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They don’t claim to be a privacy wrapper for Bing; they claim to be a standalone search engine. But they aren’t. It’s 99% Bing and there’s nothing they can do a

by pb7 3y ago

They don’t claim to be a privacy wrapper for Bing; they claim to be a standalone search engine. But they aren’t. It’s 99% Bing and there’s nothing they can do about the results getting censored at the origin.

Retric 3y ago
On multiple occasions they have uncensored results that Bing censored. They default to censoring websites when Bing does, but can trivially remove sites from that list. As to their businesses proposition privacy was central from day 1: In 2011, Weinberg, then the company’s sole employee, took out an ad on a billboard in San Francisco that declared, “Google tracks you. We don’t.” That branding—Google, but private—has served the company well in the years since. “The only way to compete with Google is not to try to compete on search results,” says Brad Burnham, a partner at Union Square Ventures, which gave DuckDuckGo its first and only Series A funding in 2011. https://www.wired.com/story/duckduckgo-quest-prove-online-privacy-possible/ https://www.wired.com/story/duckduckgo-quest-prove-online-pr...
- pb7 3y ago
  In other words, you’re seeing results that Bing wants you to see unless it raises a big enough stink for DDG to manually override. They default to being a wrapper for Bing. Edit: Since you edited, no one is arguing that their whole spiel isn’t about privacy. What I’m saying is that they refuse to admit that they’re a privacy wrapper around Bing which would make their value proposition quite weak. They puff their chest and pretend to be a big standalone player in the market but they aren’t. You aren’t at the whims of DDG as a user, but at those of Bing/Microsoft. If you’re cool with that, carry on, but I’m not going to let yegg continue to make vague statements uncontested. If they’re so sketchy and dishonest about their role in deciding the links, what else are they dishonest about? Some of you let a lot slide because they’re the underdog.
  - Retric 3y ago
    That’s not a question of being a wrapper, it’s a question of using Bing’s spam list. The difference is about sites Bing doesn’t include but also doesn’t specifically exclude. PS: As to your edit, they have specifically mentioned using Bing in the past alongside other engines. They are clearly running their own search process and widgets while also using a lot of data from Bing. I can see why you might consider it deceptive, though I really don’t.
- thewataccount 3y ago
  The real question is what extent do they index sites themselves? If they're manually adding a entry for "insert site here", maybe some "caching" of bing's results for the biggest most common searches then IMO that's still 99.999999% ~= 100%
  - Retric 3y ago
    Because an entire domain with thousands of sites can show up the simplest explanation is they are copying some Spam or Phishing etc list while also having an index they are searching. Now, they might be using low level API access to Bing’s index or something else. But I don’t see how it can be a simple wrapper.

by pb7 3y ago

Retric 3y ago

On multiple occasions they have uncensored results that Bing censored. They default to censoring websites when Bing does, but can trivially remove sites from that list. As to their businesses proposition privacy was central from day 1: In 2011, Weinberg, then the company’s sole employee, took out an ad on a billboard in San Francisco that declared, “Google tracks you. We don’t.” That branding—Google, but private—has served the company well in the years since. “The only way to compete with Google is not to try to compete on search results,” says Brad Burnham, a partner at Union Square Ventures, which gave DuckDuckGo its first and only Series A funding in 2011. https://www.wired.com/story/duckduckgo-quest-prove-online-privacy-possible/ https://www.wired.com/story/duckduckgo-quest-prove-online-pr...

pb7 3y ago
In other words, you’re seeing results that Bing wants you to see unless it raises a big enough stink for DDG to manually override. They default to being a wrapper for Bing. Edit: Since you edited, no one is arguing that their whole spiel isn’t about privacy. What I’m saying is that they refuse to admit that they’re a privacy wrapper around Bing which would make their value proposition quite weak. They puff their chest and pretend to be a big standalone player in the market but they aren’t. You aren’t at the whims of DDG as a user, but at those of Bing/Microsoft. If you’re cool with that, carry on, but I’m not going to let yegg continue to make vague statements uncontested. If they’re so sketchy and dishonest about their role in deciding the links, what else are they dishonest about? Some of you let a lot slide because they’re the underdog.
- Retric 3y ago
  That’s not a question of being a wrapper, it’s a question of using Bing’s spam list. The difference is about sites Bing doesn’t include but also doesn’t specifically exclude. PS: As to your edit, they have specifically mentioned using Bing in the past alongside other engines. They are clearly running their own search process and widgets while also using a lot of data from Bing. I can see why you might consider it deceptive, though I really don’t.
thewataccount 3y ago
The real question is what extent do they index sites themselves? If they're manually adding a entry for "insert site here", maybe some "caching" of bing's results for the biggest most common searches then IMO that's still 99.999999% ~= 100%
- Retric 3y ago
  Because an entire domain with thousands of sites can show up the simplest explanation is they are copying some Spam or Phishing etc list while also having an index they are searching. Now, they might be using low level API access to Bing’s index or something else. But I don’t see how it can be a simple wrapper.