11 ms·
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
by 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 agoInteresting 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 agoThey 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 agoSomeone please tell them they can wrap that code inside an "if" condition, and continue with the rest of the search.
- niutech 2y agoWhat would be the rest if they don't have their own index?
- niutech 2y agoSo basically DDG is the wrapper for Bing Search, not an "independent" search company as they claim.
- victor_z 2y agoProbably. But DDG at least offers more privacy, right? Right?
- niutech 2y agoDDG has a history of breaching privacy: https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/24/ddg-microsoft-tracking-blocking-limit/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/24/ddg-microsoft-tracking-blo... Meanwhile Brave Search or Mojeek provide more privacy, being independent at the same time.
- berkes 2y ago> Brave Search or Mojeek provide more privacy Do they? Or have they just not had that "history" yet? I don't see anything fundamentally different in Brave that protects your and my privacy better than on DDG. I don't know Mojeek enough.
- syklep 2y agoBrave explicitly claims not to.[1] Brave also does not rely on Bing for results. [1] https://search.brave.com/help/privacy-policy https://search.brave.com/help/privacy-policy Edit: mojeek claims the same.[2] [2] https://www.mojeek.com/about/privacy/ https://www.mojeek.com/about/privacy/
- kunley 2y agoLast time i checked, Brave was insisting on convinving me to use certain cryptocurrency platforms and it was more intrusive with it than typical web ads, which seemed really twisted, as the same Brave claimed to give ad-free experience. Are they still doing that?
- NayamAmarshe 2y agoThey don't. The cryptocurrency options are all disabled by default and are opt-in.
- throwaway425933 2y agoHow can a poor peasant start using Bing APIs? They seem to cost a ton. Do I have to raise money before I even attempt a metasearch engine.
- EasyMark 2y agothe most valuable service they provide is being a proxy for bing. they will never own up to it, but that in and of itself is an awesome service, as long as they're bing honest about your privacy.
- jamesrr39 2y agoI wonder if there are any duckduckgo/other search engine devs here to answer; why not keep a limited own index? Like, wikipedia, stack overflow, build up a cache of own-scraped sites for the top hits to popular search queries? Am a being naive with how much is possible without going all-in and building an index of the whole web, or is it possible to have some kind of in-house fallback?
- Vinnl 2y agoI believe that generally refers to all their custom answers, e.g. when you search for "weather <place name>". Nevertheless, those don't seem to work either.
- rekoil 2y agoI bet their engineers are currently discussing how to make any such answers possible without Bing working, assuming the upstream data for them is not in fact also Bing.
- notRobot 2y agoIf the upstream data isn't Bing then why did they stop working in the first place?
- mda 2y agoNo they always downplayed and tried to obscure the fact that it is basically a bing wrapper. Smoke and mirrors seems to be the main business strategy.
- tinyhouse 2y agoAbsurd. They have been doing search for so long and couldn't build their own search index? I understand it's a huge investment, and clearly for some data sources you need to create partnerships and depend on others (e.g., youtube videos). But you would think that a search engine company would invest more in this area.
- skeeter2020 2y agoDo you really understand the scale of this (ongoing) investment? I'm not sure I'd classify this as "Absurd" - the value of DDG is not yet-another (tm) search index but the specific values they add on top. When you have limited resources I'd say they're making the right choice.
- somenameforme 2y agoBrave rolled their own completely independent search [1] on what I assume is a relatively limited budget. It seems that regularly grabbing the data would be pretty easy. The harder part would be searching/ordering it in an efficient and meaningful way while avoiding SEO, but that seems more like a fun problem than a difficult one (if not both). [1] - https://search.brave.com/ https://search.brave.com/
- tredre3 2y agoThere are two things the general HN sentiment genuinely believes is impossible to build unless you have billions of dollars: - Search Engines - Browser Engines I don't quite understand how we got there because neither of those things are impossible. Both are achievable with a small team and a couple years of runway. As proved by Brave and Ladybird.
- adamomada 2y agoIt’s easy to make a crappy search and crappy browser, I think the sentiment is aimed at producing a useful alternative to google and chrome
- npteljes 2y agoI definitely felt misled, when I first learned about this, back when they censored Tank Man the same time Bing did[0]. I did remain a user though, mostly because I haven't felt like keeping up who the current good guys are. Lately I have been considering Kagi, but I don't like it that I need to log in on all my devices, and then I have to have a fallback, for when I'm not on my own devices. So yeah, for my intents and purposes, DDG is a frontend to Bing. I do appreciate how uncluttered it is though, in comparison. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man#Censorship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man#Censorship
- freedomben 2y agoI do wish Kagi had less friction getting logged in on each device, but they have gotten it as streamlined as possible without patching the browsers. Your key goes in a query string so you can put it in any browser's new/default search engine config[1]. [1] https://help.kagi.com/kagi/getting-started/setting-default.html https://help.kagi.com/kagi/getting-started/setting-default.h...
- pmlnr 2y agoI just left Kagi. At first, it looked very nice, but for some reason, in a few weeks both Google and ddg gave me much better results. The new g web filter is actually quite good as well.
- bambax 2y agoYeah, exactly. They're mostly a front end for Bing. I know they have their fans, and this remark will probably anger them, but I have never understood the point of DDG.
- victor_z 2y agoI'm not angry but: privacy? Isn't that the point they're blasting all over their page and apps?
- SassyBird 2y agoDDG UI is a lot calmer. Opening Bing feels like entering a Middle-Eastern market.
- forthewwwpoints 2y agoI created this account just to say thank you for this comment.
- elevatedastalt 2y agoThere are only 3 planet scale search indices I think. Google, Bing and Yandex. Everyone else is just rehashing those results.
- 4ggr0 2y agoMojeek has its own index as well.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 2y agoData point: Bing was not down for me.
- stanislavb 2y agoThis. At some point in the past I was giving a "test drive" to DuckDuckGo. And the moment when I realised that they are a Bing wrapper was the end of it.
- EasyMark 2y agocomparing their search result with bing for at least the first 3 or 4 pages you'll see a very high correlation to bing's result (as long as you're logged out of bing). The main thing is they proxy your search for you and give half way decent results like bing.
- xnx 2y agoI keep meaning to make a Chrome extension called DDGoogle that would reskin Google results in the style of DuckDuckGo. This way people who insist on using DDG wouldn't have to endure Bing-quality results.
- ReadCarlBarks 2y agoFirefox users can create their own "bangs" with bookmark keywords. Just bookmark https://example.com/%s https://example.com/%s and then assign a keyword to it from the Library window (full bookmarks manager).
- roelschroeven 2y agoOr right-click in any search box on any website, choose "Add keyword for this search".
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- shaan7 2y agoThe notice helped me realize that Yahoo! Search still exists xD
- Krastan 2y agoDoesn't yahoo also use bing under the hood?
- gpvos 2y agoTook them several hours to put that message there though.
- berkes 2y agoOften the case with US-based companies that have outages during "office hours in Europe". We, europeans see it going down. Communication on why, how and ETAs only appear at the start of the US day.
- mdaniel 2y agoThis take implies there is no on-call rotation at DDG, which I find suspicious
- em-bee 2y agothe most important function of on call rotation is there to fix problems, not to make announcements to the public. so they surely have the first, but maybe not the second.
- mdaniel 2y agoWell, maybe that perspective explains why it takes 6+ hours to update any status page then: "welp, shit's broke, better wait for the management team to wake up to tell anyone"
- em-bee 2y agomore like: wait for them to decide exactly how to present this to the public.
- glenjamin 2y agoThis is incorrect, the primary job of an on-call rotation is to satisfy customers. It’s usually much better ROI to publicly acknowledge an issue if the resolution is not going to be single digit minutes, as it massively reduces the incoming query/support burden
- realfeel78 2y agoI thought I was easily entertained.
- Simon_ORourke 2y agoI'd love to see the DDG engineering team at work - I'm guessing no nonsense, smart folks who can poke fun at themselves but still get things done. Contrasting to what I've personally seen at a certain other search giant.
- iechoz6H 2y agoNice, but they totally missed the opportunity to say 'Thanks for your patience while we get our ducks in a go'.
- tomphoolery 2y agoget it because ducks
- banish-m4 2y agoTo be fair, DDG uptime seems about 5-6 9's. P0 outages happen but DDG seems to have them maybe once every couple of years or so. That's pretty excellent effort.