Remember when Altavista was the search engine? Or Yahoo? They stuffed their search pages with useless, distracting crap, and using them became unpleasant. And then, bam, along came Google, with a simple, clear search page and uncluttered search results. However, now that Google has become this massive behemoth, tracking our every move, and tailoring our search results, leading to only being fed those pages you agree with – isn’t it time for something new? Something simple? It might be, and you’ve undoubtedly heard of them: DuckDuckGo. I’m switching. Update: Just got an email from Gabriel Weinberg, the guy behind DuckDuckGo. The OSNews !bang (!osnews) is now live!
DuckDuckGo is a relatively new search engine that has really been gaining in popularity recently. On OSNews alone several people regularly advise others to try it out whenever we talk about online privacy. So, what are some of the reasons you might want to try out DuckDuckGo?
First of all, DuckDuckGo doesn’t track you, so you get real privacy when you search the web. Google tracks pretty much everything you do so they can better target you with advertisements. I have no problems with targeted advertising, and I have no issues in and of itself with Google collecting such information (in the end, I decide what I feed the web).
What does bother me, though, is the fact that I wouldn’t be able to protect myself if the US government ever subpoena’d Google to gain access to that information. Of course, I am of no interest to them (even my porn habits are incredibly boring), but it’s the principle of the thing. Mind you that this is not mindless US-bashing; the same concerns apply to my own government and the EU. However, at least here in The Netherlands or even the EU I would have some means to defend myself against such government behaviour – I don’t in the US.
That’s why I love the idea of a search engine that doesn’t track me. God knows, I might develop some embarrassing illness in the future, and I would rather keep something like that under wraps. DuckDuckGo is the answer here – no tracking, no information sharing. DuckDuckGo doesn’t send your search terms to the web sites you visit. It also has various other privacy features, such as the ability to use POST requests, HTTPS with the ability to automatically force sites in the search results to also use HTTPS, and integrated Tor functionality, so you can get completely end-to-end anonymous and encrypted search.
More importantly though (at least for me) – DuckDuckGo tries to pop something called the filter bubble. “A filter bubble is a concept developed by internet activist Eli Pariser to describe a phenomenon in which search queries on sites such as Google or Facebook or Yahoo selectively guess what information a user would like to see based on the user’s past search history and, as a result, searches tend to play back information which agrees with the user’s past viewpoint,” Wikipedia summarises, “Accordingly, users get less exposure to conflicting viewpoints.” In the below TED talk, Pariser explains it in more detail.
So, is this all, or are there any other reasons to try DuckDuckGo? Well, I really like the !bang syntax, which allows for all kinds of CLI-like commands to be parsed to DuckDuckGo. Of course, things like !youtube query work, but also something like !safeoff query to perform a single search without safe search on. The list of !bangs is pretty extensive already, and yes, I’ve sent them a request to have !osnews turned into a !bang, too.
Other interesting goodies are listed on the, uh, goodies page. Of course, there are several browser extensions and smartphone applications for DuckDuckGo as well.
DuckDuckGo isn’t perfect, obviously. It doesn’t do image search, for instance (although you can use the !gi !bang for that), and more annoyingly, it’s kind of a hassle to switch ‘locales’. With Google, when I need to perform a Dutch search, I simply go to Google.nl and search from there; for international searches, I go to Google.com. With DuckDuckGo, I’d have to change locales in the settings page – as a translator, that’s incredibly annoying. I might shoot them an email and ask if locale-switching could be done using !bangs (e.g. !nl query).
I’m starting the process of switching over to DuckDuckGo; it’s now my default search engine in Chrome. It’ll take a little getting used to, but then, I once switched from Altavista to Google without much hassle, so this should work too. Competition is good, and boy, does Google need it.
Wow I just noted that !bangs work straight from the Chrome address field if you have DDG as Chrome’s default search engine. Nais.
Excellent article, thanks for the info.
I’ve been using Scroogle in https mode after reading a comment on here once – it works well with Firefox and integrates with Safari using Glims. I just visited DuckDuckGo on both and there are identical integration options for it – an addon in Firefox and a couple of options for Safari, including Glims, so I’ll certainly be giving it a go. I like how it gives you the “Add to (Browser)” link, very nice.
Yeah, I just added it to Opera. Looks nice so far
I’ve been thinking if you don’t want to send information to Google, you might want to not use Chrome.
There are quiet a few places where Chrome sends information to Google.
From the top of my head:
– unique id for collecting safebrowsing-information (url-database-download). The unique id isn’t used for anything else. But it might be pretty easy for Google to connect that idea to your website visits
– If I remember correctly the Chrome updater also uses a unique id just as mentioned above
– anything you type in the address bar is send to Google (atleast if it is the default search engine, don’t know what happends if you change it)
– when Chrome starts up it gets information from the http://www.google.com domain (I think it was to see if Chrome was the latest version), in the past by accident the usual http://www.google.com-cookies were also sent. But I think this was atleast fixed
– euh… there are others I don’t remember right now.
I really need to sleep right now
Until DuckDuckGo is available in my language, I have no interest in switching.
Yeah that’s certainly a concern. Do they have a translation team somewhere?
As far as I know, there is no “they”. It appears to be pretty much one man’s website in Pennsylvania. See https://duckduckgo.com/faq.html “Who runs DuckDuckGo?”.
Even if there are more people in the company behind DuckDuckGo, it appears to be a very small company.
That’s interesting. For me it’s a plus that I’m not forced to use localized version (like those dumb redirects from google.com to regional versions)…
They’re very open to suggestion of these things. Partly out of cheek I even proposed an automatic American English to International/British English (reinserting the u’s, ize to ise, tyre not tire, encyclopaedia not encyclopedia &c.) translator, and they were very keen to try it. Also, when we say ‘they’ you contact them and – currently – get personal replies from the boss. Its nice and personal.
Edited 2011-06-23 23:47 UTC
DuckDuckGo has been around for a while now. Longer than Cuil and Blekko. I remember seeing comments about it on this site in fact.
I think the problem with Google (and Bing) is that they are controlled by a large companies. If DuckDuckGo ever becomes large then we’d basically have another Google (or Bing) on our hands. It’s like how Facebook started out really caring about privacy until they had network effects to keep their users inline.
With general purpose search the network effects have to do with the search index, technology, and most importantly data center size. This is why there are only 2 competitive wholesale search engines around. It would take a massive amount of funding and/or time to reach Google’s or even Bing’s capabilities.
Also, “Switching” a search engine is meaningless. It’s not like AT&T vs Verizon vs Sprint. You can use any search engine at any time. You don’t have to stick to just one.
Yeah, it’s been around for ages (2008). I tried it in 2009 and back then it didn’t have good results.
I came back when I read this informative blog post:
http://madduck.net/blog/2010.02.08:optimise-google/
It is really great for something that is build on FreeBSD and Perl 😉
Oh… So it’s obfuscated on code level…
I’ve been using DDG for about a year now. While it’s results aren’t always as good as Googles (meaning I have to occasionally switch back), for the most part I prefer it.
In fact, it was recommended to me by someone else on here during one of the many epic “Google vs the world” discussions.
Exactly the same here, it’s my default search provider now for about a year. I won’t go back, it’s that good.
Edited 2011-06-21 10:16 UTC
Same here. Love the interface too, reminds me of the old google, before they destroyed their simple and clean interface due to featurisis.
Not so good on French requests, though
Edited 2011-06-21 13:31 UTC
You don’t have to switch back – just use !g <search string> – you’ll get the results from google.
Thank you.
I would +rep you if I could
Anyone know how they make their money? As they seemingly have no ads im interested in where their revenue comes from to keep it going.
Google makes its cash from targeting ads, not ideal but at least its the devil I know..
I’ll give DDG a punt though, why not.
I see adds tied to my search requests. The advertising is located in the top right corner and provided by places like Amazon, Yahoo etc.
I am kinda annoyed by the advertising lol even though this is a free service.
DuckDuckGo is powered by Bing
More accurately, it uses a combination of Yahoo! Search BOSS, Wikipedia, Wolfram Alpha and its own web crawler, the DuckDuckBot.
most of the ansvers comes from bing
I really like DDG and use it.
But about Google…
They are providing you tools and help to remove the tracking and the history. I guess this is not obvious, but a little… Googling, bring you the solution.
See https://www.google.com/history/ with your google account as an example.
And see a browser extension like http://www.ghostery.com/.
You will be alarmed by the number of blocked sites.
Edited 2011-06-21 11:29 UTC
You can also opt-out of personnalized advertising :
http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/
Regarding the filter bubble, personnalized search can be disabled entirely :
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/04/how-to-disable-google-pers…
You should also try https://www.ixquick.com/ .
It boasts good privacy terms which are certified by two different third-party agencies.
Furthermore it has better localization and supports images searches.
You may also want to have a look at Scroogle Scraper, it is essentially a privacy filtering proxy for Google searches.
https://ssl.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/scraper.htm
Unfortunately no localized versions AFAIK.
I totally switched about six months ago. I love the !bang syntax. I often use new !bang commands I didn’t even know about without even thinking.
Very informative, good video. Thanks!
*Adds DuckDuckGo to Opera’s search engines. Hooray for the instructions shown on the DuckDuckGo homepage.
“What does bother me, though, is the fact that I wouldn’t be able to protect myself if the US government ever subpoena’d Google to gain access to that information. Of course, I am of no interest to them (even my porn habits are incredibly boring), but it’s the principle of the thing.”
I have tried long and hard to see the importance of this kind of privacy, and I have failed. This notion that if the “government” has access to my online browsing habits, “it” will at some point come and destroy me is utterly misguided to me. At the risk of sounding utterly stupid to many, I will ask: What is there to worry about? Ok, so Google (and potentially the government) knows that I go online every day and (1) sign in to facebook, then (2) go on Twitter (3) read technology articles via Google Reader (4) search IMDB for titles and cast (5) look at pictures of landmarks, animals, celebrities, etc (6) check my email, (7) use google docs and calendar to organize a little band I’m part of (8) [whatever else I might do].
Someone please enlighten this fool: WHY ON EARTH SHOULD I WORRY IF GOOGLE KNOWS I DO THAT? Don’t get me wrong; I do get the principle of it (or at least I think I do): My online activities should be my concern alone, and neither Google nor the government should have access to it. That I get. What I don’t get is this movement that the world will lose its balance because Google knows this and we should act now before it’s too late. What are you expecting will happen? That, given the fact Google has online activity info of so many people, it will use it to create an indestructible empire and make us all slaves? That it will create a distortion field and show everyone only what it wants (thus, people won’t be able to make informed decisions about anything)? That your enemies at Google are going to track you down and kill you and your family? That the government is going to come after you because you look at pictures of J-Lo all the time? That Google will broadcast the to the world the fact that you, as well as who knows what percentage of the male population, look at porn every night?
Again, this whole thing is somewhat ridiculous to me. It falls under the same category of the mentality that the 911 attack was carefully planned and orchestrated by an elite group of extremely secretive and powerful people (the Masons if you will) who control everything and, honestly I almost find this mentality upsetting.
Now, I do understand that a great deal of people do frown upon the fact that others are spying on online activity. That’s very understandable. If nothing else, at least it’s creepy to know that everything you do online is being monitored by others. But my point is that this ISN’T the case. NO ONE is monitoring this information. The data comes in as part of millions of people and, trust me, Google servers don’t care about your online activities. Google the company cares about making money, and that’s why it makes sense for them to somewhat ‘track’ what you do, for the sole purpose of increasing THEIR revenue. If there were something in place that broke the link between data-gathering and money making, Google would stop it at once.
Yes, I do understand that the government might see this a great opportunity to have a database they can tap into if need be. And that’s the key: “if it’s needed.” Hey, if my neighbor is constantly browsing Al-Qaeda supporting websites, and reading articles titled “Bomb Making For Dummies” or “Explosives 101”, hell I WANT the government to track him down. Why? Because if they do and it turns out he’s a lunatic, an explosion that could potentially kill my two daughters can be prevented. If, on the other hand, it turns out the guy is a professor at MIT who is just trying to understand some complex physics and their effect on Al-Qaeda websites, then that will turn up as well and that’s where it will end. Maybe the professor will get a visit from the FBI or CIA; maybe he’ll be harassed a little or a lot; but that’s something I’m willing to live with. As normal human being who is not interested in bomb-making websites and Al-Qaeda, I don’t mind if this kind of track-down occurs.
The line will inevitably be gray at times but again, that’s something I am willing to deal with as, from my personal perspective, the pros heavily outweigh the cons.
That;’s fine – you seem to have some sort of trust in the governmental system you currently live under. I find such notions cute and naive, but you’re free to hold them. I mistrust the government deeply for the simple reason that a government – as an entity, so not on an individual basis – always strives for more control, more power. Having access to everything we do will tilt the balance of power even more towards the governments – and thus, towards the large companies that have the financial means to influence policy.
The role of the internet should be to shift the balance of power back to where it belongs: the people. The government ought to be our employee, not the other way around. Laws exist to serve us, not the other way around. The government should fear us, and its individual members ought to be wholly disposable. This is the only way to ensure the government follows the will of the people, instead of the will of a few powerful individuals.
It’s all about how willing you are to hand over core freedoms and rights in exchange for “safety” (between quotes, as history has shown that giving up liberties doesn’t make the world ANY safer).
If the government proposes to track everyone via a chip, promising it would make your daughters safe – would you do it? Would you find it worth it? What about cameras in all homes and buildings? Would you find that acceptable if it makes the world a safer place? I am NOT willing to give up my right to privacy just because a terrorist *might* someday blow himself up somewhere. That’s a risk I’m willing to take.
There have been several totalitarian states where citizens were continuously monitored. Did it make those countries any safer?
Edited 2011-06-21 15:21 UTC
Well, you and I disagree but that’s cool. We can agree to disagree. Now, 1. Can you explain what “power” this info will give governments? 2. Can you site some examples where this “power shift” has proven to be hurtful for citizens.
The way I see it, laws exist to bring order and protection — protection from the government and protection from citizens themselves.
You seem to have missed the gist of my argument: as a normal US citizen, I don’t consider the government having access to my online browsing data as a threat to me. You (and many others), on the other hand do, and what I ask is that you please elaborate on WHAT that threat is. Saying that “power will shift” towards the monster who will eat us all might be eloquent, but isn’t sufficient enough to justify a semi-schizophrenic mentality where every single governmental action implies the Illuminati will take over the world and enslave us all.
I do not want to give up my rights. As you say, that would be cute and naive. But again, I don’t know how to label those who fear others are watching their online activity and using that info to prepare for an attack.
Oh that’s so simple I assumed you figured that out by yourself.
As LulzSec and Anonymous have shown – no data repository is safe from hackers. Say Google gets hacked, and search data, purchase data, and god knows what else is out on the street. Criminals could simply take a peek at the data, see when you booked your family vacation, and burgle your home. They don’t even need to stake out any more. A simple peek at such data, et voila.
The data doesn’t even need to be leaked. You have no idea what kind of people have access to this data at Google, or, in the case of a subpoena, who in the government has access to it. What if they sold such data to criminals? Such data is incredibly valuable, and there’s no reason to assume that just because people work for the government or Google that they won’t be susceptible towards abuse of the access they have.
This has nothing to do with weirdo black helicopter bullshit – these are real and valid concerns, especially after what LulzSec, Anonymous, and others have shown us.
Sure, I’ll grant that anybody, including Google, is potentially hackable. But I have to say I think people saying “Off to vacation!” on Facebook/Twitter/whatever is a much more likely scenario to lead to them being burgled. Not to mention that usually burglary is not one of the things organized criminals do—not that they’re necessarily against it, it’s just that it entails one of the biggest risks of being caught of any crime.
Nor do you, Thom. Unless you’re in charge of Google’s data and not telling us?
If documents are subpoenaed, the subpoena should say who you’re supposed to give them to (and subpoenas themselves, with some exceptions, are public records, although the documents named in them may or may not be), so you know who has access to it.
Government officials—at least in the US, and I would think, the EU—are unlikely to do this; the penalties are just too great. The calculus isn’t worth it.
There’s no reason to assume they will be susceptible either. That’s not to say that we (interpreted broadly) shouldn’t protect against unauthorized access—but we do protect against that, with privacy laws as well as private penalties (Gcompanies or governments firing employees who leak data) and civil lawsuits.
2. Can you site some examples where this “power shift” has proven to be hurtful for citizens.
Really? An entire tribe of people ran out of Africa because of Pharaoh! Or, have you heard of the Dark Ages in Europe? Do you know why the Renaissance was so important? Did the American and French revolutions just slip your mind? Do you know anything about slave trade? You should learn Chinese history. They were about 2000 years ahead of the western world, until one day… How about modern times? Nazi Germany? Look at USSR under Stalin, or China under Mao (is that controversial?). Democratic People’s Republic of Korea? We could just look at the USA since September 2001, or even earlier. November 1963? March 1929?
Woah there. You’ve listed a lot of exciting moments and epochs, but cast the net a bit broad I feel. The Dark Ages were a period of transition from a central Authoritarian power (Rome) to anarchies and local powers, which gradually became kingdoms. How does that fit the topic in question? And at what moment did China become, and then cease to be, 2,000 years ahead of Europe, and why? China was about five hundred years ahead of Europe for about five hundred years, then entered a period of decay that lasted over four hundred and fifty years, ending with the murderous Mao. I don’t see you point.
100% agree. I’d be bored silly if I looked at my google fingerprints.
Really? You want him tracked down because he reads that?
What if he’s reading about the Boston Teaparty? Or about the southern states in the civil war?
Who are you to decide what’s normal?
It’s interesting how back in the 80’s when the Soviets did this kind of stuff the U.S painted it has evil and how it could never happen in freedom-loving USofA. Now of course, it’s all for the better of mankind to spy on the citizens. Funny how that works out.
First, why would the government need this information? You, as a US citizen should know the US constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the fact that every citizen and legal resident are innocent until proven guilty. Gathering information assumes everybody is guilty to start with. Guilty of what? Nobody will ever know the answer to that. Gathering internet habits seems like a small step, but that’s how things start. Just one small thing after another. Oh, Jews in Nazi Germany, I guess you can’t ride bicycles anymore. Weird, but where’s the harm in that? Besides, I don’t know who’s working for these companies, nor do I know personally everybody working in the government. It seems to me that anybody who is a stranger to me that knows my habits is a threat to my security. Just because they have a job with a company people want to trust, or with a government (who in their right mind trusts any government?) doesn’t mean they’re nice people. In fact, since the industrial revolution, most governments have been set up based on the very fact that no government can be trusted. The only reason Americans have the Right to Bear Arms is to protect themselves from their government if it becomes too overreaching. I’m a free man in a so-called free country in a so-called free world. Tracking what I do and assuming I’m guilty of something, that’s not freedom. As you said, there’s nothing important or interesting about your internet browsing, so why would anybody want to know about it?
Edited 2011-06-21 20:05 UTC
It’s nice that you’re willing to live with him being harrassed. I can imagine that it would be very tough on you, but I guess we all make our sacrifices.
BTW – I have a little daughter as well and I registered today to say that I disagree with almost every one of your sentiments. I love her with all of my heart, but would rather that she was struck down by a madman than have her grow up in a society where her every movement, thought and action was subject to scrutiny to determine whether she might possibly become a madman herself.
I also believe that anyone that trusts any government to carry out such an agenda without abuses really needs to brush up on the history lessons.
Sadly, however, I suspect that more people in this lovely country of mine called the USA agree with you than with me.
Regarding Google’s tracking, what happens if an extreme form of government gains power after our extended recession/depression (either Right or Left)? They can use your political internet history as a reason to make you disappear.
And before you say it can’t happen, read some history.
Edited 2011-06-21 22:10 UTC
In the end it’s really about how paranoid a person wants to be. To some degree, we’re just going to have to give the government the benefit of the doubt, even when it screws up. What else are we gonna do short of waging a probably failed revolution?
Suppose a person worries all day that the government wants to make them disappear (and why not because people are throwing out a lot of “what if’s” here). After he gets done posting his fears on all the social networking sites “that if I disappear, here’s why”, technically it could still happen. If, for example, they want to make you disappear, they certainly could do so, and not even to Gitmo, but disappear forevermore, and there’s really nothing you could do about it unless you happen to be the Special Forces type. But how much time are you going to spend worrying about it?
A lot of people around the web are throwing out that Benjamin Franklin quote, “He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither” without bothering to acknowledge that BJ lived in a simple age where they wore RED, us BLUE, and once somebody was defeated, they went home to sulk while we set off the fireworks.
Edited 2011-06-22 09:08 UTC
I like this a lot.
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Ben Franklin
I noticed that DuckDuckGo often produces more relevant results than Google!
I think the big problem is that relevance is a relative term. What you might consider a relevant result for “barefoot unicorn dildo porn” might be considered irrelevant by someone else. The past ten years of Google’s near-ubiquity has certainly coloured our expectations of what is relevant. I would say that the mere stringent exclusion of sites like eHow from DuckDuckGo’s results is reason enough to consider DDG more relevant than Google.
But then, someone else might believe differently.
I do believe differently. Ehow results are maybe a 50/50 shot with me. Half the time they are exactly what I need and none of the other results are even close. The other half they aren’t but having a single additional result isn’t that bad.
The exact opposite of what you said is one of the main reasons I haven’t been able to completely ditch Google for DuckDuckGo yet. The results I got, while decent, weren’t quite what I was looking for and unfortunately weren’t as good as Google’s.
The default setting of opening a result in a new tab is also extremely annoying; sure, it can be changed… but clear your complete history (or just cookies), use a different browser, or get on a different computer and you’re stuck with it again until you change it back. IMO, virtually no page should force a new tab open; it’s 2011, with our three-plus button mice that seem to have been common for probably over a decade now, all it takes is a middle click to achieve this when it is actually wanted.
I never knew about the !bang thing, I tried it and it’s really cool.
As for the whole privacy thing… I use Ixquick or DuckDuckGo on occasion, especially when looking up things more legally questionable, because I don’t trust Google at all. They’ve got the government in their f***ing pockets, and they admitted that they would have no problem giving complete logs to them. Once DuckDuckGo gets good enough to replace Google… I might just switch fully.
I have about as much trust in my own government as I do those companies that lobby and force their own definition of laws onto us… practically none.
If they’ve got the government (US presumably) in their pockets, wouldn’t the exchange go the other way?
I’ve been using DuckDuckGo for a long time now. Frankly, now I can’t even think about using Google as a search engine not only because of the privacy concerns, but also because of the !bang syntax! It’s so awesome that it’s just beyond words. I use DDG as the “default” search engine in Uzbl. (Of course, in Uzbl there is no such thing as “default”).
Thanks for mentioning Uzbl. Hopefully I can get it packaged to work on my Open Pandora some day.
Tried it several times, and while I quite like it, I keep coming back to Google because of how much faster it feels. I haven’t had a go in a while, though, it may have improved.
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/keep-your-hands-my-facebook-george…
For a long time, I’ve been wanting to find a simple article that delineates the differences between *nix-style kernels and NT-style kernels. Not high-level design or end-user; actual ways in which their handling of processes, memory, and devices differ. It’s one of those searches that I keep making at least montly – and which neither of the ‘big two’ serve up right.
Search on Google? Linux advocacy, hosting ads, FUD, linux advocacy.
Search on Bing? Linux advocacy, hosting ads, Microsoft ads, linux advocacy.
Search on Duck Duck Go? I finally found this article written by Mark Russinovich: http://www.windowsitpro.com/print/interoperability/nt-vs-unix-is-on…
Yes, the article is basic; yes, the article has a bias; yes, the article is thirteen years old. But considering Duck Duck Go has been able to return on search one what Google and Microsoft haven’t been able to return in a year’s time, I’m already quite impressed.
Good find, thanks!
Fair enough, you were interested in this particular kind of advocacy and DDG worked better for you. Which is great, in the end, that’s all that matters. But I’m pretty sure DDG omitted some of the interesting content too. You simply can’t fit every rant people wrote on “nt vs unix” on a single page.
… with the bang syntax giving command-line style in-roads to OSNews, Board Game Geek, the d20 SRD, Bulbapedia, Career Builder, Monster, DeviantArt, and Youtube? Fantastic!
Now to suggest two more and replace the Bing default in IE with a brand new search engine…
Edited 2011-06-21 19:53 UTC
I like it, google has become to intrusive so this is an option I gladly welcome.
One thing that might keep DuckDuckGo from becoming a household name like Google is it’s name, since it’s hard to be used like a verb. For example, when you want to tell somebody to search for something, you say ‘Just Google it’. Can you imagine telling somebody to ‘Just DuckDuckGo it’
haha
True. I would have named the thing GrabIt.
“Just GrabIt.” Short and sweet.
“Just DDG it”
“DuckDuckGo doesn’t send your search terms to the web sites you visit.”
But your browser does do that.
The browser won’t do it if you change it by enabling the POST-option in the DuckDuckGo-settings mentioned in the article.
I thought I would clear that up as that wasn’t clear in the article.
Sorry, could you explain this one a little bit? I tried DDG’ing “get vs. post privacy search” but couldn’t find anything.
(No, seriously, why is one considered more private than the other? I also read the privacy setting description but it wasn’t entirely helpful.)
Here is the long version:
Every webpage you visit or any image and so on that is downloaded by the browser includes an extra header of where the referrer was.
So let’s say you search on Google for OSnews and you click on the link that points to http://www.osnews.com.
The browser will send a request to the http://www.osnews.com server and include a header which say: http://www.google.com/search?q=osnews
Most webservers are setup to log every request in a logfile. And if people checked the logfile or some statistics program they would see that someone searched for osnews on Google and visited their site because of it.
The frontpage of DDG and Google have a ‘search-form’ as you know.
There are 2 ways a (search-)form can be used as ‘GET’ which will put all the information of the form in the URL. Or the POST which does not and allows for sending larger information like files.
So if you set it up as a POST it won’t be in the URL, so the referer header will, so the search-terms will not be recorded in the logs.
Why does DDG include it in the URL-bar by default and why does Google do it ? I think it is because then people can bookmark it.
Edited 2011-06-22 23:33 UTC
On the one hand, it’s nice and egalitarian the way everyone gets the same results, but on the other hand, I like that searching for “ABC” in Google gives me ABC Australia, not ABC America.
I gave duckduckgo a whirl today, might take a bit of adjusting to after years of google and other more prominent search engines. Seems like the search algorythm could use a it of work though. It returned alot of odd results. Still its great to see another alternative in the market place !
Anyone have an alternate download link for the DDG Safari Extension? The site seems to be down.
And what gives you guarantee that these websites are not tracking you? Or that your ISP is not tracking you? Please people, start being a bit more realistic, nothing on the internet can be hidden, at least not for too long. HTTPS is not safe either, remember that you could be going through a transparent proxy and all your traffic could be being decrypted in the middle, but you wouldn’t know any better.
Anyways, you don’t like what Google is doing, then don’t use it, or clear your cookies every once in a while. Also stop bitching when you are actually using Google’s Chrome browser and watching video’s on Google’s Youtube, or using Gmail, or GoogleVoice for your “VoIP”, or Picasa, or any of their offerings, hypocrisy is not a good thing.
daedalus8,
“And what gives you guarantee that these websites are not tracking you?”
There’s no guarantee other websites are not logging. The best we can do is run through tor or another type of anonymous proxy.
However the problem with google in particular is their own ubiquity. Not only do they have google search traffic, they scan private emails. They bug a large portion of the internet via adsense, analytics, youtube, doubleclick, google checkout, blogspot, maps, google apps, and so on.
“Please people, start being a bit more realistic, nothing on the internet can be hidden, at least not for too long.”
Can you explain what you mean by this?
“HTTPS is not safe either, remember that you could be going through a transparent proxy and all your traffic could be being decrypted in the middle, but you wouldn’t know any better.”
I’m not sure what you meant here either. HTTPS does in fact protect from MITM attack. However it obviously cannot protect your privacy from the endpoint who’s decrypting the traffic.
“Anyways, you don’t like what Google is doing, then don’t use it, or clear your cookies every once in a while.”
Google has a great deal of information collected from properties not owned by google. Web users generally don’t know when they’re being watched by google – they think the tracking only takes place at google.com, and that’s far from the case.
What about their foray into healthcare services? If the provider has a contract with google, patients have no knowledge google will hold their information, much less have the right to opt out.
Even governments are outsourcing IT to google. In these cases, we have no reasonable way to know when google is actually watching us.
We’re forced to take them at their word as to what they do with the information. Even if the company is officially committed to privacy, those of us in IT know that it only takes one rogue employee to fall to temptation and use customer data inappropriately. And there’s always the risk of government control, and intrusion.
At what point do we say it’s too much information for one entity to have? For me, we’re well beyond any point which makes me comfortable.
“Also stop bitching when you are actually using Google’s Chrome browser and watching video’s on Google’s Youtube, or using Gmail, or GoogleVoice for your ‘VoIP’, or Picasa, or any of their offerings, hypocrisy is not a good thing.”
I don’t believe I was being hypocritical. These are very real concerns about privacy and the future of the web. I think a lot more people would be outraged if they only knew the extent of google’s monitoring.
I use it since 4 months ago.. if privacy is a importante concern for you, use duckduckgo.com
It is there for you to see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy
Come on!
(And this is biased against the US. Just think about the other side for… a… femtosecond)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin
If you don’t see the problem it is because you have a problem.
Couldn’t they pick a less professional name? Maybe it’s a search engine catering to first graders.
It is missing one of the most useful features that Google (and some others) has – highlighting of search terms in the cache view. Won’t leave Google without it.
Edited 2011-06-22 21:01 UTC
TED talk: Eli Pariser: Beware online “filter bubbles”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8ofWFx525s
I know DDG for at least 1 year. I tested it for a few days. While for some search terms it was relevant, for the most it was way less relevant than Google.
For me, the most important aspect of a search engine is being relevant. Not being simple or being small, or not being Google.
Right now, I find Google to be the most relevant, followed by Bing/Yahoo.
DDG isn’t even a search engine. It’s a search engine aggregator, a metacrawler. It internally uses Google and other search engines to find the results. While this might be ok, not having good algorithms for filtering and returning the results based on relevance, is not ok at all.