firefox as my daily driver primarily for privacy concerns and control, and secondarily to avoid monolithic browser stacks controlled by Google. Firefox isn’t perfect, but I enjoy the experience and have no issue browsing the web with it.

dkdbejwi383 5y ago
It’s not (necessarily) Chromium: > "Instead of forking Chromium or anything else, we're building our desktop app around the OS-provided rendering engines (like on mobile), allowing us to strip away a lot of the unnecessary cruft and clutter that's accumulated over the years in major browsers," explains Weinberg.
- Comevius 5y ago
  The OS-provided rendering engine is Chromium's engine on Android and Windows, and Safari's on iOS and macOS.
  - isodev 5y ago
    "Safari" refers to the browser app built on top of the WebKit engine. Browsers on iOS use the WebKit engine (and not the Safari browser itself). The same engine (WebKit) is available on all Apple platforms. One can also build a desktop browser on top of WebKit like DuckDuckGo suggests it may do on macOS. This approach has a tremendous advantage for solid platform integration and allows them to focus on building a good user experience (and, in this case, secure* good user experience).
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      WebKit is also fully usable on other platforms too, but I seldom ever reach for it unless I'm forced to by the OS.
    - cma 5y ago
      > This approach has a tremendous advantage for solid platform integration and allows them to focus on building a good user experience It basically only lets them do a bit more than skinning it. No deep plugin architectures like you see with Android Firefox, allowing real ad blockers.
      - isodev 5y ago

pndy 5y ago

The only thing that bugs me with ddg is that every search inquiry is being processed by improving.duckduckgo.com and it's not possible disable it in search options. You can do block it manually in few ways if you wish but I think that should be an option user can control, in an easy way. I'm bit concerned how things may look like after Manifest v3 will arrive, when it comes to privacy, ads and tracking. Another Chromium-based browser? Why not, I won't mind it but everything comes to what Google does thru Chromium project people hands. And I don't think it can be anything else but Chromium - despite what he says. If not immediately then they later switch to it - just like Microsoft abandon EdgeHTML in favor of Chromium and Blink.

drcongo 5y ago

I wish they'd focus on fixing the various things that have broken in their search over the last couple of years, like literal string searching and negation.

szszrk 5y ago
Thanks for confirming this, negation is screwed up somehow. I ended up using !g for redirection for google instead, when I need to negate. But in general I think result quality went off the roof recently, while google's went down for me. I really find it more effective to search on ddg now, for any matter, technical and personal. Google still has a huge database of businesses and integration with maps is awesome, but that advantage is so small that I switch to google less then a few times a month.

IceWreck 5y ago

They're using OS provided rendering engines. So Chromium based Edge Webview on windows, Webkit on Safari and what exactly on Linux ? QTWebengine ? Gecko ? No linux support ? Who knows.

chupasaurus 5y ago
Lynx/links as a dependency. /s
deleted 5y ago
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up6w6 5y ago
Taking from Tauri [1], which tries to use native rendering engines too, it's WebKitGTK [2]. I thought that only OSX and mobile OS had an integrated rendering engine to call it native, though. [1] https://github.com/tauri-apps/tauri#introduction https://github.com/tauri-apps/tauri#introduction [2] https://webkitgtk.org/ https://webkitgtk.org/
- khimaros 5y ago
  this is also what epiphany (GNOME Web) uses for rendering.
- chupasaurus 5y ago
  Which isn't there outside GTK-based environments.
  - jmnicolas 5y ago
    It's not like it can't be installed. I use KDE at home, but I have quite a few GTK apps installed.
  - stjohnswarts 5y ago
    You're joking right? GTK apps work just fine outside of "gtkbased environments". They have since the beginning. Some may not have the styling of their DE but they run just fine. I use Gimp and Meld all over the place, including on windows without any issues.

deleted 5y ago

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anoplus 5y ago

If improving DDG - or any privacy respecting search engine - would require extra funding, I just want to say I would be happy to pay subscription fees for a good service.

cloudengineer94 5y ago

Can't wait to see what they offer I have been using Safari and Brave for quite some time now. For work I use strictly Edge as it keeps everything from o365 together.

MrAlex94 5y ago

This raises a few questions: * Will this be open source? * Will this support WebExtensions? Assuming they'll have to develop their own implementation since they are using the operating system's own rendering engines, so they will most likely have to have their own implementation. * Will this allow ad-blocking and tracking protection? Once again, seems they will have to develop this feature themselves. Will the ad-blocking whitelist their own properties or does the user have granular control? * Will this allow usage of other search engines within the browser, or are you locked in to DDG only? (Of course, ignoring actually navigating directly to the relevant search engines own website). Interestingly enough, from their blog post[1]: > Instead of forking Chromium or anything else, we’re building our desktop app around the OS-provided rendering engines (like on mobile), allowing us to strip away a lot of the unnecessary cruft and clutter that’s accumulated over the years in major browsers. On macOS, Safari is probably the most anaemic "major" web browser out there. Interested to see how it compares to that. I'm not convinced a more minimalist browser compared to Safari is actually useful? [1] https://spreadprivacy.com/duckduckgo-2021-review/ https://spreadprivacy.com/duckduckgo-2021-review/

deleted 5y ago
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gwbas1c 5y ago
I interviewed for the position. (They regularly posted the position in the "Who's hiring" threads for awhile.) It's going to be an extremely simple browser. Their strategy is to use the HTML rendering component built into each OS. The way I interpreted it was that they're trying to make a browser that's simple enough to develop with a small team, "good enough" for most people, and doesn't have every feature under the kitchen sink. > Will this be open source? Doubtful. It also doesn't "make sense" to open source, as they're basically using the same rendering engine as Edge / Safari, with a different UI around it. (Side note: If you want something like this that's open source, it's probably easier to clone it than to fork it. Every few years I write an experimental browser based on these rendering engines, and I frequently come across "simple" open-source browsers that provide great examples of how to use these components.) > Will this support WebExtensions? No. They are building ad-blocking and privacy functionality into the browser. To paraphrase what they told me, most people only install ad-blocking and privacy extensions. > Will this allow ad-blocking and tracking protection? Yes, that is the major feature they are trying to build. They have extensive blacklists already, as they already ship privacy-focused plugins for Chrome. (Their take-home assessment involved using a well-known privacy list published on Github.) > Will this allow usage of other search engines within the browser, or are you locked in to DDG only? We didn't discuss that. This is speculation on my part, but I think their motivations are to "keep it simple" instead of offer every feature under the sun.

jokethrowaway 5y ago

I really hope they end up using servo. If you're ignoring established engines, it's a pretty good first step I don't think the web is fixable as it is though. Performances are going to be terrible no matter what unless we pick a subset of functionality and provide native code to handle that. EDIT: ooh, they're going to use the native engine on each platform! Wow! This is a non news.

dartharva 5y ago

From the official blog: >Instead of forking Chromium or anything else, we’re building our desktop app around the OS-provided rendering engines (like on mobile), allowing us to strip away a lot of the unnecessary cruft and clutter that’s accumulated over the years in major browsers. With our clean and simple interface combined with the beloved Fire Button from our mobile app, DuckDuckGo for desktop will be ready to become your new everyday browsing app. It seems they are making the desktop equivalent of Firefox Focus.

yawaworht1978 5y ago

A mix of Firefox , opera(I kinda like some features), safari without the proprietary issues and the chromium parts minus the tracking would be amazing. Rooting for the team, everyone used to say it's too hard to create a new browser from scratch, the monopoly is too overwhelming etc. But we got brave, at least it's something fresh. And it appears duck has generated money or investments for following googles path. Next they could go for an email client, a good copy of the Ms suite and a video platform and google might become dethroned some day.

xigoi 5y ago
They're not going to create a new browser from scratch, unfortunately.

jdpedrie 5y ago

There seems to be a growing consensus around the idea that alternative search engines aren't viable without their own browser. Cliqz (acquired by Brave), DDG (obviously successful by some metrics, but not a real threat to Google), Kagi (pops up from time to time here)[0]. Given that Google considers it worth tens of billions of dollars a year to remain the default on Apple devices and Firefox, the default search advantage is clearly quite important. I'm not sold on the idea that convincing people to install a different browser will be easier than teaching them to install an extension or choose a different default search provider, but clearly the latter isn't paying off. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28799049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28799049

toper-centage 5y ago
They are viable, but growth is significantly hindered by GOOGLE. When you install a search engine extension, that is explicitly labeled as such, Google will still "warn" users that an extention has "hijacked" their default search provider, and recommend to revert back. This is obviously anti-conpetitive but governments are too slow to react. Furthermore, extensions are at the mercy of extension stores' obscure policies, and are often dropped on a whim by "reviewers". With that said, tens of millions of users is hardly "unviable". There are several profitable search engines.

pleb_nz 5y ago

As I read I was thinking Please don't use chromium Please don't use chromium Please don't use chromium Please don't use chromium Then I found it... Yes Then I saw 'building or own'... I thought. Why oh why.... sigh... At least consider Firefox

jmnicolas 5y ago
You didn't read enough: they will be using the default os webview so Edge on Windows, Chrome on Android and Webkit on Apples.
- Yizahi 5y ago
  Edge = Chrome
  - speedgoose 5y ago
    The Google trackers are replaced by Microsoft trackers. It's a bit different.
    - stjohnswarts 5y ago
      totally different.
- toper-centage 5y ago
  So I suppose... No Linux support? I assume a significant share of their users are Linux users.
  - stjohnswarts 5y ago
    If they're using webkit on Apple it's safe to assume they could use QtWebkit or GtkWebkit on linux. Linux will be lower priority probably strictly from a numbers game though.
- pleb_nz 5y ago
  Oh I read that alrigt. I think you may have missed my point...

Yizahi 5y ago

Yet another Google Chrome clone with privacy mods. How many of those we have already? Four? Five? Good job cementing Googleopoly of internet.

9387367 5y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29316022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29316022

azangru 5y ago

How many web developers get peeved when they see news of another prospective web browser, I wonder?

stjohnswarts 5y ago
We don't care we'll just continue to test in Safari and Chrome and then ship it. You're on your own if you use something else, change the UA and hope for the best.

waweic 5y ago

It's very important to understand that, other than Blink, Gecko is incredibly hard to integrate into other software. That's why, for example, there is no Firefox-based Electron or Qutebrowser equivalent. This is only due to the failure (and unwillingness) of Mozilla to build a truly modular, expandable browser. Mozilla isn't even trying to compete with Google anymore at this point. They are only implementing new features into Firefox that Google has first built into Chrome (and firing developers working on features that could actually set Firefox apart from Chrome). Also, they are quick to implement most "features" Google implements, no matter how user-unfriendly it may be. An example for this is Mozilla implementing Manifest V3: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/11/manifest-v3-open-web-politics-sheeps-clothing https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/11/manifest-v3-open-web-p...

mariusor 5y ago
I just posted a top level comment before seeing yours, and basically I have started to think (with my obligatory tinfoil hat on) that it's not just the lack of vision on the part of Mozilla's board, but actually external influence and intentional sabotage which led to this.
8K832d7tNmiQ 5y ago
The reason behind the nonexistense of firefox-based electron is mainly rooted in the fact that FIrefox does not offer any embedded framework like webkit did with webkit2gtk and chromium with CEF. They used to have one, but just largely forgotten and abandoned.
gruez 5y ago
>Also, they are quick to implement most "features" Google implements, no matter how user-unfriendly it may be. >An example for this is Mozilla implementing Manifest V3: I fail to see how "implementing manifest v3" is user-unfriendly. I can see how people think that way, because "implementing manifest v3" is being conflated with "removing blocking webRequest API". However, there really isn't any indication that mozilla is doing the latter. For instance, you could implement manifest v3 but still supporting v2, or drop v2 but still keep the blocking webRequest API as a vendor specific API. There are good reasons to do the former, to allow firefox to work with extensions built for chrome, so I don't see any issues with mozilla implementing v3.

mwcampbell 5y ago

> we’re building our desktop app around the OS-provided rendering engines I'm skeptical that this will give them enough control to fully customize all browser behavior. The platform-provided browser engine APIs (WebKit, the new WebView2 on Windows) are designed for simple HTML embedding scenarios, not a full web browser. I struggled with this when developing a browser based on the IE engine several years ago. I think Electron would be a better bet. Does anyone disagree

heresaPizza 5y ago
I 1000% percent disagree. Firstly as a user I see no point in this browser at all. They should have partnered with Mozilla to stick to their commitment to privacy and to their effort to support open source projects. Imho they don’t aim to customize the UX that much. They’ll build something like their mobile browser and push for their search engine, mail protection and whatever they’ll try to sell in the future. And we should just not trust them. So many people use browsers as they are (which I find impossible nowadays with all the ads and popups) and reading that DuckDuckGo magically protected them will be enough for them. Instead of Electron they could have just used Chromium but that is ethically terrible and an un useful effort for them (given what I said about their intentions).

quiet_cool 5y ago

Couldn't find it in the article but I'm assuming it will only run on current officially supported Win and Mac OS

foxfluff 5y ago

Now DuckDuckGo is building a new skin for someone else's old browser engine.

mariusor 5y ago

The more I see how Mozilla does nothing to allow Firefox/Gecko/Servo to be a base for other browsers, the more I start to believe that it's not just a problem of not having it prioritized on their road map, but it's actually undue influence from outside the company. It's impossible that in the 10 or so years since people manifested desires to have a way to embed a browser engine which is not Google controlled in applications, nobody at Mozilla actually realized how good of an idea that is for their popularity, influence, and why not, monetization capabilities.

whywhywhywhy 5y ago
> but it's actually undue influence from outside the company I mean we’ve all seen how Mozilla execs behave. I’d say it’s likely an influence inside the company.
mook 5y ago
10 years or so? Try 20. https://web.archive.org/web/20000815063229/http://www.mozilla.org/projects/embedding/ https://web.archive.org/web/20000815063229/http://www.mozill... Yeah, they used to support embedding. But it kept being under resourced, with bug reports and patches often being ignored.

arendtio 5y ago

Most people here probably know it, but for those who don't: The key point 'Chromium fork vs. OS provided Webview' is somewhat non-relevant, because they aren't very different. Chromiums rendering engine 'Blink' is a fork of WebKit and most OS provided Webviews are either Blink or WebKit based. The last major rendering engine that is different is Gecko/Quantum which is being developed by Mozilla for Firefox. Everything else is based on WebKit nowadays. The only fun thing about the situation is that WebKit is a fork of KHTML which was developed by the KDE developers for their browser Konqueror for Linux.

TingPing 5y ago
The WebKit fork was a while ago and the two behave quite different.

ravenstine 5y ago

As much as I prefer DDG over Google in terms of search, and perhaps other services of DDG provided them, I'd beware of allowing them to take on the all-encompassing nature that Google imposes. I can see it now... it's the year 2525 and there's DDG search, DDG browser, DDG email, DDG video chat, DDG social network... and they announce the addition of personalization features based on user behavior, restriction of ad-blocking for "helpful ads", and then they just get bought by Google anyway.

spicybright 5y ago
I always use this argument: If you wanted to make a big honey pot to collect people's data, how would you market it to get the most users? Exactly how DDG is marketed. While there's no evidence of it happening, it's entirely possible they sell data to people on the hush hush.
ausbah 5y ago
that's kinda how most successful businesses work? you succeed in one area, move into another related area, repeat ad infinitum
timbit42 5y ago
Up to the point it reaches parity with Google, it's a win for users.

yosito 5y ago

Alternative title: "DuckDuckGo is joining the band wagon and releasing another white labeled variant of Chrome"

tristan957 5y ago
Or you could read the article.

hestefisk 5y ago

Btw it’s total non-news that they are building a browser. It’s just a repackaging of the existing OS browser control in a new GUI. So still Chromium / Edge behind the scenes on Windows.

ac130kz 5y ago

They seem to oversold "engine" things to the journalists, the article itself even states that it's simply a thin wrapper to WebViews aka Chromium/Webkit. Yes, it's not a fork, yet it uses only already available engines.

shmerl 5y ago

May be they can turn Servo into a complete engine.

sam0x17 5y ago

Would be cool if they, ya know, built a search engine first. They just serve bing results with a few sponsored things thrown in.