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The privacy problem is imaginary because (a) only a puny fraction of users care, and (b) thanks to the "patriot" act, our ISPs are storing our search history an

The privacy problem is imaginary because (a) only a puny fraction of users care, and (b) thanks to the "patriot" act, our ISPs are storing our search history anyway. I have worked on search (see my background), and doing search well is massively difficult. The problem has deep necessary complexity, and Google has invested thousands of PhD years against that already. If Google were incompetent, maybe I could see it. But they're damned smart and their product is extremely good. Data is also a problem - Microsoft has been collecting all your google searches since IE8, and can probably just clone Google's search results for the top few million queries. But even given that, Bing is a massive undertaking. Since nobody uses DDG, Google can't be expected to make them a default search choice in Chrome. Accusing Google of some malfeasance is just childish and silly. Finally, the name DDG is atrocious. Really bad in more ways than I have time to list.

mistercow 14y ago
>thanks to the "patriot" act, our ISPs are storing our search history anyway. I think you're thinking of PCIPA (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protecting_Children_from_Internet_Pornographers_Act_of_2011 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protecting_Children_from_Intern... ), which would do that, but is still a long way from becoming law. I am fairly sure that the USA PATRIOT Act does not contain any such provision.
- paulsutter 14y ago
  From the EFF, regarding the "Patriot" act: "At the very least, this change means that the government can use a pen-trap to see the email addresses of people youre sending email to and the addresses of people who send email to you, along with the timestamp and size in bytes of each email. The FBI can monitor the IP addresses of all the computers you interact with over the Internet, or capture the IP addresses of every person visiting a particular website. Under the vaguely written statute, it may even be able to capture the URL of every web page that you read, although the FBI refuses to confirm or deny whether it has done so." Sure, I should have inserted the word [can], but it hardly changes the point. Given the direction laws have taken since 9/11, you would be foolish to rely on your search activity remaining anonymous. http://w2.eff.org/patriot/sunset/214.php http://w2.eff.org/patriot/sunset/214.php
  - mistercow 14y ago
    While awful, that is not in any way the same thing as ISPs storing our search history. It means that the FBI can monitor internet usage on an individual basis, not that the ISPs are tracking and storing everybody's internet usage.

mistercow 14y ago

>thanks to the "patriot" act, our ISPs are storing our search history anyway. I think you're thinking of PCIPA (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protecting_Children_from_Internet_Pornographers_Act_of_2011 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protecting_Children_from_Intern... ), which would do that, but is still a long way from becoming law. I am fairly sure that the USA PATRIOT Act does not contain any such provision.

paulsutter 14y ago
From the EFF, regarding the "Patriot" act: "At the very least, this change means that the government can use a pen-trap to see the email addresses of people youre sending email to and the addresses of people who send email to you, along with the timestamp and size in bytes of each email. The FBI can monitor the IP addresses of all the computers you interact with over the Internet, or capture the IP addresses of every person visiting a particular website. Under the vaguely written statute, it may even be able to capture the URL of every web page that you read, although the FBI refuses to confirm or deny whether it has done so." Sure, I should have inserted the word [can], but it hardly changes the point. Given the direction laws have taken since 9/11, you would be foolish to rely on your search activity remaining anonymous. http://w2.eff.org/patriot/sunset/214.php http://w2.eff.org/patriot/sunset/214.php
- mistercow 14y ago
  While awful, that is not in any way the same thing as ISPs storing our search history. It means that the FBI can monitor internet usage on an individual basis, not that the ISPs are tracking and storing everybody's internet usage.