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They probably start with Bing results and do custom filtering, ranking and presentation, so without the initial Bing results they can't do anything.
by 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 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.
- somenameforme 2y agoIt literally never did that. There's some crypto wallet button that you get in the address bar that you can disable with a right click, and that's pretty much the extent of it. All crypto and other related functionality is completely opt-in.
- decide1000 2y agoYes, those ads are still part of Brave.
- arrowsmith 2y agoWhat ads? I'm writing this on Brave and I've never seen any ads. Are we talking about the same browser?
- niutech 2y agoI was talking about Brave Search (https://search.brave.com https://search.brave.com), not Brave browser. Seaech doesn't promote crypto.
- Timshel 2y agoThat only concern the browser not the search engine ? HN discussion at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31490515 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31490515
- ipqk 2y agoCause Brave CEO, Brendan Eich, is such a swell guy.
- red_admiral 2y agoThat is true, but it's referring to their android browser app not their search engine, if I've read correctly.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- kornhole 2y agoYes it is one of many metasearch sites and not actually a search engine. Other engines include Kagi, Yandex, Brave, Mojeek, Quant, and something called Google.
- niutech 2y agoQuant also relies on Bing API.
- decide1000 2y agoQuant or Qwant? Qwant does not rely on the Bing api but has its own index.
- mardifoufs 2y agoAre you sure about that? It doesn't completely rely on it but didn't it use bing as one of the search providers? I'm probably completely wrong and my info is outdated but I'm asking because it would be pretty special (in a good way!) if they use their own index exclusively.
- pythux 2y agoQwant was not usable yesterday during the Bing outage so that pretty much shows they cannot function without Bing (even if they do have some auxiliary indexes of some sort)
- niutech 2y agoQwant, sorry. On Wikiledia they mention Bing multiple times: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwant Qwant was also out of service today due to Bing API outage: https://www.gamingdeputy.com/bing-outage-exposes-qwant-and-duckduckgos-lack-of-independence/ https://www.gamingdeputy.com/bing-outage-exposes-qwant-and-d...
- gregw134 2y agoPretty sure kagi is a bing wrapper too, although they blend in some other datasets.
- Minor49er 2y agoThe industry term is "whitelabeling" Sometimes it pays to pretend
- elevatedastalt 2y agoThe legal term is "deception".
- ThrowawayTestr 2y agoTaking someone else's product and making it better is a useful service.
- arrowsmith 2y agoIt's not deception if you tell people you're doing it.
- elevatedastalt 2y agoDDG massively oversells their own contribution to the search results. If you look at their marketing material, they claim to "use a variety of sources, 500+ to bring you your search results". This is of course technically correct, but the truth is they are a relatively thin wrapper on Bing results. So yes, I'd claim it is a form of deception.
- autoexec 2y agoAnd Bing lifts their results from Google (https://www.wired.com/2011/02/bing-copies-google/ https://www.wired.com/2011/02/bing-copies-google/) so in the end it seems like the internet only has one search engine.
- barbazoo 2y agoThere's also Kagi
- bloblaw 2y agoThat article is from 2011. I can imagine that in 13 years this may no longer be true.
- pphysch 2y agoWhat would lead you to believe that in the last 13 years MS would make the titanic investment of reimplementing their (alleged) Google-based search backend? Given the trajectory of Bing this seems unlikely.
- adamomada 2y agoFor me it’s because DDG (aka Bing) results are vastly different than Google results. I use the !g and !s bangs often. I think you’re making a huge assumption that nothing would change in 13 years!
- politelemon 2y agoMakes me wonder, does this mean Bing is the Chromium or Firefox of search?
- somenameforme 2y agoBrave Search [1] is 100% independent. There's also Yandex [2] which also works excellently, but is biased towards more Russian language results. The image search is second to none though. [1] - https://search.brave.com/ https://search.brave.com/ [2] - https://yandex.com/ https://yandex.com/
- wannacboatmovie 2y agoWait till you find out who makes some store-brand food.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 2y agoIf they branded themselves as what it is, anonymized bing search with better features, I would be totally fine with that. As is, even if they don’t go with that branding, I have no problem using the service under those terms.
- red_admiral 2y ago"Bing but without copilot" alone would be a product worth having. But I think DDG has a few more things on top of that, like the `!bang` stuff and the bit where they don't send tracking data on you to Microsoft.
- arrowsmith 2y agoI really don't understand why any technically literate person would be impressed by the "!bang" stuff on DDG. You know your browser already provides this feature, right? Just configure some custom search keywords in your search settings. What does DDG offer that's better than this?
- afavour 2y agoHow do I set that up on iOS Safari?
- banish-m4 2y agoExactly. You can't except by setting DDG as the default search engine. Chrome, Brave, and FF for iOS also don't directly support this sort of feature either.
- opan 2y agoThey already set them up for a ton of sites, though, and often you can guess your way to a bang on the first try. I have only looked at the actual list once or twice. Plus it seems to match the closest one in cases of using one that doesn't exist. I can also go to a machine that isn't my own and take advantage of them there right away. I heavily use the quickmarks in qutebrowser, but also the ddg bangs. I just hit O for open in new tab and can put in a bang right there.
- malicka 2y agoJust to emphasize: When opan says ton, they mean a TON. Around 13 thousand, if I remember correctly.
- 2y ago
- mdp2021 2y agohttps://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources/ https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources... > # Where do DuckDuckGo search results come from? // Most of our search result pages feature one or more Instant Answers. To deliver Instant Answers on specific topics, DuckDuckGo leverages many sources, including specialized sources like Sportradar and crowd-sourced sites like Wikipedia. We also maintain our own crawler (DuckDuckBot) and many indexes to support our results. Of course, we have more traditional links and images in our search results too, which we largely source from Bing. Our focus is synthesizing all these sources to create a superior search experience
- niutech 2y agoTheir previous answer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40454640 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40454640
- 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?