61 ms·

DuckDuckGo was down

272 points by jshupe 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
allanrbo 2y ago
not down for me.
- jshupe 2y ago
  site responds but search results are down on my phone wifi, and LTE, and desktop
  - kbrkbr 2y ago
    Same here still
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
kernelsanderz 2y ago
down for me. doesn't get search results
pcvarmint 2y ago
It started failing on searches 1-2 hours ago.
secondary_op 2y ago
bing.com also down, looks like duckduckgo is frontend to bing at least bing images, https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=katrina https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=katrina
- secondary_op 2y ago
  > It's not you, it's us > Bing isn't available right now, but everything should be back to normal very soon. > https://www4.bing.com/bingparachute/panda.png https://www4.bing.com/bingparachute/panda.png > https://www4.bing.com/bingparachute/bing_logo.png https://www4.bing.com/bingparachute/bing_logo.png
- FriedrichN 2y ago
  It seems that https://www.startpage.com https://www.startpage.com also uses Bing for its images.
hilux 2y ago
22-May-2024 ... the day privacy (finally) died.
- secondary_op 2y ago
  Presume that duckduckgo is not private or otherwise compromised. For example many things I search trough duckduckgo later that day showed up in my twitter/x.com algorithmic feed, coincidence ? don't think so.
  - n_ary 2y ago
    Or it could be that, when you search something, you also click through to some of the results, where FB/AdWords and other trackers are present. Alternatively, there was a fallacy of human mind(forgot the name), where if you think of something, your brain will start focusing on the random occurrences of that things in all places. So, those ads were always there, your brain just started focusing suddenly on those as you were thinking of those things. Note: Not affiliated with DDG.
    - 256_ 2y ago
      It's called the Baader-Meinhof effect.
    - secondary_op 2y ago
      Yes, in this case only way to not be spied on is to not go on the internet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion
  - weberer 2y ago
    There's also the likelyhood that the pages you landed on sent your info to their "ad partners"
  - logtempo 2y ago
    duckduckgo don't prevent website to track you or deposit cookies etc. Once you're on a website, let's say twitter, duckduckgo does nothing. > When you view Twitter content such as embedded Tweets, buttons, or timelines integrated into other websites using Twitter for Websites, Twitter may receive information, including the web page you visited, your IP address, browser type, operating system, and cookie information. (https://developer.x.com/en/docs/twitter-for-websites/privacy https://developer.x.com/en/docs/twitter-for-websites/privacy) So, if you visit a news paper that have embedded twitter post in it, twitter might know you passed by this website.
naitgacem 2y ago
I just experienced this as well. I had a giggle when I opened a new tab and searched "is duckduckgo down" and the default search engine is ... duckduckgo. Still no results .. strange :P
ffpip 2y ago
What a coincidence! I used it after 3-4 months and it didn't show any search results. Thought I had forgotten how to use their !bangs feature. Turns out it is down
alentred 2y ago
https://www.bing.com/ https://www.bing.com/ is down too at the moment. Curiously I cannot find a "health" or a "status" page for either.
- kuro_neko 2y ago
  Does it vary by region? Mine works fine for bing.
  - pcvarmint 2y ago
    Bing is sluggish but seems to work sometimes now. I wonder if it's a DDoS attack on Bing.
    - Iulioh 2y ago
      ....can you really DDoS Bing?
- wannacboatmovie 2y ago
  Maybe today's the day we find out DDG is just a UI to an Amazon Go-style backend: a room full of workers in India typing the queries into Bing and copy/pasting the results back to you.
- tgv 2y ago
  DDG runs on bing, so that squares. Apparently, MS uses Bing for their portal, because I can't search inside Azure portal neither.
  - ErrrNoMate 2y ago
    like a very large number of things we are pitched as search engines: https://www.searchenginemap.com/ https://www.searchenginemap.com/
- windowshopping 2y ago
  works for me 8 minutes later, idk
hpeter 2y ago
same. I just noticed it too, about 30 minutes ago
mrweasel 2y ago
It seems to be all search engines powered by Bing. Ecosia isn't working either, and they also don't have a status page.
- opem 2y ago
  yep
anoplus 2y ago
Started about an hour ago (~1716454800000)
teekert 2y ago
Yes, seeing it too, for about an hour already! Came here to check. Nothing on their xitter page but this thing is spiking: https://downdetector.com/status/duckduckgo/ https://downdetector.com/status/duckduckgo/
256_ 2y ago
If you look up "hacker news", it at least shows you an insert from the Wikipedia article, even if there are no normal results: https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=hacker+news https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=hacker+news
- meonkeys 2y ago
  I love this low-tech DDG interface! Made my day, thanks. (aha, https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/features/non-javascript/ https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/features/non-ja... mentions the "HTML" and "Lite" versions) Also, why is your username green?
  - 4ggr0 2y ago
    > What do green usernames mean? Green indicates a new account. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
camiat 2y ago
Yup, I am also running into the same issue where duck duck go is returning the error message: > Sorry, we ran into an error displaying these results. Click here to try again. I thought it was just duck duck go, but I tried searching with bing, and was met with: > It's not you, it's us > Bing isn't available right now, but everything should be back to normal very soon.
DeathArrow 2y ago
Maybe it was acquired by Google?
bun_terminator 2y ago
They lost all relevance after they gleefully announced their manipulation of search results 2 years ago
- rurban 2y ago
  Still better than Google
  - beretguy 2y ago
    Still there are better alternatives to ddg. I use Brave and Kagi.
    - rurban 2y ago
      But not free. I use Fennec with ddg. Loved Kagi, but too expensive for my German income
      - em-bee 2y ago
        brave search is free.
      - beretguy 2y ago
        Yes, Kagi is expensive. But it also has useful features other search engines don’t. It’s nice if you can afford it.
CTOSian 2y ago
bing as well
- pierrebeucher 2y ago
  Same problem, encountering similar problems with Qwant (though not always)
- WCSTombs 2y ago
  Bing is up now, but DDG is still down.
  - worik 2y ago
    Comes and goes for me
  - mgoetzke 2y ago
    down right now.
n_ary 2y ago
My conspiracy mind tells me, may be bing changed their search api with breaking changes or suddenly introduced massive billing(think Twitter API, reddit API et al.) hence all search-engines pulled an immediate break without having time to fix/update.
hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
Yup. Maybe it's a NS, LB, or IPv6 only problem because it works eventually.
nirse 2y ago
Is it just me, or has DDG been having trouble often lately? Or is it just a combination with some outage + degradation of search results lately that makes me g! regularly these days? Didn't use to need that.
- epolanski 2y ago
  Bing's been working oddly for few days now for me. I guess it impacts the other engines that are based on it.
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
Ecosia is also down. I think all of these use Bing under the covers? If it is actually a Bing problem, it is pretty incredible that MS has an outage this long. Makes me think twice about the stability of Azure.
whitehat33 2y ago
DDG Site responds, but gives and error and is not showing search results.
pluto_modadic 2y ago
Hmmm... Is having a status page a sign of engineering maturity?
- DANmode 2y ago
  Engineering excellence, maybe. And then the curve ends back on the ground, with manual updates being swapped back into the same previously automated status pages, because money.
mnuu 2y ago
DDG down here
- jollyca 2y ago
  Same here - it used to work intermittently this morning (1 out of 3 searches), but now I get the same error every time
maryShap 2y ago
Get the same error with both Firefox and Edge. Very frustrating.
- loloquwowndueo 2y ago
  The site is having trouble, a different browser is not going to help.
spaniard89277 2y ago
keyword !brave works though
ikt 2y ago
I duno how this isn't getting more views tbh Ecosia and Duckduckgo and Bing are down, there's at least 5% of the search engine market (the non-google part) down at the moment
- beretguy 2y ago
  Man, can you imagine if this happened to Google! I’m so curious now.
- hhh 2y ago
  because not that many people use search engines other than google
  - dzhiurgis 2y ago
    which is surprising given how unbearable google has gotten it's a bit like sticking to using windows in 2010
    - throwaway290 2y ago
      It's not surprising given how much better it is than everything else
      - loloquwowndueo 2y ago
        lol what? Google or Windows? Got a chuckle out of this either way.
        throwaway290 2y ago
        who said anything about windows?
        Slyfox33 2y ago
        The comment you replied to?
secondary_op 2y ago
That's it, ddg is gone from my Firefox and hopefully from my browsing habits. Speaking about Firefox, it is insane how needlessly complicated it is to add new search engine to Firefox [1] 1. Open a new tab and type about:config in the address bar 2. In the search box type: browser.urlbar.update2.engineAliasRefresh 3. Click on the little + symbol on the right. It should look like after you pressed it: boolean true value 4. Go to firefox Settings → Search. Or enter this in the address bar: about:preferences#search 5. In the "Search Shortcuts" section you should notice a new "add" button. search add button 6. Press the add button and fill in the name, search engine url and a keyword(optional). 7. Go to the "Default Search Engine" section and select the engine you just added. [1] https://superuser.com/questions/7327/how-to-add-a-custom-search-engine-to-firefox/1756774#1756774 https://superuser.com/questions/7327/how-to-add-a-custom-sea...
- joveian 2y ago
  Neat, I kept thinking there should be a way to add keywords to that list and now I know how to do it (execept for some reason you can only add a new engine with a keyword there and not add a keyword to an existing engine :( ). I use mozlz4 and aeson-pretty to look at the search.json.mozlz4 file. https://github.com/jusw85/mozlz4 https://github.com/jusw85/mozlz4 https://github.com/informatikr/aeson-pretty https://github.com/informatikr/aeson-pretty To be fair you can also just right click on the URL bar when on a page that advertises having a search and click Add <name of search>. Or if you want to search by keyword you can right click on most search boxes and click "add a keyword for this search". Mycroft Project has a bunch of random search engines ready to add to Firefox (via right clicking on the URL bar when on the search entry page): https://mycroftproject.com/ https://mycroftproject.com/ If you use more than one search engine, I like the Right Click Search addon to be able to search highlighted text with multiple engines easily (unfortunately not monitored by Mozilla but you can look over the code before installing and turn off updates since it is quite simple and requires no permissions): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/right-click- https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/right-click- search/ The most privacy friendly way to search is to search the site you want to end up on when you know what site that is and they have a usable search. For general search engines, I suggest giving Metager a try, it is a non-profit metasearch. https://metager.org/ https://metager.org/
cbovis 2y ago
Non-Google recommendations in the interim?
- beretguy 2y ago
  Kagi
- sumosudo 2y ago
  searx.org public instances https://searx.space https://searx.space
- em-bee 2y ago
  https://search.brave.com/ https://search.brave.com/ using that as my default search engine on firefox since last year. quite happy with the quality of results.
  - shiandow 2y ago
    It's fairly quick and supports !bangs, and it actually works right now... I'll give it a try.
  - cbovis 2y ago
    Looks great thank you. I see there's a !brave bang for duckduckgo too so no need to change up browser defaults.
- ColinHayhurst 2y ago
  https://seirdy.one/posts/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexes/ https://seirdy.one/posts/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-...
BubBob 2y ago
[dead]
maryShap 2y ago
Duckduckgo doesn't work on Windows 11 but does work on Windows 10
- beretguy 2y ago
  I… don’t understand how that’s possible.
  - bitnasty 2y ago
    Serving different resources based on reported user agent data.
- RegW 2y ago
  I'm using 10 - it doesn't work for me.
Mountain_Skies 2y ago
DuckDuckGo also is unable to provide search results, which seems to confirm they use Bing as a base for their searches.
- riffraff 2y ago
  ditto for Ecosia.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- adamomada 2y ago
  Startpage too, but only on mobile (???)
- deliriumchn 2y ago
  Yes, they use bing https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources/ https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources...
  - the_70x 2y ago
    DuckDuckGo is just a search proxy
beretguy 2y ago
I also sometimes get 500 on Brave Search, but not always? Kagi works fine. Yeah, something is wrong with bing. That’s what you get when you rely on others instead of building your own. A jenga tower. https://xkcd.com/2347/ https://xkcd.com/2347/
- pythux 2y ago
  Please see my answer to another similar message of yours here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40452726 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40452726 Brave Search is fully independent and does not rely on Bing whatsoever so any 500 is unrelated to this incident.
dvh 2y ago
It was me. I asked it which pigeon has orange beak and it crashed it.
- saikatsg 2y ago
  Let me help you ;) https://unsplash.com/photos/blue-and-white-bird-with-orange-beak-TEsQGtgDjts https://unsplash.com/photos/blue-and-white-bird-with-orange-...
  - dvh 2y ago
    That's him. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_wood_pigeon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_wood_pigeon
- linker3000 2y ago
  Actually, I think it was me asking "Show me an example of a major systems outage at Microsoft." /Bets on "If it's not DNS, they'll be rolling back a poorly-tested patch they just installed."?
jmcnulty 2y ago
They're aware of the problem. https://www.reddit.com/r/duckduckgo/comments/1cynfft/duckduckgo_search_issues/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button https://www.reddit.com/r/duckduckgo/comments/1cynfft/duckduc...
- mrweasel 2y ago
  It's disappointing that a "meeh" Reddit post is total sum of communication from Bing, DuckDuckGo, Ecosia and others.
farmdve 2y ago
While we are on the subject of search engines, which search engines still show you like blogs, forum posts and stuff like that? Most of the blogs for obscure projects or problems are no longer even discoverable.
- fp64 2y ago
  You're supposed to get your information from big platforms exclusively, otherwise how would you be able to see all the nice ads and "curated activism"?
  - qwertox 2y ago
    "Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity" [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - fp64 2y ago
      I'm sorry, I did not realize that complaining about big corporations using their monopoly was considered political and ideological now, but I suppose it makes sense. Please excuse my previous comment, I agree it's not helpful, and I should have resisted the urge to voice my frustration with the direction I see the internet heading
      - UI_at_80x24 2y ago
        FWIW, I agree with your post and disagree that it violates the rules.
- __jonas 2y ago
  https://search.marginalia.nu/ https://search.marginalia.nu/ https://blog.kagi.com/small-web https://blog.kagi.com/small-web
  - pooper 2y ago
Neroilek 2y ago
[dead]
voidUpdate 2y ago
DDG relying on bing for doing searches is... strange to me. I feel like I've seen its own web crawler in my access logs
- WhereIsTheTruth 2y ago
  NSA needs backup, when people wants to remain "private" ;)
- NikkiA 2y ago
  It's other ! commands still work though, so !g will work as a backup or even !yandex if you feel that way inclined (and don't mind answering endless captchas
  - gitaarik 2y ago
    yeah of course that works because that just redirects to to another site
- beretguy 2y ago
  Yeah, I knew they rely on Bing but didn’t know this much. This really makes me not want to use ddg anymore. I’m seriously considering just paying $108/year to Kagi.
  - biglyburrito 2y ago
    You don't have to go straight to the Professional ($108/year, unlimited searches) plan. There's also the Trial (free, 100 searches one-time) and Starter ($5/month, 3600 searches per year) plans, to help you figure out if it's worth spending for the unlimited plan. Once I hit 3600 searches & was faced with the prospect of either going back to DuckDuckGo & Google to provide inferior search results -OR- paying $108/year for Kagi, it made the choice pretty simple. But it took me a few months to get to that point, and I don't think I spent more than $15 in that time figuring out if Kagi was right for me.
    - 2y ago
Kye 2y ago
DuckDuckNoGo
- pooper 2y ago
  What makes me sad is that even the url decode function of duck duck go failed :( I'd have thought at least that part would work.
  - SSLy 2y ago
    at least the !bangs still work, they probably are implemented at their load balancers
- ekianjo 2y ago
  ah thats why ddg was down too?
IceWreck 2y ago
Yes, ddg is just a bing frontend which anonymizes results before sending them to MS.
- gertop 2y ago
  DDG also serves Yahoo ads (which are Microsoft ads) and host all their services on Microsoft Azure!
pixxel 2y ago
Bing wrappers exposed.
maelito 2y ago
So, Kagi's not relying on Bing ?
mgoetzke 2y ago
Teamviewer also seems to have issues. No one in our company can even log in, not even get past the email screen in their own web app
mrweasel 2y ago
Is it just me or is it really weird that neither Microsoft, or ANY of the search engines that uses Bing on the backend has posted anything about this? DuckDuckGo and Ecosia has not been working all morning (CET) but there is zero indication on their sites that they are even aware of the problem. DuckDuckGo has a single Reddit posts and that's it.
- beretguy 2y ago
  I kind of hope it’s something to do with AI, like, I don’t know, AI coming to conclusion that internet is bad for humanity and so it’s trying to shut down a search engine, or something mildly dystopian like that.
- beAbU 2y ago
  I went looking for a DDG status page this morning before seeing this link on HN. Google found a tweet from them earlier today with an announcement [1] I'm pretty surprised that I'm unable to find a dedicated status page for DDG - kinda horrible that I need to rely on twitter/reddit in order to know that they are having issues. I'm also a little tickled by the fact that I need to search "Duck Duck Go status !g" in order to be directed to Google, because searching for DDGs status on DDG does not, well, work. 1 - https://x.com/DuckDuckGo/status/1793557968027570527 https://x.com/DuckDuckGo/status/1793557968027570527
  - mrweasel 2y ago
    That statement in that tweet is also strange, but it's the same for Qwant and Ecosia now. I wonder if they are contractually not allowed to state that there are issues with Bing, or if others are correct in that they really don't want to be to public about the Bing dependency.
- ricardo81 2y ago
  Because DDG markets itself as privacy focused, yet is hosted on MS servers. Ecosia make a lot about their green credentials but it's not obvious if they factor in the CO2 output of what Bing requires to product results.
beretguy 2y ago
I don’t see anybody mentioning Brave Search. I’m getting 500. Anybody else?
- Aaargh20318 2y ago
  One of the interesting things about this downtime is that it has highlighted how many 'alternative' search engines are really just a front-end for Bing.
  - beretguy 2y ago
    Not sure why your text is grey. I mean, yeah, “Dependency” xkcd exists for a reason: https://xkcd.com/2347/ https://xkcd.com/2347/ Except that in this case instead of a “random person in Nebraska” we have a multi billion dollar corporation.
  - dewaldr 2y ago
    Wait until the ChatGPT API goes down one day and see how just about all startups from the last 12 months are just wrappers.
    - eskibars 2y ago
      You don't need to look hard to find this happen. OpenAI has had several API outages this year
- pythux 2y ago
  Hey, Brave engineer here. Brave Search is up and running (thanks to our fully independent index and no reliance on Bing whatsoever). Any 500 error is unrelated to the Bing incident. Would you be able to share a query if the 500 happens consistently? We’ll look into it. Thanks for your help, I hope that helps,
  - beretguy 2y ago
    Test - works Test one - works Test one two three - got 500 Feels strange. Edit: Hello - works Hello world - 500 again It’s like, if you type in more than 1-2 words it gives you 500. Edit: Test one two - just gave me 500 this time. It’s not very consistent. Maybe it’s something on my end. I wonder if anybody can reproduce it. I made a screen recording to proof I’m not too crazy, if necessary.
SushiHippie 2y ago
According to the comments on this lemmy post [0] Bing, DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, StartPage, Qwant are/were affected [0] https://lemmy.world/post/15708430 https://lemmy.world/post/15708430
datenyan 2y ago
Looks like it's affecting anything Bing-related, at least over here in Australia. Same symptoms for Bing and Ecosia.
- tu7001 2y ago
  Yep, (typing from Poland)
- tetris11 2y ago
  Same, Germany
nobody9999 2y ago
Yes. It certainly appears so, and has been down for at least a couple hours.
nobody9999 2y ago
This appears to be covered by the following HN submission which already has a dozen comments. Please redirect your interest there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40451490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40451490
aaron695 2y ago
[dead]
drpossum 2y ago
If you still want to search with bing you can use this URL https://www4.bing.com/ https://www4.bing.com/
- beretguy 2y ago
  I don’t, but I’m still curious what difference does that “4” make?
  - drpossum 2y ago
    It's one more than 3 (I think that host just doesn't have AI stuff associated or whatever is bringing it down)
CassisW 2y ago
Hillarious! I was debugging a python script and didn't get results from duckduckgo and I was checking ANYTHING else first before checking their page manually. Then checking if my IP perhaps is blocked. Nope, down in general, no search results
h2onock 2y ago
Perhaps it's time to give Mojeek a try if you haven't already.
- throwaway211 2y ago
  Unfortunately I tried to DDG 'mojeek', but that didn't work! https://www.mojeek.com/ https://www.mojeek.com/
nazgulsenpai 2y ago
I have been meaning to check out Brave search anyhow.
rendall 2y ago
Bangs still work e.g. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=duckduckgo+search+not+working+!g https://duckduckgo.com/?q=duckduckgo+search+not+working+!g
mhuffman 2y ago
Can't wait to find out what happened here. This seems to be a massive outage. Interesting how fragile things become when so much technology is concentrated into just a few companies.
- theshrike79 2y ago
  It's always DNS.
  - jeffrallen 2y ago
    Unless it's Nagle. (Sorry animats.)
  - onion2k 2y ago
    Or BGP
- us0r 2y ago
  My money is on expired domain somewhere or security certificate.
  - jraph 2y ago
    A Windows update restarted a critical server automatically. A core service is blocked from starting by a Candy Crush ad installed by the update. The Crandy Crush ad is somehow expecting a Copilot key to be pressed on the keyboard to let the system keep going. MS engineers are waiting for an online purchase of a new $400 keyboard with the Copilot key to complete and planning to run to the data center to plug the keyboard. However, the Bing outage is preventing the purchase to go through, because the payment somehow relies on Bing suggestions to load for obscure reasons.
    - Kerbonut 2y ago
      No way Microsoft could be this inept… could they?
josemanuel 2y ago
DDG has been down all morning (UK) on safari mobile and chrome on windows 10.
feb 2y ago
Actually Qwant.com uses bing API too and has a warning at the top of their homepage.
- lioeters 2y ago
  Yeah I saw this too. DDG was down, so I searched (on Wikipedia!) for another search engine. Tried Qwant for the first time, and it's also down.
devnonymous 2y ago
Huh, of all those, ddg seems the odd one. I thought it used its own search service, didn't realise it was bing underneath. Even if that's not entirely true the fact that the home page is down due to the same reason that bing is down doesn't look good.
- enkrs 2y ago
  When the outage started, for me duckduckgo.com just returned no results with the searchbar visible. The ddg homepage was still working. I've been using "my search term !g" for now and ddg just redirects my search to Google, so I don't have to change search provider in browsers.
- misnome 2y ago
  It's been many hours now. They could have at least added a page saying "We are having an outage" rather than "There was an error displaying the search results. Please try again."
altdataseller 2y ago
Maybe this forces DDG and ChatGPT to make their own search engine index and corpus. Sure it might be a few years too late for the former, but thats probably what they said 5 years ago too.
- bogtog 2y ago
  Do DDG and ChatGPT believe that they could do a better job of uptime than Microsoft?
  - altdataseller 2y ago
    Its not just a question of uptime but dependencies too. The moment it doesnt make strategic sense to have an open Bing API for Microsoft, anyone reliant on them is in for a world of hurt. Especially if its the core feature of your product (ie DDG)
- pityJuke 2y ago
  Brave is genuinely impressive here in having their own index (granted, that’s the result of an acquisition rather than their own volition).
  - BirAdam 2y ago
    Yeah. I like Brave Search. In my own usage it seems to offer far more useful results rather than 5 pages of ads.
- Operyl 2y ago
  With how aggressively Anthropic is crawling the internet right now, they might not be far behind. They’re hitting some web properties I oversee at 50 RPS in some cases and it’s frustrating.
- ColinHayhurst 2y ago
  Another option is to use multiple sources. For example Kagi who use Mojeek (self-disclosure) and others; "Our search results also include anonymized API calls to all major search result providers worldwide"
michael9423 2y ago
So much about DuckDuckGo's claim that Bing is only a part of their search results.
- Springtime 2y ago
  Prior to the Russia-Ukraine situation they actually did offer Yandex results if you set your region to Russia. It was interesting sometimes to see if there were any more useful top results. So at one point the claim was accurate.
  - pjc50 2y ago
    Yandex.com itself seems to be still available in the West.
- deutschepost 2y ago
  I‘m pretty sure it was always just a proxy for bing. Just stripping away the Microsoft tracking. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27394925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27394925
  - rvnx 2y ago
    If you use Bing: You have "only" Microsoft Bing tracking you If you use DuckDuckGo: Now, you have "Yahoo Ads" instead of Microsoft Ads, but these ads, they are in fact Microsoft Ads, except sold via Yahoo. In front of these Yahoo Ads, DuckDuckGo actually adds its own click-through tracker. Now you have DDG, Yahoo and Microsoft tracking you. Bonus point if you click on an Amazon affiliate link, because in that case, the Amazon affiliate (DuckDuckGo) knows item-per-item what you purchased.
    - dazc 2y ago
      Good reason not to use amazon then.
    - Springtime 2y ago
      There's a setting in DDG to disable ads. I'm aware of the Amazon affiliate link URL addition but since I don't buy anything from Amazon it doesn't concern me personally. Either way everyone can benefit from running a content blocker (I'd be surprised if anyone from this audience wasn't).
beretguy 2y ago
Use Brave search for now instead. https://search.brave.com https://search.brave.com
- reddalo 2y ago
  No thanks, it's run by cryptobros.
  - beretguy 2y ago
    Then you can pay for Kagi.
  - atomicfiredoll 2y ago
    The amount of Brave and Kagi spam in this thread is nutso. I can't be convinced it's not coordinated marketing by either or both of them. I'm not saying that there aren't some satisfied customers, but at some point a normal human being says: "Hey, 30 other people posted this. Maybe I shouldn't."
    - beretguy 2y ago
      Are you a marketer for DDG? No need to get so paranoid. People just share their experiences.
      - atomicfiredoll 2y ago
        I didn't say anything about DDG. Plus, the internet is full of influence campaigns and "organic marketing," so there's plenty of reason to be mindful and question what you're seeing/reading. A suspiciously large number of people seem to "share their experiences" whenever anything tangentially related comes up. Authentic or not, it's raising spam flags.
kunley 2y ago
Bing is working though, DDG still down
mrkramer 2y ago
Death by outsourcing.
- exitzer0 2y ago
  This guy Microsofts.
dewey 2y ago
> Hopefully DDG will be back soon, as I'm loathe to go back to Google for search. Maybe Kagi is an option for you? I'm very happy with them and exclusively use them for more than a year now after never getting comfortable with DDG.
- dpatac 2y ago
  I concur on Kagi. Now when I go to other search engines I just get frustrated.
- jasonvorhe 2y ago
  Came here to praise Kagi (and Brave Search) as well.
  - goneri 2y ago
    I'm a Kagi user and unfortunately they are reselling Google Search results.
- nobody9999 2y ago
  >Maybe Kagi is an option for you? Thanks, but I'd rather have my tonsils extracted through my ears. Unless you're buying. From the FAQ[0]: >Kagi Search requires an account only because it is a paid service which requires an account for the transaction. [0] https://help.kagi.com/kagi/faq/faq.html#why-does-kagi-search-require-an-account https://help.kagi.com/kagi/faq/faq.html#why-does-kagi-search...
  - dewey 2y ago
    You pay with your data instead, which is a fair choice.
  - idiotsecant 2y ago
    Yes, unlike google who takes all the pesky account business out of the loop and does the tracking for you! Either you pay for the product or you are the product for someone else who is paying. I know which I prefer.
bhaney 2y ago
Bing is down and the rest of those use Bing for results?
maryShap 2y ago
Duckduckgo is working fine on my iPhone15.
GRBurst 2y ago
yeah seems like at least for many that is the case. I wasn't aware that so many engines are using bing! under the hood. Afaik qwant uses their own thing and that startpage is using google under the hood, but that might have changed
maryShap 2y ago
Sorry, should have said that it was with the Safari brower
nullndr 2y ago
Ddg has been down for 5 hours. Quite a problem they got.
biglyburrito 2y ago
Kagi works just fine: https://kagi.com https://kagi.com
divyaranjan1905 2y ago
Even startpage.com shows no results
- probably_wrong 2y ago
  Startpage works for me in Germany, and has been working all morning. DDG remains unhappy.
- luuurker 2y ago
  It's working for me. Also, they use Google for search results, not Bing.
keybits 2y ago
A Microsoft outage is the source of this problem: A massive Microsoft outage affects Bing.com, Copilot for web and mobile, Copilot in Windows, ChatGPT internet search and DuckDuckGo. Microsoft outage started at approximately 3 AM EDT and seems to have primarily affected users in Asia and Europe. https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-outage-affects-bing-copilot-duckduckgo-and-chatgpt-internet-search/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-ou...
- keybits 2y ago
  Being discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40453077 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40453077
tokai 2y ago
Whats up with the 'surprised' comments about ddg? I don't like ddg myself, but it has never been a secret that they base their results on bing.
- whalesalad 2y ago
  now I know why their results are so trash. switched to kagi a few years ago and it has been quite nice.
  - moffkalast 2y ago
    Paying for search results? Come on, we're not that desperate.
    - whalesalad 2y ago
      Totally worth it. Very happy to see a small startup start eating into this space and happy to support them.
sidcool 2y ago
Still down.
biglyburrito 2y ago
Kagi works just fine: https://kagi.com https://kagi.com
- randomuser69 2y ago
  100 search for free :(
neogodless 2y ago
Is there any possibility that the latest Windows 11 update which is going out to "Insiders" now could be massively increasing the load on CoPilot / Bing infrastructure?
- TechDebtDevin 2y ago
  [flagged]
_tk_me 2y ago
Microsoft outage
weinzierl 2y ago
Bangs still seem to work, so "[search term] g!" saves the day until this is fixed.
az09mugen 2y ago
Startpage [0] search also is not returning web results. But image search is working. I wonder what's happening. [0] https://www.startpage.com https://www.startpage.com
dgan 2y ago
Same for Startpage. Using Kagi now
dgan 2y ago
Same for Startpage
tanelpoder 2y ago
I had been using DuckDuckGo for the last 2-3 years, but starting from early this year I noticed that their search index just didn’t index some of the things I searched for (enterprise tech stuff). These searches worked ok before and still worked with other engines. So I finally switched to Kagi and am happy with it.
eth0up 2y ago
I'm not sure why DDG has become such an acceptable google alternative. Even google returns less IP-based, irrelevant results. It's not terrible and sometimes it's good, but results are frequently absurd. I find an instance of searx, or even swisscows generally superior. DDG has no regard for specific queries and always seems to insert a handful of ridiculous IP-based results, however impossibly pertinent to the subject. I think DDG has IP tourette.
knifie_spoonie 2y ago
It's probably because Bing is down
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
FerretFred 2y ago
> "Update 1: Microsoft has confirmed an issue where users may be unable to access the Microsoft Copilot service" So not all bad then?!
- TechDebtDevin 2y ago
  I'm still unsure of what MS Copilot is. For the longest time I thought it was GH Cp because of the obvious association, but it's not. I'm assuming it's some bunk ass Bing "AI" assisted search? I truly think MS is the perfect example of a moat experiencing a drought. Unfortunately, money can't buy rain, it can only pump water from other sources. This never works.
  - FerretFred 2y ago
    I encountered MS Copilot recently when I reluctantly installed Windows for a local charity (their idea, not mine). Basically, if you do a search it'll give you the results but will then fill your screen with other information allegedly related to your query but relayed in the most verbose and annoying manner possible.
    - TechDebtDevin 2y ago
      Sounds like a native MS product.
  - mavhc 2y ago
    It's chatgpt wearing a hat and sunglasses
  - altdataseller 2y ago
    I thibk its the AI version of Clippy or something embedded in Office or Microsoft365 or whatever they call that thing these days.. (i think, i have absolutely no idea either :)
  - lenerdenator 2y ago
    For better or for worse, it absolutely works. Pumping water from other sources or copying another type of well has been Microsoft's MO for almost 50 years and they're one of the most valuable companies on the planet.
npteljes 2y ago
I love the acknowledgement that DDG put on their page. We're currently experiencing an issue with DuckDuckGo Search. Thanks for your patience while we get our ducks in a row. In the meantime, you can use other search engines right here by using "bangs" So fun and straightforward.
- TechDebtDevin 2y ago
  [flagged]
- notRobot 2y ago
  Interesting how they insist that they use "so much more" than just Bing for their results, but the moment Bing goes down their search functionality is down entirely, unable to show a single result.
  - devit 2y ago
    They probably start with Bing results and do custom filtering, ranking and presentation, so without the initial Bing results they can't do anything.
    - ffhhj 2y ago
      Someone please tell them they can wrap that code inside an "if" condition, and continue with the rest of the search.
      - niutech 2y ago
        What would be the rest if they don't have their own index?
    - niutech 2y ago
      So basically DDG is the wrapper for Bing Search, not an "independent" search company as they claim.
      - 2y ago
Brajeshwar 2y ago
The movies were indeed way ahead and knew -- Mothership snaps and the entire fleet just collapse like an unplugged discharged device.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
is_true 2y ago
Probably nothing, or a rogue AI is taking over MS. This is the real world...if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it
- jklein11 2y ago
  Go on... if a tree falls in the forest, and no one hears it... ?
  - throwaway211 2y ago
    The falling produces a sound that no one hears.
  - wglb 2y ago
    Do the other trees laugh at it?
aeonian_8 2y ago
"We're currently experiencing an issue with DuckDuckGo Search. Thanks for your patience while we get our ducks in a row. In the meantime, you can use other search engines right here by using "bangs": Google: !g why did youtube remove my subscriptions list Yahoo: !y why did youtube remove my subscriptions list Wikipedia: !w why did youtube remove my subscriptions list And many more." This change just happened. I've been waiting on Ddg since ~10am in Frankfurt, Germany.
cooljoey 2y ago
Oops lots of corporates MS Dyanmics platforms down as they rely on Bing address api!
sixthDot 2y ago
what a quack
cooljoey 2y ago
Oops, lots of corporate MS Dynamics platforms are down as they rely on Bing address api
philipov 2y ago
Single point of faaaaiiiiiluuuuure - Sing it!
- moffkalast 2y ago
  I love it when Cloudflare accidentally breaks something and over half of the entire internet immediately goes down.
  - mdaniel 2y ago
    I also love that because I hope it will cause people to rethink such rampant centralization. Yeah, I get it, blah, blah, ddos, spider, etc, but for their gatekeeping, there sure doesn't seem to be any appeals process if they deem you to be Not An Upstanding Netizen
MatthiasPortzel 2y ago
Luckily !g still works, but this is pretty by bad.
binarymax 2y ago
Unlikely, but perhaps this might motivate DDG into finally making their own index and eventually drop bing
blondie9x 2y ago
[flagged]
- BirAdam 2y ago
  I always use Brave first, and when that fails, I try Bing. If Bing fails, I try Google. Most of the time, I can just use Brave.
blondie9x 2y ago
Is it just me or is search terribly broken on the internet. It’s Google or Bing and Bing imposters. Why aren’t there more broad search options? Search was better when we had page rank algorithms. It’s gotten over condensed into 2 companies.
- alphabetting 2y ago
  search has always been hard and say if you do get market share on google, a portion of the massive SEO industry will eventually turn their sights on you and make your life hell.
- lawn 2y ago
  Like others have said, try out Kagi. I didn't buy the hype but the results are much better.
- nottorp 2y ago
  Page rank was a google thing, and it helped them take market share from everyone else and achieve their current quasi-monopoly?
benrutter 2y ago
I use Ecosia (which Bing powered) and wondered why it was down earlier. Makes you realise just how few players there actually are in the search rankings space.
- repeekad 2y ago
  I believe you.com has their own proper search index? Ecosia and duckduckgo exist purely on ad revenue, any good search engine will be paid for in the future, even Google’s non-ad search results make me hesitant, it’s all SEO spam now, plus chatGPT or Gemini can answer nearly any question when you pay for the real service
jandrusk 2y ago
How in the world is DDG dependent upon Bing to function? So glad I switched to Brave Search :)
BubBob 2y ago
[flagged]
- Gormo 2y ago
  How do search engines relate to animals and biodiversity? They seem to be completely unrelated things.
  - BubBob 2y ago
    Because sponsored links are the single biggest source of revenue on the web! It's a $200-300 billion market, with Google owning more than 90% of it. If just 1% of Google users switch to KARMA, it will fund the actions of its non-profit partners to the tune of $1 billion per year! Switching is free and effortless, it only takes a few seconds...
    - Gormo 2y ago
      Seems like a bit of confusion of purpose. Why would I not use the search engine that gives me the most useful search results, and then, unrelatedly, just donate to an organization like the World Wildlife Fund if I care about protecting biodiversity? It seems strange to link these things together.
kbazbaz 2y ago
From DDG: https://x.com/DuckDuckGo/status/1793557968027570527 https://x.com/DuckDuckGo/status/1793557968027570527
IG_Semmelweiss 2y ago
Question for OP. What would be your guess that someone like he article writer is able to make the inference that Bing being down was also impacting DDG or ChatGPT ? Is it public knowledge that they use the Bing backend to do their work ? Particularly for Bing Copilot, isn't the relationship the other way around (OpenAI has the core sauce, bing uses its API to power their copilot searches) ?
- jerpint 2y ago
  Microsoft has the compute, so its likely to be an infrastructure problem
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  At least for DDG, it's public knowledge.
rodondenderon 2y ago
[dead]
- skeeter2020 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - victor_z 2y ago
    Besides getting the search engine wrong, it's still cool to see many more search engine alternatives to the big ones. I'll allow it.
mistyvales 2y ago
Maybe it's an issue with their Bing connection..
markbeare 2y ago
This probably relates to the Bing Search API. A lot of these alternative search engines are using Bing for the organic results.
noman-land 2y ago
It's still down... crazy. I had to use Yahoo today, ew.
jraph 2y ago
DDG is back.
kbazbaz 2y ago
Back: https://x.com/DuckDuckGo/status/1793652538476216398 https://x.com/DuckDuckGo/status/1793652538476216398
dudeinjapan 2y ago
Bet their site reliability team was saying “F*k F*k No!”
gunapologist99 2y ago
I switched to Brave search; I think their search results are from a search engine they acquired, so they don't use Bing or Google unless you tell them to 'mix in' those results. I've actually found Brave search's results to be more accurate and less spammy than Google's, but they still exhibit similar biases in predictable areas.
udev4096 2y ago
I hope duckduckgo tries to shift away from Bing. They were lying about the fact that "we rely on different crawlers apart from Bing"
- iamthirsty 2y ago
  Where exactly were they lying, and how do you know for a fact?
sigmonsays 2y ago
maybe it's time to centralize crawlers and search data, making it publicly available to anyone willing to process it. Not only would that reduce crawler traffic on websites to a single crawler entity it would make page data available for any indexer. The idea that one company owns this data is kind of silly, it should be a coalition or a group of companies working together...
- RunningDroid 2y ago
  I think a better design would be to define a spec for search data so sites that implement it could generate a ".well-known/search_data.zst" (or whatever) and people would only need to crawl the site to check compliance with the spec.
vondur 2y ago
I was getting an error from Bing not working earlier today. Possibly related?
phreeza 2y ago
Did they stop publishing detailed traffic stats? They used to have a very detailed page if I recall correctly, but I can't find it any more.
nashashmi 2y ago
I realized DDG was just a skin on Bing a couple of days ago. Bing's results have gone incredibly sour. Too many ads on bing. Bing speaks of censorship and fake results (repeated listings of the same garbage on 3rd, 4th pages). The only thing DDG is good for: using bangs! search any and every search engine thru ![bang]. What other search engines are still good? Google hit the fan a couple of years back after the hire of Prabhakar Raghavan (https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/ https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/). Bing cowered to censored results. ChatGPT is muzzled.
kawfey 2y ago
I grew up using Google (and ask jeeves and yahoo.) In school, google won. Now, google sucks. It's all ads, AI SEO maxxing, and the work to find useful results has gone up manyfold. I found myself using site:"" to get closer to what I needed. I tried DDG, and it's more or less the same, but it's like the search engine is conspiring against you to more or less find completely useless results. I tried kagi, and i love it. I hate that it's 100 searches for the cheapest account, but it gets me right into the thick of my research off the bat, plus searching smallweb has brought my faith back into the internet, and it's AI stuff is useful, insofar that it doesn't get in the way. DDG is still my standard search tool for "picture of banana" or "WWII jet airplanes" but for "forum discussion 73 magazine article on homebrew superheterodyne receiver from 1980s" im going straight to kagi.
- elicksaur 2y ago
  >it's like the search engine is conspiring against you to more or less find completely useless results. Has not been my experience at all. Been using ddg as my default for a few years. What kinds of searches do you find frustrating?
  - bombcar 2y ago
    In my experience DDG and Google are similar in that you either get what you wanted right away, or you’re doomed At least with Kagi it’s been worth scrolling down a page or two before reformatting my search query.
  - reassess_blind 2y ago
    [dead]
- Atlas48 2y ago
  I main DDG for it's bang feature. It's permanently ingrained into my muscle memory now.
  - niutech 2y ago
    Brave Search supports bangs too! https://search.brave.com/bangs https://search.brave.com/bangs
TheRealNGenius 2y ago
[dead]
jsemrau 2y ago
I wrote a Langchain ReAct agent that searches the web for me using Wikipedia, Serpapi (google), and DDG. Works better than traditional search.
khana 2y ago
[dead]
Ophuscado 2y ago
I rediscovered Yahoo thanks to it.
lowkey 2y ago
I’ve started using search.brave.com instead of Duck Duck Go as my default search engine (which in turn replaced Google search, the spyware/adware posing as a search engine) I was formerly a huge advocate of DDG but between the Microsoft ad tracking the company was paid to include without disclosing to users [1] and their pro-censorship stance on the Ukraine war [2], they lost my trust. Turns out Duck Duck Go is not a serious company. They are not serious about privacy and they are not serious about censorship, two principles I hold dear. "It takes years to build trust and seconds to destroy it." - Warren Buffett Now search.brave.com is my default on both Desktop and iOS (using the excellent Safari extension Hyperweb)
nalinidash 2y ago
Weird, it still is not working for me. edit: working now.
derryman 2y ago
[dead]

DuckDuckGo was down

272 points by jshupe 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

allanrbo 2y ago

not down for me.

jshupe 2y ago
site responds but search results are down on my phone wifi, and LTE, and desktop
- kbrkbr 2y ago
  Same here still

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

kernelsanderz 2y ago

down for me. doesn't get search results

pcvarmint 2y ago

It started failing on searches 1-2 hours ago.

secondary_op 2y ago

bing.com also down, looks like duckduckgo is frontend to bing at least bing images, https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=katrina https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=katrina

secondary_op 2y ago
> It's not you, it's us > Bing isn't available right now, but everything should be back to normal very soon. > https://www4.bing.com/bingparachute/panda.png https://www4.bing.com/bingparachute/panda.png > https://www4.bing.com/bingparachute/bing_logo.png https://www4.bing.com/bingparachute/bing_logo.png
FriedrichN 2y ago
It seems that https://www.startpage.com https://www.startpage.com also uses Bing for its images.

hilux 2y ago

22-May-2024 ... the day privacy (finally) died.

secondary_op 2y ago
Presume that duckduckgo is not private or otherwise compromised. For example many things I search trough duckduckgo later that day showed up in my twitter/x.com algorithmic feed, coincidence ? don't think so.
- n_ary 2y ago
  Or it could be that, when you search something, you also click through to some of the results, where FB/AdWords and other trackers are present. Alternatively, there was a fallacy of human mind(forgot the name), where if you think of something, your brain will start focusing on the random occurrences of that things in all places. So, those ads were always there, your brain just started focusing suddenly on those as you were thinking of those things. Note: Not affiliated with DDG.
  - 256_ 2y ago
    It's called the Baader-Meinhof effect.
  - secondary_op 2y ago
    Yes, in this case only way to not be spied on is to not go on the internet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion
- weberer 2y ago
  There's also the likelyhood that the pages you landed on sent your info to their "ad partners"
- logtempo 2y ago
  duckduckgo don't prevent website to track you or deposit cookies etc. Once you're on a website, let's say twitter, duckduckgo does nothing. > When you view Twitter content such as embedded Tweets, buttons, or timelines integrated into other websites using Twitter for Websites, Twitter may receive information, including the web page you visited, your IP address, browser type, operating system, and cookie information. (https://developer.x.com/en/docs/twitter-for-websites/privacy https://developer.x.com/en/docs/twitter-for-websites/privacy) So, if you visit a news paper that have embedded twitter post in it, twitter might know you passed by this website.

naitgacem 2y ago

I just experienced this as well. I had a giggle when I opened a new tab and searched "is duckduckgo down" and the default search engine is ... duckduckgo. Still no results .. strange :P

ffpip 2y ago

What a coincidence! I used it after 3-4 months and it didn't show any search results. Thought I had forgotten how to use their !bangs feature. Turns out it is down

alentred 2y ago

https://www.bing.com/ https://www.bing.com/ is down too at the moment. Curiously I cannot find a "health" or a "status" page for either.

kuro_neko 2y ago
Does it vary by region? Mine works fine for bing.
- pcvarmint 2y ago
  Bing is sluggish but seems to work sometimes now. I wonder if it's a DDoS attack on Bing.
  - Iulioh 2y ago
    ....can you really DDoS Bing?
wannacboatmovie 2y ago
Maybe today's the day we find out DDG is just a UI to an Amazon Go-style backend: a room full of workers in India typing the queries into Bing and copy/pasting the results back to you.
tgv 2y ago
DDG runs on bing, so that squares. Apparently, MS uses Bing for their portal, because I can't search inside Azure portal neither.
- ErrrNoMate 2y ago
  like a very large number of things we are pitched as search engines: https://www.searchenginemap.com/ https://www.searchenginemap.com/
windowshopping 2y ago
works for me 8 minutes later, idk

hpeter 2y ago

same. I just noticed it too, about 30 minutes ago

mrweasel 2y ago

It seems to be all search engines powered by Bing. Ecosia isn't working either, and they also don't have a status page.

opem 2y ago
yep

anoplus 2y ago

Started about an hour ago (~1716454800000)

teekert 2y ago

Yes, seeing it too, for about an hour already! Came here to check. Nothing on their xitter page but this thing is spiking: https://downdetector.com/status/duckduckgo/ https://downdetector.com/status/duckduckgo/

256_ 2y ago

If you look up "hacker news", it at least shows you an insert from the Wikipedia article, even if there are no normal results: https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=hacker+news https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=hacker+news

meonkeys 2y ago
I love this low-tech DDG interface! Made my day, thanks. (aha, https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/features/non-javascript/ https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/features/non-ja... mentions the "HTML" and "Lite" versions) Also, why is your username green?
- 4ggr0 2y ago
  > What do green usernames mean? Green indicates a new account. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

camiat 2y ago

Yup, I am also running into the same issue where duck duck go is returning the error message: > Sorry, we ran into an error displaying these results. Click here to try again. I thought it was just duck duck go, but I tried searching with bing, and was met with: > It's not you, it's us > Bing isn't available right now, but everything should be back to normal very soon.

DeathArrow 2y ago

Maybe it was acquired by Google?

bun_terminator 2y ago

They lost all relevance after they gleefully announced their manipulation of search results 2 years ago

rurban 2y ago
Still better than Google
- beretguy 2y ago
  Still there are better alternatives to ddg. I use Brave and Kagi.
  - rurban 2y ago
    But not free. I use Fennec with ddg. Loved Kagi, but too expensive for my German income
    - em-bee 2y ago
      brave search is free.
    - beretguy 2y ago
      Yes, Kagi is expensive. But it also has useful features other search engines don’t. It’s nice if you can afford it.

CTOSian 2y ago

bing as well

pierrebeucher 2y ago
Same problem, encountering similar problems with Qwant (though not always)
WCSTombs 2y ago
Bing is up now, but DDG is still down.
- worik 2y ago
  Comes and goes for me
- mgoetzke 2y ago
  down right now.

n_ary 2y ago

My conspiracy mind tells me, may be bing changed their search api with breaking changes or suddenly introduced massive billing(think Twitter API, reddit API et al.) hence all search-engines pulled an immediate break without having time to fix/update.

hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago

Yup. Maybe it's a NS, LB, or IPv6 only problem because it works eventually.

nirse 2y ago

Is it just me, or has DDG been having trouble often lately? Or is it just a combination with some outage + degradation of search results lately that makes me g! regularly these days? Didn't use to need that.

epolanski 2y ago
Bing's been working oddly for few days now for me. I guess it impacts the other engines that are based on it.

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago

Ecosia is also down. I think all of these use Bing under the covers? If it is actually a Bing problem, it is pretty incredible that MS has an outage this long. Makes me think twice about the stability of Azure.

whitehat33 2y ago

DDG Site responds, but gives and error and is not showing search results.

pluto_modadic 2y ago

Hmmm... Is having a status page a sign of engineering maturity?

DANmode 2y ago
Engineering excellence, maybe. And then the curve ends back on the ground, with manual updates being swapped back into the same previously automated status pages, because money.

mnuu 2y ago

DDG down here

jollyca 2y ago
Same here - it used to work intermittently this morning (1 out of 3 searches), but now I get the same error every time

maryShap 2y ago

Get the same error with both Firefox and Edge. Very frustrating.

loloquwowndueo 2y ago
The site is having trouble, a different browser is not going to help.

spaniard89277 2y ago

keyword !brave works though

ikt 2y ago

I duno how this isn't getting more views tbh Ecosia and Duckduckgo and Bing are down, there's at least 5% of the search engine market (the non-google part) down at the moment

beretguy 2y ago
Man, can you imagine if this happened to Google! I’m so curious now.
hhh 2y ago
because not that many people use search engines other than google
- dzhiurgis 2y ago
  which is surprising given how unbearable google has gotten it's a bit like sticking to using windows in 2010
  - throwaway290 2y ago
    It's not surprising given how much better it is than everything else
    - loloquwowndueo 2y ago
      lol what? Google or Windows? Got a chuckle out of this either way.
      - throwaway290 2y ago
        who said anything about windows?
        Slyfox33 2y ago
        The comment you replied to?

secondary_op 2y ago

That's it, ddg is gone from my Firefox and hopefully from my browsing habits. Speaking about Firefox, it is insane how needlessly complicated it is to add new search engine to Firefox [1] 1. Open a new tab and type about:config in the address bar 2. In the search box type: browser.urlbar.update2.engineAliasRefresh 3. Click on the little + symbol on the right. It should look like after you pressed it: boolean true value 4. Go to firefox Settings → Search. Or enter this in the address bar: about:preferences#search 5. In the "Search Shortcuts" section you should notice a new "add" button. search add button 6. Press the add button and fill in the name, search engine url and a keyword(optional). 7. Go to the "Default Search Engine" section and select the engine you just added. [1] https://superuser.com/questions/7327/how-to-add-a-custom-search-engine-to-firefox/1756774#1756774 https://superuser.com/questions/7327/how-to-add-a-custom-sea...

joveian 2y ago
Neat, I kept thinking there should be a way to add keywords to that list and now I know how to do it (execept for some reason you can only add a new engine with a keyword there and not add a keyword to an existing engine :( ). I use mozlz4 and aeson-pretty to look at the search.json.mozlz4 file. https://github.com/jusw85/mozlz4 https://github.com/jusw85/mozlz4 https://github.com/informatikr/aeson-pretty https://github.com/informatikr/aeson-pretty To be fair you can also just right click on the URL bar when on a page that advertises having a search and click Add <name of search>. Or if you want to search by keyword you can right click on most search boxes and click "add a keyword for this search". Mycroft Project has a bunch of random search engines ready to add to Firefox (via right clicking on the URL bar when on the search entry page): https://mycroftproject.com/ https://mycroftproject.com/ If you use more than one search engine, I like the Right Click Search addon to be able to search highlighted text with multiple engines easily (unfortunately not monitored by Mozilla but you can look over the code before installing and turn off updates since it is quite simple and requires no permissions): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/right-click- https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/right-click- search/ The most privacy friendly way to search is to search the site you want to end up on when you know what site that is and they have a usable search. For general search engines, I suggest giving Metager a try, it is a non-profit metasearch. https://metager.org/ https://metager.org/

cbovis 2y ago

Non-Google recommendations in the interim?

beretguy 2y ago
Kagi
sumosudo 2y ago
searx.org public instances https://searx.space https://searx.space
em-bee 2y ago
https://search.brave.com/ https://search.brave.com/ using that as my default search engine on firefox since last year. quite happy with the quality of results.
- shiandow 2y ago
  It's fairly quick and supports !bangs, and it actually works right now... I'll give it a try.
- cbovis 2y ago
  Looks great thank you. I see there's a !brave bang for duckduckgo too so no need to change up browser defaults.
ColinHayhurst 2y ago
https://seirdy.one/posts/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexes/ https://seirdy.one/posts/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-...

BubBob 2y ago

[dead]

maryShap 2y ago

Duckduckgo doesn't work on Windows 11 but does work on Windows 10

beretguy 2y ago
I… don’t understand how that’s possible.
- bitnasty 2y ago
  Serving different resources based on reported user agent data.
RegW 2y ago
I'm using 10 - it doesn't work for me.

Mountain_Skies 2y ago

DuckDuckGo also is unable to provide search results, which seems to confirm they use Bing as a base for their searches.

riffraff 2y ago
ditto for Ecosia.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
adamomada 2y ago
Startpage too, but only on mobile (???)
deliriumchn 2y ago
Yes, they use bing https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources/ https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources...
- the_70x 2y ago
  DuckDuckGo is just a search proxy

beretguy 2y ago

I also sometimes get 500 on Brave Search, but not always? Kagi works fine. Yeah, something is wrong with bing. That’s what you get when you rely on others instead of building your own. A jenga tower. https://xkcd.com/2347/ https://xkcd.com/2347/

pythux 2y ago
Please see my answer to another similar message of yours here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40452726 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40452726 Brave Search is fully independent and does not rely on Bing whatsoever so any 500 is unrelated to this incident.

dvh 2y ago

It was me. I asked it which pigeon has orange beak and it crashed it.

saikatsg 2y ago
Let me help you ;) https://unsplash.com/photos/blue-and-white-bird-with-orange-beak-TEsQGtgDjts https://unsplash.com/photos/blue-and-white-bird-with-orange-...
- dvh 2y ago
  That's him. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_wood_pigeon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_wood_pigeon
linker3000 2y ago
Actually, I think it was me asking "Show me an example of a major systems outage at Microsoft." /Bets on "If it's not DNS, they'll be rolling back a poorly-tested patch they just installed."?

jmcnulty 2y ago

They're aware of the problem. https://www.reddit.com/r/duckduckgo/comments/1cynfft/duckduckgo_search_issues/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button https://www.reddit.com/r/duckduckgo/comments/1cynfft/duckduc...

mrweasel 2y ago
It's disappointing that a "meeh" Reddit post is total sum of communication from Bing, DuckDuckGo, Ecosia and others.

farmdve 2y ago

While we are on the subject of search engines, which search engines still show you like blogs, forum posts and stuff like that? Most of the blogs for obscure projects or problems are no longer even discoverable.

fp64 2y ago
You're supposed to get your information from big platforms exclusively, otherwise how would you be able to see all the nice ads and "curated activism"?
- qwertox 2y ago
  "Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity" [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - fp64 2y ago
    I'm sorry, I did not realize that complaining about big corporations using their monopoly was considered political and ideological now, but I suppose it makes sense. Please excuse my previous comment, I agree it's not helpful, and I should have resisted the urge to voice my frustration with the direction I see the internet heading
    - UI_at_80x24 2y ago
      FWIW, I agree with your post and disagree that it violates the rules.
__jonas 2y ago
https://search.marginalia.nu/ https://search.marginalia.nu/ https://blog.kagi.com/small-web https://blog.kagi.com/small-web
- pooper 2y ago

Neroilek 2y ago

[dead]

voidUpdate 2y ago

DDG relying on bing for doing searches is... strange to me. I feel like I've seen its own web crawler in my access logs

WhereIsTheTruth 2y ago
NSA needs backup, when people wants to remain "private" ;)
NikkiA 2y ago
It's other ! commands still work though, so !g will work as a backup or even !yandex if you feel that way inclined (and don't mind answering endless captchas
- gitaarik 2y ago
  yeah of course that works because that just redirects to to another site
beretguy 2y ago
Yeah, I knew they rely on Bing but didn’t know this much. This really makes me not want to use ddg anymore. I’m seriously considering just paying $108/year to Kagi.
- biglyburrito 2y ago
  You don't have to go straight to the Professional ($108/year, unlimited searches) plan. There's also the Trial (free, 100 searches one-time) and Starter ($5/month, 3600 searches per year) plans, to help you figure out if it's worth spending for the unlimited plan. Once I hit 3600 searches & was faced with the prospect of either going back to DuckDuckGo & Google to provide inferior search results -OR- paying $108/year for Kagi, it made the choice pretty simple. But it took me a few months to get to that point, and I don't think I spent more than $15 in that time figuring out if Kagi was right for me.
  - 2y ago

Kye 2y ago

DuckDuckNoGo

pooper 2y ago
What makes me sad is that even the url decode function of duck duck go failed :( I'd have thought at least that part would work.
- SSLy 2y ago
  at least the !bangs still work, they probably are implemented at their load balancers
ekianjo 2y ago
ah thats why ddg was down too?

IceWreck 2y ago

Yes, ddg is just a bing frontend which anonymizes results before sending them to MS.

gertop 2y ago
DDG also serves Yahoo ads (which are Microsoft ads) and host all their services on Microsoft Azure!

pixxel 2y ago

Bing wrappers exposed.

maelito 2y ago

So, Kagi's not relying on Bing ?

mgoetzke 2y ago

Teamviewer also seems to have issues. No one in our company can even log in, not even get past the email screen in their own web app

mrweasel 2y ago

Is it just me or is it really weird that neither Microsoft, or ANY of the search engines that uses Bing on the backend has posted anything about this? DuckDuckGo and Ecosia has not been working all morning (CET) but there is zero indication on their sites that they are even aware of the problem. DuckDuckGo has a single Reddit posts and that's it.

beretguy 2y ago
I kind of hope it’s something to do with AI, like, I don’t know, AI coming to conclusion that internet is bad for humanity and so it’s trying to shut down a search engine, or something mildly dystopian like that.
beAbU 2y ago
I went looking for a DDG status page this morning before seeing this link on HN. Google found a tweet from them earlier today with an announcement [1] I'm pretty surprised that I'm unable to find a dedicated status page for DDG - kinda horrible that I need to rely on twitter/reddit in order to know that they are having issues. I'm also a little tickled by the fact that I need to search "Duck Duck Go status !g" in order to be directed to Google, because searching for DDGs status on DDG does not, well, work. 1 - https://x.com/DuckDuckGo/status/1793557968027570527 https://x.com/DuckDuckGo/status/1793557968027570527
- mrweasel 2y ago
  That statement in that tweet is also strange, but it's the same for Qwant and Ecosia now. I wonder if they are contractually not allowed to state that there are issues with Bing, or if others are correct in that they really don't want to be to public about the Bing dependency.
ricardo81 2y ago
Because DDG markets itself as privacy focused, yet is hosted on MS servers. Ecosia make a lot about their green credentials but it's not obvious if they factor in the CO2 output of what Bing requires to product results.

beretguy 2y ago

I don’t see anybody mentioning Brave Search. I’m getting 500. Anybody else?

Aaargh20318 2y ago
One of the interesting things about this downtime is that it has highlighted how many 'alternative' search engines are really just a front-end for Bing.
- beretguy 2y ago
  Not sure why your text is grey. I mean, yeah, “Dependency” xkcd exists for a reason: https://xkcd.com/2347/ https://xkcd.com/2347/ Except that in this case instead of a “random person in Nebraska” we have a multi billion dollar corporation.
- dewaldr 2y ago
  Wait until the ChatGPT API goes down one day and see how just about all startups from the last 12 months are just wrappers.
  - eskibars 2y ago
    You don't need to look hard to find this happen. OpenAI has had several API outages this year
pythux 2y ago
Hey, Brave engineer here. Brave Search is up and running (thanks to our fully independent index and no reliance on Bing whatsoever). Any 500 error is unrelated to the Bing incident. Would you be able to share a query if the 500 happens consistently? We’ll look into it. Thanks for your help, I hope that helps,
- beretguy 2y ago
  Test - works Test one - works Test one two three - got 500 Feels strange. Edit: Hello - works Hello world - 500 again It’s like, if you type in more than 1-2 words it gives you 500. Edit: Test one two - just gave me 500 this time. It’s not very consistent. Maybe it’s something on my end. I wonder if anybody can reproduce it. I made a screen recording to proof I’m not too crazy, if necessary.

SushiHippie 2y ago

According to the comments on this lemmy post [0] Bing, DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, StartPage, Qwant are/were affected [0] https://lemmy.world/post/15708430 https://lemmy.world/post/15708430

datenyan 2y ago

Looks like it's affecting anything Bing-related, at least over here in Australia. Same symptoms for Bing and Ecosia.

tu7001 2y ago
Yep, (typing from Poland)
tetris11 2y ago
Same, Germany

nobody9999 2y ago

Yes. It certainly appears so, and has been down for at least a couple hours.

nobody9999 2y ago

This appears to be covered by the following HN submission which already has a dozen comments. Please redirect your interest there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40451490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40451490

aaron695 2y ago

[dead]

drpossum 2y ago

If you still want to search with bing you can use this URL https://www4.bing.com/ https://www4.bing.com/

beretguy 2y ago
I don’t, but I’m still curious what difference does that “4” make?
- drpossum 2y ago
  It's one more than 3 (I think that host just doesn't have AI stuff associated or whatever is bringing it down)

CassisW 2y ago

Hillarious! I was debugging a python script and didn't get results from duckduckgo and I was checking ANYTHING else first before checking their page manually. Then checking if my IP perhaps is blocked. Nope, down in general, no search results

h2onock 2y ago

Perhaps it's time to give Mojeek a try if you haven't already.

throwaway211 2y ago
Unfortunately I tried to DDG 'mojeek', but that didn't work! https://www.mojeek.com/ https://www.mojeek.com/

nazgulsenpai 2y ago

I have been meaning to check out Brave search anyhow.

rendall 2y ago

Bangs still work e.g. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=duckduckgo+search+not+working+!g https://duckduckgo.com/?q=duckduckgo+search+not+working+!g

mhuffman 2y ago

Can't wait to find out what happened here. This seems to be a massive outage. Interesting how fragile things become when so much technology is concentrated into just a few companies.

theshrike79 2y ago
It's always DNS.
- jeffrallen 2y ago
  Unless it's Nagle. (Sorry animats.)
- onion2k 2y ago
  Or BGP
us0r 2y ago
My money is on expired domain somewhere or security certificate.
- jraph 2y ago
  A Windows update restarted a critical server automatically. A core service is blocked from starting by a Candy Crush ad installed by the update. The Crandy Crush ad is somehow expecting a Copilot key to be pressed on the keyboard to let the system keep going. MS engineers are waiting for an online purchase of a new $400 keyboard with the Copilot key to complete and planning to run to the data center to plug the keyboard. However, the Bing outage is preventing the purchase to go through, because the payment somehow relies on Bing suggestions to load for obscure reasons.
  - Kerbonut 2y ago
    No way Microsoft could be this inept… could they?

josemanuel 2y ago

DDG has been down all morning (UK) on safari mobile and chrome on windows 10.

feb 2y ago

Actually Qwant.com uses bing API too and has a warning at the top of their homepage.

lioeters 2y ago
Yeah I saw this too. DDG was down, so I searched (on Wikipedia!) for another search engine. Tried Qwant for the first time, and it's also down.

devnonymous 2y ago

Huh, of all those, ddg seems the odd one. I thought it used its own search service, didn't realise it was bing underneath. Even if that's not entirely true the fact that the home page is down due to the same reason that bing is down doesn't look good.

enkrs 2y ago
When the outage started, for me duckduckgo.com just returned no results with the searchbar visible. The ddg homepage was still working. I've been using "my search term !g" for now and ddg just redirects my search to Google, so I don't have to change search provider in browsers.
misnome 2y ago
It's been many hours now. They could have at least added a page saying "We are having an outage" rather than "There was an error displaying the search results. Please try again."

altdataseller 2y ago

Maybe this forces DDG and ChatGPT to make their own search engine index and corpus. Sure it might be a few years too late for the former, but thats probably what they said 5 years ago too.

bogtog 2y ago
Do DDG and ChatGPT believe that they could do a better job of uptime than Microsoft?
- altdataseller 2y ago
  Its not just a question of uptime but dependencies too. The moment it doesnt make strategic sense to have an open Bing API for Microsoft, anyone reliant on them is in for a world of hurt. Especially if its the core feature of your product (ie DDG)
pityJuke 2y ago
Brave is genuinely impressive here in having their own index (granted, that’s the result of an acquisition rather than their own volition).
- BirAdam 2y ago
  Yeah. I like Brave Search. In my own usage it seems to offer far more useful results rather than 5 pages of ads.
Operyl 2y ago
With how aggressively Anthropic is crawling the internet right now, they might not be far behind. They’re hitting some web properties I oversee at 50 RPS in some cases and it’s frustrating.
ColinHayhurst 2y ago
Another option is to use multiple sources. For example Kagi who use Mojeek (self-disclosure) and others; "Our search results also include anonymized API calls to all major search result providers worldwide"

michael9423 2y ago

So much about DuckDuckGo's claim that Bing is only a part of their search results.

Springtime 2y ago
Prior to the Russia-Ukraine situation they actually did offer Yandex results if you set your region to Russia. It was interesting sometimes to see if there were any more useful top results. So at one point the claim was accurate.
- pjc50 2y ago
  Yandex.com itself seems to be still available in the West.
deutschepost 2y ago
I‘m pretty sure it was always just a proxy for bing. Just stripping away the Microsoft tracking. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27394925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27394925
- rvnx 2y ago
  If you use Bing: You have "only" Microsoft Bing tracking you If you use DuckDuckGo: Now, you have "Yahoo Ads" instead of Microsoft Ads, but these ads, they are in fact Microsoft Ads, except sold via Yahoo. In front of these Yahoo Ads, DuckDuckGo actually adds its own click-through tracker. Now you have DDG, Yahoo and Microsoft tracking you. Bonus point if you click on an Amazon affiliate link, because in that case, the Amazon affiliate (DuckDuckGo) knows item-per-item what you purchased.
  - dazc 2y ago
    Good reason not to use amazon then.
  - Springtime 2y ago
    There's a setting in DDG to disable ads. I'm aware of the Amazon affiliate link URL addition but since I don't buy anything from Amazon it doesn't concern me personally. Either way everyone can benefit from running a content blocker (I'd be surprised if anyone from this audience wasn't).

beretguy 2y ago

Use Brave search for now instead. https://search.brave.com https://search.brave.com

reddalo 2y ago
No thanks, it's run by cryptobros.
- beretguy 2y ago
  Then you can pay for Kagi.
- atomicfiredoll 2y ago
  The amount of Brave and Kagi spam in this thread is nutso. I can't be convinced it's not coordinated marketing by either or both of them. I'm not saying that there aren't some satisfied customers, but at some point a normal human being says: "Hey, 30 other people posted this. Maybe I shouldn't."
  - beretguy 2y ago
    Are you a marketer for DDG? No need to get so paranoid. People just share their experiences.
    - atomicfiredoll 2y ago
      I didn't say anything about DDG. Plus, the internet is full of influence campaigns and "organic marketing," so there's plenty of reason to be mindful and question what you're seeing/reading. A suspiciously large number of people seem to "share their experiences" whenever anything tangentially related comes up. Authentic or not, it's raising spam flags.

kunley 2y ago

Bing is working though, DDG still down

mrkramer 2y ago

Death by outsourcing.

exitzer0 2y ago
This guy Microsofts.

dewey 2y ago

> Hopefully DDG will be back soon, as I'm loathe to go back to Google for search. Maybe Kagi is an option for you? I'm very happy with them and exclusively use them for more than a year now after never getting comfortable with DDG.

dpatac 2y ago
I concur on Kagi. Now when I go to other search engines I just get frustrated.
jasonvorhe 2y ago
Came here to praise Kagi (and Brave Search) as well.
- goneri 2y ago
  I'm a Kagi user and unfortunately they are reselling Google Search results.
nobody9999 2y ago
>Maybe Kagi is an option for you? Thanks, but I'd rather have my tonsils extracted through my ears. Unless you're buying. From the FAQ[0]: >Kagi Search requires an account only because it is a paid service which requires an account for the transaction. [0] https://help.kagi.com/kagi/faq/faq.html#why-does-kagi-search-require-an-account https://help.kagi.com/kagi/faq/faq.html#why-does-kagi-search...
- dewey 2y ago
  You pay with your data instead, which is a fair choice.
- idiotsecant 2y ago
  Yes, unlike google who takes all the pesky account business out of the loop and does the tracking for you! Either you pay for the product or you are the product for someone else who is paying. I know which I prefer.

bhaney 2y ago

Bing is down and the rest of those use Bing for results?

maryShap 2y ago

Duckduckgo is working fine on my iPhone15.

GRBurst 2y ago

yeah seems like at least for many that is the case. I wasn't aware that so many engines are using bing! under the hood. Afaik qwant uses their own thing and that startpage is using google under the hood, but that might have changed

maryShap 2y ago

Sorry, should have said that it was with the Safari brower

nullndr 2y ago

Ddg has been down for 5 hours. Quite a problem they got.

biglyburrito 2y ago

Kagi works just fine: https://kagi.com https://kagi.com

divyaranjan1905 2y ago

Even startpage.com shows no results

probably_wrong 2y ago
Startpage works for me in Germany, and has been working all morning. DDG remains unhappy.
luuurker 2y ago
It's working for me. Also, they use Google for search results, not Bing.

keybits 2y ago

A Microsoft outage is the source of this problem: A massive Microsoft outage affects Bing.com, Copilot for web and mobile, Copilot in Windows, ChatGPT internet search and DuckDuckGo. Microsoft outage started at approximately 3 AM EDT and seems to have primarily affected users in Asia and Europe. https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-outage-affects-bing-copilot-duckduckgo-and-chatgpt-internet-search/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-ou...

keybits 2y ago
Being discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40453077 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40453077

tokai 2y ago

Whats up with the 'surprised' comments about ddg? I don't like ddg myself, but it has never been a secret that they base their results on bing.

whalesalad 2y ago
now I know why their results are so trash. switched to kagi a few years ago and it has been quite nice.
- moffkalast 2y ago
  Paying for search results? Come on, we're not that desperate.
  - whalesalad 2y ago
    Totally worth it. Very happy to see a small startup start eating into this space and happy to support them.

sidcool 2y ago

Still down.

biglyburrito 2y ago

Kagi works just fine: https://kagi.com https://kagi.com

randomuser69 2y ago
100 search for free :(

neogodless 2y ago

Is there any possibility that the latest Windows 11 update which is going out to "Insiders" now could be massively increasing the load on CoPilot / Bing infrastructure?

TechDebtDevin 2y ago
[flagged]

_tk_me 2y ago

Microsoft outage

weinzierl 2y ago

Bangs still seem to work, so "[search term] g!" saves the day until this is fixed.

az09mugen 2y ago

Startpage [0] search also is not returning web results. But image search is working. I wonder what's happening. [0] https://www.startpage.com https://www.startpage.com

dgan 2y ago

Same for Startpage. Using Kagi now

dgan 2y ago

Same for Startpage

tanelpoder 2y ago

I had been using DuckDuckGo for the last 2-3 years, but starting from early this year I noticed that their search index just didn’t index some of the things I searched for (enterprise tech stuff). These searches worked ok before and still worked with other engines. So I finally switched to Kagi and am happy with it.

eth0up 2y ago

I'm not sure why DDG has become such an acceptable google alternative. Even google returns less IP-based, irrelevant results. It's not terrible and sometimes it's good, but results are frequently absurd. I find an instance of searx, or even swisscows generally superior. DDG has no regard for specific queries and always seems to insert a handful of ridiculous IP-based results, however impossibly pertinent to the subject. I think DDG has IP tourette.

knifie_spoonie 2y ago

It's probably because Bing is down

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

FerretFred 2y ago

> "Update 1: Microsoft has confirmed an issue where users may be unable to access the Microsoft Copilot service" So not all bad then?!

TechDebtDevin 2y ago
I'm still unsure of what MS Copilot is. For the longest time I thought it was GH Cp because of the obvious association, but it's not. I'm assuming it's some bunk ass Bing "AI" assisted search? I truly think MS is the perfect example of a moat experiencing a drought. Unfortunately, money can't buy rain, it can only pump water from other sources. This never works.
- FerretFred 2y ago
  I encountered MS Copilot recently when I reluctantly installed Windows for a local charity (their idea, not mine). Basically, if you do a search it'll give you the results but will then fill your screen with other information allegedly related to your query but relayed in the most verbose and annoying manner possible.
  - TechDebtDevin 2y ago
    Sounds like a native MS product.
- mavhc 2y ago
  It's chatgpt wearing a hat and sunglasses
- altdataseller 2y ago
  I thibk its the AI version of Clippy or something embedded in Office or Microsoft365 or whatever they call that thing these days.. (i think, i have absolutely no idea either :)
- lenerdenator 2y ago
  For better or for worse, it absolutely works. Pumping water from other sources or copying another type of well has been Microsoft's MO for almost 50 years and they're one of the most valuable companies on the planet.

npteljes 2y ago

I love the acknowledgement that DDG put on their page. We're currently experiencing an issue with DuckDuckGo Search. Thanks for your patience while we get our ducks in a row. In the meantime, you can use other search engines right here by using "bangs" So fun and straightforward.

TechDebtDevin 2y ago
[flagged]
notRobot 2y ago
Interesting how they insist that they use "so much more" than just Bing for their results, but the moment Bing goes down their search functionality is down entirely, unable to show a single result.
- devit 2y ago
  They probably start with Bing results and do custom filtering, ranking and presentation, so without the initial Bing results they can't do anything.
  - ffhhj 2y ago
    Someone please tell them they can wrap that code inside an "if" condition, and continue with the rest of the search.
    - niutech 2y ago
      What would be the rest if they don't have their own index?
  - niutech 2y ago
    So basically DDG is the wrapper for Bing Search, not an "independent" search company as they claim.
    - 2y ago

Brajeshwar 2y ago

The movies were indeed way ahead and knew -- Mothership snaps and the entire fleet just collapse like an unplugged discharged device.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

is_true 2y ago

Probably nothing, or a rogue AI is taking over MS. This is the real world...if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it

jklein11 2y ago
Go on... if a tree falls in the forest, and no one hears it... ?
- throwaway211 2y ago
  The falling produces a sound that no one hears.
- wglb 2y ago
  Do the other trees laugh at it?

aeonian_8 2y ago

"We're currently experiencing an issue with DuckDuckGo Search. Thanks for your patience while we get our ducks in a row. In the meantime, you can use other search engines right here by using "bangs": Google: !g why did youtube remove my subscriptions list Yahoo: !y why did youtube remove my subscriptions list Wikipedia: !w why did youtube remove my subscriptions list And many more." This change just happened. I've been waiting on Ddg since ~10am in Frankfurt, Germany.

cooljoey 2y ago

Oops lots of corporates MS Dyanmics platforms down as they rely on Bing address api!

sixthDot 2y ago

what a quack

cooljoey 2y ago

Oops, lots of corporate MS Dynamics platforms are down as they rely on Bing address api

philipov 2y ago

Single point of faaaaiiiiiluuuuure - Sing it!

moffkalast 2y ago
I love it when Cloudflare accidentally breaks something and over half of the entire internet immediately goes down.
- mdaniel 2y ago
  I also love that because I hope it will cause people to rethink such rampant centralization. Yeah, I get it, blah, blah, ddos, spider, etc, but for their gatekeeping, there sure doesn't seem to be any appeals process if they deem you to be Not An Upstanding Netizen

MatthiasPortzel 2y ago

Luckily !g still works, but this is pretty by bad.

binarymax 2y ago

Unlikely, but perhaps this might motivate DDG into finally making their own index and eventually drop bing

blondie9x 2y ago

[flagged]

BirAdam 2y ago
I always use Brave first, and when that fails, I try Bing. If Bing fails, I try Google. Most of the time, I can just use Brave.

blondie9x 2y ago

Is it just me or is search terribly broken on the internet. It’s Google or Bing and Bing imposters. Why aren’t there more broad search options? Search was better when we had page rank algorithms. It’s gotten over condensed into 2 companies.

alphabetting 2y ago
search has always been hard and say if you do get market share on google, a portion of the massive SEO industry will eventually turn their sights on you and make your life hell.
lawn 2y ago
Like others have said, try out Kagi. I didn't buy the hype but the results are much better.
nottorp 2y ago
Page rank was a google thing, and it helped them take market share from everyone else and achieve their current quasi-monopoly?

benrutter 2y ago

I use Ecosia (which Bing powered) and wondered why it was down earlier. Makes you realise just how few players there actually are in the search rankings space.

repeekad 2y ago
I believe you.com has their own proper search index? Ecosia and duckduckgo exist purely on ad revenue, any good search engine will be paid for in the future, even Google’s non-ad search results make me hesitant, it’s all SEO spam now, plus chatGPT or Gemini can answer nearly any question when you pay for the real service

jandrusk 2y ago

How in the world is DDG dependent upon Bing to function? So glad I switched to Brave Search :)

BubBob 2y ago

[flagged]

Gormo 2y ago
How do search engines relate to animals and biodiversity? They seem to be completely unrelated things.
- BubBob 2y ago
  Because sponsored links are the single biggest source of revenue on the web! It's a $200-300 billion market, with Google owning more than 90% of it. If just 1% of Google users switch to KARMA, it will fund the actions of its non-profit partners to the tune of $1 billion per year! Switching is free and effortless, it only takes a few seconds...
  - Gormo 2y ago
    Seems like a bit of confusion of purpose. Why would I not use the search engine that gives me the most useful search results, and then, unrelatedly, just donate to an organization like the World Wildlife Fund if I care about protecting biodiversity? It seems strange to link these things together.

kbazbaz 2y ago

From DDG: https://x.com/DuckDuckGo/status/1793557968027570527 https://x.com/DuckDuckGo/status/1793557968027570527

IG_Semmelweiss 2y ago

Question for OP. What would be your guess that someone like he article writer is able to make the inference that Bing being down was also impacting DDG or ChatGPT ? Is it public knowledge that they use the Bing backend to do their work ? Particularly for Bing Copilot, isn't the relationship the other way around (OpenAI has the core sauce, bing uses its API to power their copilot searches) ?

jerpint 2y ago
Microsoft has the compute, so its likely to be an infrastructure problem
marcosdumay 2y ago
At least for DDG, it's public knowledge.

rodondenderon 2y ago

[dead]

skeeter2020 2y ago
[flagged]
- victor_z 2y ago
  Besides getting the search engine wrong, it's still cool to see many more search engine alternatives to the big ones. I'll allow it.

mistyvales 2y ago

Maybe it's an issue with their Bing connection..

markbeare 2y ago

This probably relates to the Bing Search API. A lot of these alternative search engines are using Bing for the organic results.

noman-land 2y ago

It's still down... crazy. I had to use Yahoo today, ew.

jraph 2y ago

DDG is back.

kbazbaz 2y ago

Back: https://x.com/DuckDuckGo/status/1793652538476216398 https://x.com/DuckDuckGo/status/1793652538476216398

dudeinjapan 2y ago

Bet their site reliability team was saying “F*k F*k No!”

gunapologist99 2y ago

I switched to Brave search; I think their search results are from a search engine they acquired, so they don't use Bing or Google unless you tell them to 'mix in' those results. I've actually found Brave search's results to be more accurate and less spammy than Google's, but they still exhibit similar biases in predictable areas.

udev4096 2y ago

I hope duckduckgo tries to shift away from Bing. They were lying about the fact that "we rely on different crawlers apart from Bing"

iamthirsty 2y ago
Where exactly were they lying, and how do you know for a fact?

sigmonsays 2y ago

maybe it's time to centralize crawlers and search data, making it publicly available to anyone willing to process it. Not only would that reduce crawler traffic on websites to a single crawler entity it would make page data available for any indexer. The idea that one company owns this data is kind of silly, it should be a coalition or a group of companies working together...

RunningDroid 2y ago
I think a better design would be to define a spec for search data so sites that implement it could generate a ".well-known/search_data.zst" (or whatever) and people would only need to crawl the site to check compliance with the spec.

vondur 2y ago

I was getting an error from Bing not working earlier today. Possibly related?

phreeza 2y ago

Did they stop publishing detailed traffic stats? They used to have a very detailed page if I recall correctly, but I can't find it any more.

nashashmi 2y ago

I realized DDG was just a skin on Bing a couple of days ago. Bing's results have gone incredibly sour. Too many ads on bing. Bing speaks of censorship and fake results (repeated listings of the same garbage on 3rd, 4th pages). The only thing DDG is good for: using bangs! search any and every search engine thru ![bang]. What other search engines are still good? Google hit the fan a couple of years back after the hire of Prabhakar Raghavan (https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/ https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/). Bing cowered to censored results. ChatGPT is muzzled.

kawfey 2y ago

I grew up using Google (and ask jeeves and yahoo.) In school, google won. Now, google sucks. It's all ads, AI SEO maxxing, and the work to find useful results has gone up manyfold. I found myself using site:"" to get closer to what I needed. I tried DDG, and it's more or less the same, but it's like the search engine is conspiring against you to more or less find completely useless results. I tried kagi, and i love it. I hate that it's 100 searches for the cheapest account, but it gets me right into the thick of my research off the bat, plus searching smallweb has brought my faith back into the internet, and it's AI stuff is useful, insofar that it doesn't get in the way. DDG is still my standard search tool for "picture of banana" or "WWII jet airplanes" but for "forum discussion 73 magazine article on homebrew superheterodyne receiver from 1980s" im going straight to kagi.

elicksaur 2y ago
>it's like the search engine is conspiring against you to more or less find completely useless results. Has not been my experience at all. Been using ddg as my default for a few years. What kinds of searches do you find frustrating?
- bombcar 2y ago
  In my experience DDG and Google are similar in that you either get what you wanted right away, or you’re doomed At least with Kagi it’s been worth scrolling down a page or two before reformatting my search query.
- reassess_blind 2y ago
  [dead]
Atlas48 2y ago
I main DDG for it's bang feature. It's permanently ingrained into my muscle memory now.
- niutech 2y ago
  Brave Search supports bangs too! https://search.brave.com/bangs https://search.brave.com/bangs

TheRealNGenius 2y ago

[dead]

jsemrau 2y ago

I wrote a Langchain ReAct agent that searches the web for me using Wikipedia, Serpapi (google), and DDG. Works better than traditional search.

khana 2y ago

[dead]

Ophuscado 2y ago

I rediscovered Yahoo thanks to it.

lowkey 2y ago

I’ve started using search.brave.com instead of Duck Duck Go as my default search engine (which in turn replaced Google search, the spyware/adware posing as a search engine) I was formerly a huge advocate of DDG but between the Microsoft ad tracking the company was paid to include without disclosing to users [1] and their pro-censorship stance on the Ukraine war [2], they lost my trust. Turns out Duck Duck Go is not a serious company. They are not serious about privacy and they are not serious about censorship, two principles I hold dear. "It takes years to build trust and seconds to destroy it." - Warren Buffett Now search.brave.com is my default on both Desktop and iOS (using the excellent Safari extension Hyperweb)

nalinidash 2y ago

Weird, it still is not working for me. edit: working now.

derryman 2y ago

[dead]