This title is very misleading (and really should be changed).
This is not about search. To be clear, when you load our search results, you are completely anonymous, including ads. For ads, we actually worked with Microsoft to make ad clicks privacy protected as well. From our public ads page, "Microsoft Advertising does not associate your ad-click behavior with a user profile." This page is linked to next to every Microsoft ad that is served on our search engine (duckduckgo.com). https://help.duckduckgo.com/company/ads-by-microsoft-on-duck....
In all our browsing apps (iOS/Android/Mac) we also block third-party cookies, including those from Microsoft-owned properties like LinkedIn and Bing. That is, the privacy thing most people talk about on the web (blocking 3rd party cookies) applies here to MSFT. We also have a lot of other web protections that also apply to MSFT-owned properties as well, e.g., GPC, first-party cookie expiration, fingerprinting protection, referrer header trimming, cookie consent handling, fire button data clearing, etc.
This is just about non-DuckDuckGo and non-Microsoft sites in our browsers, where our search syndication agreement currently prevents us from stopping Microsoft-owned scripts from loading, though we can still apply our browser's protections post-load (like 3rd party cookie blocking and others mentioned above, and do). We've also been tirelessly working behind the scenes to change this limited restriction. I also understand this is confusing because it is a search syndication contract that is preventing us from doing a non-search thing. That's because our product is a bundle of multiple privacy protections, and this is a distribution requirement imposed on us as part of the search syndication agreement. Our syndication agreement also has broad confidentially provisions and the requirement documents themselves are explicitly marked confidential.
Taking a step back, I know our product is not perfect and will never be. We face many constraints: platform constraints, contractual constraints (like in this case), breakage constraints, and the evolving tracking arms race. Holistically though I believe it is the best thing out there for mainstream users who want simple privacy protection without breaking things, and that is our product vision.
Overall our app is multi-pronged privacy protection in one package (private search, web protection, HTTPS upgrading, email protection, app tracking protection for Android, and more to come), being careful (and putting in a lot of effort) to not break things while still offering protections -- an "easy button" for privacy. And we constantly work to improve its capabilities and will continue to do so, including in this case. For example, we've recently been adding bespoke third-party protections for Google and Facebook, like Google AMP/Topics/FLEDGE protection and Facebook embedded content protection.
Yes, it is. Your competitors in the privacy-centric browser space don’t have this restriction because they’re not search engines acquiring the majority of their data from an entity with a conflicting interest.
I’m inclined to blame Microsoft here; this is a nasty move on their part. However, your stance is problematic. This is a problem, and it’s a serious one. It undermines trust in a product that claims to be the bastion of privacy. And statements like this…
> Overall our app is multi-pronged privacy protection in one package (private search, web protection, HTTPS upgrading, email protection, app tracking protection for Android, and more to come), being careful (and putting in a lot of effort) to not break things while still offering protections -- an "easy button" for privacy.
…don’t help the matter. To me, that just sounds like marketing mumbo jumbo. Ultimately, if a privacy-centric browser is contractually obligated to load tracking scripts and is required to avoid disclosing that fact, I want absolutely nothing to do with either party.
We will work diligently today to find a way to say something in our app store descriptions in terms of a better disclosure -- will likely have something up by the end of the day.
In terms of our app and multi-pronged protection, it isn't mumbo jumbo. Our app is way more than just a browser (and increasingly so). For example, the app tracking protection mentioned for Android blocks trackers in all your other apps. The email tracking protection blocks trackers in your email (that you read in your regular email client/app).
I understand the concern here that we are working to address in a variety of ways, but to be clear no app will provide 100% protection for a variety of reasons, and the scripts in question here do currently have significant protection on them in our browser. From the comment "That is, the privacy thing most people talk about on the web (blocking 3rd party cookies) applies here to MSFT. We also have a lot of other web protections that also apply to MSFT-owned properties as well, e.g., GPC, first-party cookie expiration, fingerprinting protection, referrer header trimming, cookie consent handling, fire button data clearing, etc."
Do you have any sources you can cite that Microsoft has breached contracts with companies in the past in an effort to get at your ID for advertisers? Otherwise, I would consider this a nothing burger.
> Ad clicks are managed by Microsoft’s ad network.
> Microsoft and DuckDuckGo have partnered [..] Microsoft Advertising will use your full IP address and user-agent string so that it can properly process the ad click and charge the advertiser
It seems DDG is not that privacy focused when it comes to ads.
Actually, that's not the case. First, that page is a linked to directly from every Microsoft ad on duckduckgo.com -- it's a public disclosure for transparency. Second, we specifically worked with Microsoft to make our ads privacy protected. When you load them, they are completely anonymous. When you click on them, we got Microsoft to contractually agree and publicly commit (on this page) that "Microsoft Advertising does not associate your ad-click behavior with a user profile. It also does not store or share that information other than for accounting purposes."
The submitted title was "DuckDuckGo Paid by Microsoft to not block their trackers". We've changed it now. If anyone wants to suggest a better (i.e. more accurate and neutral) title, we can change it again.
When you click on a link in our results page, your search terms are not sent to the site that you click on, which can be the case on other search engines due to something called HTTP "referers".
On modern browsers we accomplish this by adding a small piece of code to our page called Meta referrer. Some browsers (especially older ones) do not support this standard, however. For those browsers, and also in situations where meta referrer doesn't work, we send the request back to our servers to remove search terms. This redirect goes through r.duckduckgo.com.
You can disable this privacy feature. To do that, go to the settings page, select Privacy, and change the option Redirect to Off.
I just changed from DDG to Kagi and will probably pay them once out of Beta. So far I am very happy with the search results and I believe that the next innovation in search is it not being beholden to ads. DDG is not in the place where ads will corrupt your business but should you grow and be successful, you one day will be.
>This is just about non-DuckDuckGo and non-Microsoft sites in our browsers, where our search syndication agreement currently prevents us from stopping Microsoft-owned scripts from loading
But this is exactly the problem. Sure, unlike Google DDG is not itself collecting data, and there appear to be limited tracking on MS properties, but unless I misunderstand the situation (a decent possibility) then the vast majority of the web, which are not MS sites, are still able to use MS scripts for tracking.
You are marketing a privacy-centric ecosystems of tools but your partner in one component (search) is preventing you from implementing that vision in non-search areas, so that should be clear. It should also be clear that it's still very much a search problem. The source of the limitation has search as a root cause, and a massive corporation with just as much interest in obtaining data on user browsing habits is still able to do so in some ways.
I admit this is still a better situation than Google, but you're providing an ecosystem of tools, they are inextricably linked with each other.
I don't have any proposed solution. I'm not sure there needs to be one aside from making boundaries clear. I still see significant value in your offerings. Partnering with a provider of quality search that solves some but not all privacy issues is still valuable. Each person chooses their own level of comfort & tradeoffs between product quality & privacy, and you offer what I consider to be a valuable middle ground in that range. But let's just be clear on what the middle ground is made of, though I otherwise do not judge harshly for an agreement like this.
It is “independent from search” in the sense that people who just use DDG as a web search provider from any browser other than DDG’s own will be unaffected by this constraint, and will browse just as anonymously as if this constraint was not imposed. (Which is to say: as anonymously as their browser enables for them, with DDG not being the limiting constraint. Not so anonymous for Chrome; much more anonymous for Brave / TorBrowser / etc.)
All this constraint is doing is limiting the increase in privacy you get from using the DDG mobile app on top of the privacy you get from using the DDG web search provider. At worst, DDG searches in the DDG app will be no less private than DDG searches done in any non-privacy-enforcing browser, e.g. Chrome. Which is to say—still pretty private.
Also, I presume that only a minority of DDG users are users of the DDG mobile browser app. (I didn’t even know it existed!)
It is hard to title because people assume this is about search (when it's not, so that should be in there), and also people assume trackers get a free pass (when they do not, e.g., 3rd party cookies blocked, etc.)
Maybe something like:
Microsoft contractually prevents DuckDuckGo's browser from stopping Microsoft scripts from loading on 3rd party sites (FYI: not search related)
People know us primarily for search and our relationship with Microsoft is about search, so it will be assumed by most people this is about search (when it is not, it's about browsers).
Additionally the way it is phrased implies Microsoft trackers get a free pass, when they are in fact heavily restricted, e.g., blocking 3rd party cookies, fingerprint protection, etc.
And the current title can further easily be misinterpreted to be about more than Microsoft scripts on 3rd party sites (e.g., other companies, which it is not).
What is the real, tangible improvement to someone's life with all this claimed privacy protection? IE, when my mom asks why she should switch from Google, what would I tell her that would actually make a difference in her life?
To answer your question though, comprehensive privacy protection prevents data profiles from getting created about you, which in turn prevents ad and other content targeting. This targeting, regardless of how it's done, enables
general manipulation (e.g., exploiting personal characteristics for commercial or political gain), filter bubbles (e.g., creating echo chambers that can divide people), and discrimination (e.g., people not seeing job opportunities based on personal profiles).
More generally though, I view privacy as protecting you from coercion. Yes, it protects personal information, but that's not the real point. The real point is autonomy -- the freedom to make decisions without coercion. From this perspective in addition to helping reduce identity theft, commercial exploitation, ideological manipulation, discrimination, polarization, etc., it also helps reduce self-surveillance (i.e., chilling effects), and just general loss of freedom (e.g., mass surveillance).
OT but thanks for making DDG. I went out and discovered it on my own because i wasn't satisfied with Google Search (too much SEO results, not enough links to forums). But many thanks and i wish you the best of success.
Sorry, I was trying to be clear not confusing :). But no, this has nothing to do with DuckDuckGo servers or sites, whatsoever. This is about completely 3rd party sites that might embed a Microsoft script. The original example was Workplace.com embedded a LinkedIn.com script.
Just looking at the original title, I knew this was going to be a twitter post by a Brave employee posting either hearsay, or something taken out of context.
Private browsing is a small niche, and Brave does their best to drive competitors at every turn, and not by being obviously better at it. Kinda scummy, if I’m honest.
Was forever turned off Brave when they sent me direct mail advertisements (for a privacy focused browser lol). They bought my info from some list and spammed me with postcard ads.
> Just looking at the original title, I knew this was going to be a twitter post by a Brave employee posting either hearsay, or something taken out of context.
This HN submission links to a tweet by a Brave employee. However, that tweet is just a screenshot of replies to the thread at https://twitter.com/thezedwards/status/1528808759027331072 written by a researcher who doesn't appear to be a Brave employee. I think it would be better if the link were directly to the tweet by Zach Edwards instead.
Agreed. All this post did for me is make me think even less of Brave. It hasn't really changed my opinion of DDG. For the majority of DDG users (like me) who only use it for search, this changes nothing. All it does is make the Brave folks look like mudslingers.
DuckDuckGo feels like just a front for Microsoft at this point. I once looked into buying search ads on DuckDuckGo, only to discover to my horror that DDG didn't have its own ad business. DDG is entirely reliant on Microsoft's advertising system. You have to sign up for a Microsoft account to even put ads on DDG! And it's difficult — maybe impossible IIRC? — to specifically target DDG in those ads, without also targeting other MS properties.
Until DuckDuckGo separates itself from Microsoft and becomes truly independent, especially in its business model, you have to question why DDG even exists.
DDG was founded 14 years ago. I can understand initially bootstrapping on MS ads, but what's the excuse now? How about separating yourself from Microsoft first, before making a web browser that gives special exemptions to Microsoft?
I totally agree. It seems DDG exists at Microsoft's leisure and has little leverage in the relationship. In addition to serving Microsoft ads and this new special arrangement to allow Microsoft tracking, they also serve almost exclusively Bing search results. It seems like they're all but a subsidiary at this point.
As a consumer if you're happy with DDG's results this may not be relevant, but it doesn't seem like a great long-term strategy for DDG.
I consider DDG a no-bullshit less-creepy and infinitely less pushy and needy “skin” over Bing (and maybe some others) search results.
In my opinion you have:
- Google: best search results but you’re profiled to death
- Bing: okay-ish search results and you’re profiled to death
- DDG: okay-ish search results and you’re barely or not tracked at all
I've been surprisingly pleased with Kagi, a paid search engine in private beta right now. I believe they also use bing results was well as their own indexes. I've found the search results to be on par with Google and no longer feel the "well maybe google would find something this missed" anxiety from trying previous search engines. That being said, I've not given DDG a fair try but I appreciate the paid service model of Kagi. I do miss the shopping results on Google but that's really the only search use case I go back for.
> Until DuckDuckGo separates itself from Microsoft and becomes truly independent, especially in its business model, you have to question why DDG even exists.
DDG exists to make money for itself. It doesn't exist to protect your privacy.
From google to github to mozilla to everything, you would think the tech idealism would have died already. People working in tech, especially the elite, are some of the slimiest and greediest people on earth. Where money goes, so go the greedy slimeballs. It's pretty much a law of nature.
In fact they go out of their way to mention Google without ever mentioning Microsoft:
"Is DuckDuckGo owned by Google?
No, we are not and have never been owned by Google. We have been an independent company since our founding in 2008 and, unlike some other search engines, we don’t rely on Google’s results for any of our search results."
Maybe Bing's reputation would be better if its privacy practices were even up to par with Google. Bing gives you a deceptive toggle on the search history page that hides new searches from that page, but they still get logged to your Microsoft account and it can't be turned off (best you can do is periodically clear it). So even if just in that narrow sense, DDG has a reason to exist in that it lets you use Bing search in a manner at least as private as Google with Web & App Activity disabled.
So if I understand correctly, the problem is that in order to license its search index, MS requires a concession from DDG on its browser. From a customer's standpoint, these are two separate products - you can use DDG search and not use DDG's browser, or vice versa. It's only because they're made by the same company that MS has the leverage to demand this carve-out. It seems like the answer for customers is to just not use a browser made by DDG, thereby removing that leverage.
Well... how about stopping all this "Bing on the background" thing and do like Brave search and Qwant (which i'm testing as to switch away from ddg for a few months now - because of you relying in Bing) and start believing a bit more on your own index???
Why not start being a "real" search engine???
I would say it's about time!!!
(If brave and qwant can do it, so can you - man... even Gigablast does it!!!)
First, it is misleading to say our results just come from Bing. That's far from the case in actuality. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31490994 for a more detailed explanation on that.
On other search engines, they all rely somewhat on either Google's or Bing's web crawling: Qwant, Bing and Brave, Google (and Bing for images). This is easy to see as a webmaster since you don't see their crawlers much (if at all). Only Google and Bing are doing full scale web crawls. However, search is a lot more than traditional web links -- in fact it is about half now from instant answers that can come from dozens of sources and indexes (which the above comment gets into).
> First, it is misleading to say our results just come from Bing. That's far from the case in actuality.
That's just corpo-speak. For the most part, Duckduckgo is Bing with some additional features. That's true to the extent that when Bing decided to censor the Tank Man image, it was removed from your results too. [1] Not that you guys refrain from censorship yourselves. [2]
The crawler (DuckDuckBot) doesn't have much of an impact on the search results, it's mainly used to provide instant answers. [3]
I'd like to correct some factually incorrect information regarding Brave Search.
Brave search crawls the web through the Web Discovery Project and has its own crawler, which fetches a bit more than 100M pages daily.
Brave search uses Bing API and Google fallback for about 8% of the results shown to the users, the remaining 92% are served from our own index, when we launched almost 1 year ago the number of results from 3rd parties was 13%.
There is no need to mention "multiple source" when a number can be given. The underlying theme here is not if DDG provides no value on top of Bing, it does, no one is questioning that. The question is whether DDG would be able to operate if Bing were to shut DDG down tomorrow.
If Bing and Google were to disappear tomorrow, for whatever reason, Brave search would continue to operate, that's the independence Brave search is building.
But what i would REALLY like to see on DDG (beside it becoming fully OpenSource - someday) was having it taking the step of not relying on Bing.
That is a terrible shadow over you.
You should embrace the momentum you're having and step up and do your own thing. Your own index. Yes, you have to build/rely on others such as wikipedia... naturally
But please... NOT on big tech!!!
Or one day, someone else will get there and eat your lunch (Honestly, Qwant is a great alternative that apparently does not rely on big tech)
I maybe wrong, but i think this is what everyone one wishes from DDG!!!
I believe everyone wants DDG free from Big Tech
Holy shit, stop calling everything anyone in this thread says "misleading". Your answers are so off-putting. GP didn't say
> [your] results just come from Bing
You're the one being misleading here by suggesting that they did say that. Nobody is interpreting what they said as "All search results from DDG are just straight from bing". You're nitpicking words in almost every one of your responses.
If there are truly only two full-scale web crawlers left, and they are Google (ew!) and Bing (ew!), then it's high time there were more options. I naively thought DDG was exactly that, with a 100% focus on privacy. The cake is a lie.
Care to give some numbers instead of handwaving? What percentage of the queries are answered from bing index? Or even better what percentage of queries that resulted in an ad click were powered by Bing? A ballpark estimate is fine.
I'll pile on this Kagi recommendation - going on a few months I've used it exclusively. It has bangs like DDG but I find I use them less. Kagi's results are generally quite good.
Sadly DDG can no longer be trusted for being shady.
A better option would have been to let the community decide. You could have easily posted something to the effect of "One of the search engines wants us to sign an NDA and force us to allow more tracking than we are comfortable with"
Then let the community decide if we wanted a branded browser that is less secure or even if enough folks didn't care that you could still justify dev cycles on the browser.
Readit News
This is not about search. To be clear, when you load our search results, you are completely anonymous, including ads. For ads, we actually worked with Microsoft to make ad clicks privacy protected as well. From our public ads page, "Microsoft Advertising does not associate your ad-click behavior with a user profile." This page is linked to next to every Microsoft ad that is served on our search engine (duckduckgo.com). https://help.duckduckgo.com/company/ads-by-microsoft-on-duck....
In all our browsing apps (iOS/Android/Mac) we also block third-party cookies, including those from Microsoft-owned properties like LinkedIn and Bing. That is, the privacy thing most people talk about on the web (blocking 3rd party cookies) applies here to MSFT. We also have a lot of other web protections that also apply to MSFT-owned properties as well, e.g., GPC, first-party cookie expiration, fingerprinting protection, referrer header trimming, cookie consent handling, fire button data clearing, etc.
This is just about non-DuckDuckGo and non-Microsoft sites in our browsers, where our search syndication agreement currently prevents us from stopping Microsoft-owned scripts from loading, though we can still apply our browser's protections post-load (like 3rd party cookie blocking and others mentioned above, and do). We've also been tirelessly working behind the scenes to change this limited restriction. I also understand this is confusing because it is a search syndication contract that is preventing us from doing a non-search thing. That's because our product is a bundle of multiple privacy protections, and this is a distribution requirement imposed on us as part of the search syndication agreement. Our syndication agreement also has broad confidentially provisions and the requirement documents themselves are explicitly marked confidential.
Taking a step back, I know our product is not perfect and will never be. We face many constraints: platform constraints, contractual constraints (like in this case), breakage constraints, and the evolving tracking arms race. Holistically though I believe it is the best thing out there for mainstream users who want simple privacy protection without breaking things, and that is our product vision.
Overall our app is multi-pronged privacy protection in one package (private search, web protection, HTTPS upgrading, email protection, app tracking protection for Android, and more to come), being careful (and putting in a lot of effort) to not break things while still offering protections -- an "easy button" for privacy. And we constantly work to improve its capabilities and will continue to do so, including in this case. For example, we've recently been adding bespoke third-party protections for Google and Facebook, like Google AMP/Topics/FLEDGE protection and Facebook embedded content protection.
Yes, it is. Your competitors in the privacy-centric browser space don’t have this restriction because they’re not search engines acquiring the majority of their data from an entity with a conflicting interest.
I’m inclined to blame Microsoft here; this is a nasty move on their part. However, your stance is problematic. This is a problem, and it’s a serious one. It undermines trust in a product that claims to be the bastion of privacy. And statements like this…
> Overall our app is multi-pronged privacy protection in one package (private search, web protection, HTTPS upgrading, email protection, app tracking protection for Android, and more to come), being careful (and putting in a lot of effort) to not break things while still offering protections -- an "easy button" for privacy.
…don’t help the matter. To me, that just sounds like marketing mumbo jumbo. Ultimately, if a privacy-centric browser is contractually obligated to load tracking scripts and is required to avoid disclosing that fact, I want absolutely nothing to do with either party.
In terms of our app and multi-pronged protection, it isn't mumbo jumbo. Our app is way more than just a browser (and increasingly so). For example, the app tracking protection mentioned for Android blocks trackers in all your other apps. The email tracking protection blocks trackers in your email (that you read in your regular email client/app).
I understand the concern here that we are working to address in a variety of ways, but to be clear no app will provide 100% protection for a variety of reasons, and the scripts in question here do currently have significant protection on them in our browser. From the comment "That is, the privacy thing most people talk about on the web (blocking 3rd party cookies) applies here to MSFT. We also have a lot of other web protections that also apply to MSFT-owned properties as well, e.g., GPC, first-party cookie expiration, fingerprinting protection, referrer header trimming, cookie consent handling, fire button data clearing, etc."
Isn't this entire story about them disclosing this fact?
What’s more helpful is to hear in which exact situations their blocking doesn’t work.
Just because other avenues exist doesn’t mean people walk them
Deleted Comment
> Ad clicks are managed by Microsoft’s ad network.
> Microsoft and DuckDuckGo have partnered [..] Microsoft Advertising will use your full IP address and user-agent string so that it can properly process the ad click and charge the advertiser
It seems DDG is not that privacy focused when it comes to ads.
[0] https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/company/ad...
From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31492789:
> "Bing search contract prohibits DDG browser from blocking Microsoft tracking scripts by default."
You may be making it worse. Really need to dial down on click tracking (or, at least respect the dnt header).
Ex A: Searching for Cristiano Ronaldo (from Chrome Incognito but not Firefox, amusingly) returns this horrible href:
**
When you click on a link in our results page, your search terms are not sent to the site that you click on, which can be the case on other search engines due to something called HTTP "referers".
On modern browsers we accomplish this by adding a small piece of code to our page called Meta referrer. Some browsers (especially older ones) do not support this standard, however. For those browsers, and also in situations where meta referrer doesn't work, we send the request back to our servers to remove search terms. This redirect goes through r.duckduckgo.com.
You can disable this privacy feature. To do that, go to the settings page, select Privacy, and change the option Redirect to Off.
**
But this is exactly the problem. Sure, unlike Google DDG is not itself collecting data, and there appear to be limited tracking on MS properties, but unless I misunderstand the situation (a decent possibility) then the vast majority of the web, which are not MS sites, are still able to use MS scripts for tracking.
You are marketing a privacy-centric ecosystems of tools but your partner in one component (search) is preventing you from implementing that vision in non-search areas, so that should be clear. It should also be clear that it's still very much a search problem. The source of the limitation has search as a root cause, and a massive corporation with just as much interest in obtaining data on user browsing habits is still able to do so in some ways.
I admit this is still a better situation than Google, but you're providing an ecosystem of tools, they are inextricably linked with each other.
I don't have any proposed solution. I'm not sure there needs to be one aside from making boundaries clear. I still see significant value in your offerings. Partnering with a provider of quality search that solves some but not all privacy issues is still valuable. Each person chooses their own level of comfort & tradeoffs between product quality & privacy, and you offer what I consider to be a valuable middle ground in that range. But let's just be clear on what the middle ground is made of, though I otherwise do not judge harshly for an agreement like this.
Thank you for making great tools.
All this constraint is doing is limiting the increase in privacy you get from using the DDG mobile app on top of the privacy you get from using the DDG web search provider. At worst, DDG searches in the DDG app will be no less private than DDG searches done in any non-privacy-enforcing browser, e.g. Chrome. Which is to say—still pretty private.
Also, I presume that only a minority of DDG users are users of the DDG mobile browser app. (I didn’t even know it existed!)
A shorter answer would have more credence.
https://youtu.be/nzNL0b4d_WY?t=148
What do you think the title should be yegg?
Maybe something like:
Microsoft contractually prevents DuckDuckGo's browser from stopping Microsoft scripts from loading on 3rd party sites (FYI: not search related)
Additionally the way it is phrased implies Microsoft trackers get a free pass, when they are in fact heavily restricted, e.g., blocking 3rd party cookies, fingerprint protection, etc.
And the current title can further easily be misinterpreted to be about more than Microsoft scripts on 3rd party sites (e.g., other companies, which it is not).
To answer your question though, comprehensive privacy protection prevents data profiles from getting created about you, which in turn prevents ad and other content targeting. This targeting, regardless of how it's done, enables general manipulation (e.g., exploiting personal characteristics for commercial or political gain), filter bubbles (e.g., creating echo chambers that can divide people), and discrimination (e.g., people not seeing job opportunities based on personal profiles).
More generally though, I view privacy as protecting you from coercion. Yes, it protects personal information, but that's not the real point. The real point is autonomy -- the freedom to make decisions without coercion. From this perspective in addition to helping reduce identity theft, commercial exploitation, ideological manipulation, discrimination, polarization, etc., it also helps reduce self-surveillance (i.e., chilling effects), and just general loss of freedom (e.g., mass surveillance).
Your brand is privacy, and you have betrayed your philosophical principles.
Personally: you will never regain my trust. I'm sorry this happened.
https://pplware.sapo.pt/internet/duckduckgo-apanhado-a-dar-p...
Deleted Comment
Party #1: Me
Party #2: DDG
>currently prevents us from stopping Microsoft-owned scripts from loading
How is this not allowing 3rd party (Microsoft) tracking? Are they loading the scripts from DDG's servers?
Fool's gold. Privacy is never easy.
Private browsing is a small niche, and Brave does their best to drive competitors at every turn, and not by being obviously better at it. Kinda scummy, if I’m honest.
https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/utgukp/i...
It's just as easy as selling bunker-beds and ammo for doomer-preppers (while stroking their ego).
But, shhh don't tell them and hurt their ego
This HN submission links to a tweet by a Brave employee. However, that tweet is just a screenshot of replies to the thread at https://twitter.com/thezedwards/status/1528808759027331072 written by a researcher who doesn't appear to be a Brave employee. I think it would be better if the link were directly to the tweet by Zach Edwards instead.
By posting a screenshot, the poster removed all context. Even being charitable, it's not a good luck for Brave.
What you're actually upset about is that someone pointed out their hypocrisy?
Until DuckDuckGo separates itself from Microsoft and becomes truly independent, especially in its business model, you have to question why DDG even exists.
DDG was founded 14 years ago. I can understand initially bootstrapping on MS ads, but what's the excuse now? How about separating yourself from Microsoft first, before making a web browser that gives special exemptions to Microsoft?
As a consumer if you're happy with DDG's results this may not be relevant, but it doesn't seem like a great long-term strategy for DDG.
In my opinion you have:
- Google: best search results but you’re profiled to death - Bing: okay-ish search results and you’re profiled to death - DDG: okay-ish search results and you’re barely or not tracked at all
Easy choice for me.
(founder here)
DDG exists to make money for itself. It doesn't exist to protect your privacy.
From google to github to mozilla to everything, you would think the tech idealism would have died already. People working in tech, especially the elite, are some of the slimiest and greediest people on earth. Where money goes, so go the greedy slimeballs. It's pretty much a law of nature.
I don't think these are mutually exclusive. It all depends on how you make your money.
I would love to advertise on a search engine that's independent of Google and Microsoft. Unfortunately, DuckDuckGo is not it.
Its been useful for me for 14 years so idk about that.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30703172
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27399017
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25839873
How is it unsurprising? Where on https://duckduckgo.com/ or https://duckduckgo.com/about do they mention Microsoft or Bing?
In fact they go out of their way to mention Google without ever mentioning Microsoft:
"Is DuckDuckGo owned by Google? No, we are not and have never been owned by Google. We have been an independent company since our founding in 2008 and, unlike some other search engines, we don’t rely on Google’s results for any of our search results."
Because Microsoft's reputation is lower than dirt and that's probably a big part of the reason why so many people mock Bing and refuse to even try it.
Well... how about stopping all this "Bing on the background" thing and do like Brave search and Qwant (which i'm testing as to switch away from ddg for a few months now - because of you relying in Bing) and start believing a bit more on your own index???
Why not start being a "real" search engine???
I would say it's about time!!!
(If brave and qwant can do it, so can you - man... even Gigablast does it!!!)
On other search engines, they all rely somewhat on either Google's or Bing's web crawling: Qwant, Bing and Brave, Google (and Bing for images). This is easy to see as a webmaster since you don't see their crawlers much (if at all). Only Google and Bing are doing full scale web crawls. However, search is a lot more than traditional web links -- in fact it is about half now from instant answers that can come from dozens of sources and indexes (which the above comment gets into).
That's just corpo-speak. For the most part, Duckduckgo is Bing with some additional features. That's true to the extent that when Bing decided to censor the Tank Man image, it was removed from your results too. [1] Not that you guys refrain from censorship yourselves. [2]
The crawler (DuckDuckBot) doesn't have much of an impact on the search results, it's mainly used to provide instant answers. [3]
[1]: https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2021/06/04/search_engine_tia...
[2]: https://nitter.net/yegg/status/1501716484761997318
[3]: https://seirdy.one/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexe...
I'd like to correct some factually incorrect information regarding Brave Search.
Brave search crawls the web through the Web Discovery Project and has its own crawler, which fetches a bit more than 100M pages daily.
Brave search uses Bing API and Google fallback for about 8% of the results shown to the users, the remaining 92% are served from our own index, when we launched almost 1 year ago the number of results from 3rd parties was 13%.
There is no need to mention "multiple source" when a number can be given. The underlying theme here is not if DDG provides no value on top of Bing, it does, no one is questioning that. The question is whether DDG would be able to operate if Bing were to shut DDG down tomorrow.
If Bing and Google were to disappear tomorrow, for whatever reason, Brave search would continue to operate, that's the independence Brave search is building.
But what i would REALLY like to see on DDG (beside it becoming fully OpenSource - someday) was having it taking the step of not relying on Bing.
That is a terrible shadow over you.
You should embrace the momentum you're having and step up and do your own thing. Your own index. Yes, you have to build/rely on others such as wikipedia... naturally
But please... NOT on big tech!!!
Or one day, someone else will get there and eat your lunch (Honestly, Qwant is a great alternative that apparently does not rely on big tech)
I maybe wrong, but i think this is what everyone one wishes from DDG!!! I believe everyone wants DDG free from Big Tech
(but everyone is free to correct me).
> [your] results just come from Bing
You're the one being misleading here by suggesting that they did say that. Nobody is interpreting what they said as "All search results from DDG are just straight from bing". You're nitpicking words in almost every one of your responses.
> if you are not paying for the product then you are the product
I have switched to Kagi [0] a paid search engine (free in beta) as my default search engine and so far it has been working out great.
[0] https://www.kagi.com
A better option would have been to let the community decide. You could have easily posted something to the effect of "One of the search engines wants us to sign an NDA and force us to allow more tracking than we are comfortable with"
Then let the community decide if we wanted a branded browser that is less secure or even if enough folks didn't care that you could still justify dev cycles on the browser.
No you took the shady approach and that is sad.
https://twitter.com/thezedwards/status/1528808759027331072