Either that is completely bullshit, or it’s technically-bullshit.
1. They don’t have to censor because their sources censor for them. “Oh we’re just an aggregator of censored results” doesn’t mean “this is an uncensored search engine” like the claim would have you believe.
2. Proof of this is evident in by comparing Russian yandex.com, my now go to for anything related to hacking, pirated anything, topics of censorship or controversial discussion, even “legit” but rarer information like how to train or use X or Y AI model, etc. The domains that appear on yandex remind me a time gone by. Like image search before Pinterest, unreliable but not sterilized.
3. I use DDG everyday. In the last year or so, I have found myself going to Google, Bing, Brave, Yandex, SearX, and other more than ever. The quality of DDG has for me, unquestionably slipped. I have a strong distaste for Google, and have used them this year more than ever.
They are not uncensored, although maybe they allow that burden to be done for them to keep their nose high in their air on the topic.
However, I fear it may be a moot point as I find myself looking elsewhere often now.
Why do you feel that the actions of a search provider(s) should be reflected so negatively and angrily on the aggregator?
It’s not like anyone can go and see the CCP scoresheet for DDG.
If you see results missing, I'd be happy to look into them. My email is in my profile.
I mean… that’s exactly my issue. That’s just another way to say “we present censored results”.
To be fair… my real issue is the last year or so the results have been noticeably sub-par for me.
I knew there would be no point discussing a subjective matter like that. So I brought up statement that I found misleading.
All search engines got so much worse in the last years - it is so sad. We lost some of our knowledge that way.
This already started before AI, but AI further reduces the quality now.
While it seems DDG is on the same path of AI / chat centric search UX, at least they allow me to turn off all that stuff. But... search has gotten so bad in general, DDG is having the same results issue I had on Google. I don't see DDG as a player in the Ai space so I think my usage will only decrease as search result quality continues to decrease.
I am hopeful in the long run that search index / results will become better as the core UX for most people becomes chat, search result pages become low human traffic (meaning ads are worthless), and search becomes one of many research tools for to the agents
I'm now looking for APIs to integrate with my custom / personal agent setup. I'm done outsourcing my UX to Big Ai/Tech. I don't think we should repeat the same mistakes of outsource a core human/digital UX to Big Ai/Tech. We (HNers) complain so much about all the bad stuff the prior iterations (social media, saas out the wazoo), are we going to repeat it again by defaulting to whatever they give us, misaligned incentives and all?
I would pay DDG if they gave me an API for search, ideally pay-per-request. I'm not paying them for Ai, I can get that much better elsewhere
Agreed that a DDG API would be pretty great, though.
You can search "!w Gabriel Weinberg" and it will open the Wikipedia article because of the leading exclamation mark and w. If a site changes their search url, you can submit the precise new pattern they should use for a redirect. If a new service pops up, you can use the same form to request a new search prefix. These form submissions could give someone at DDG an easy interface to verify quickly and approve or reject them.
These form submissions get ignored and have been for years at this point.
You can choose keywords that don't start with !, so typing them is easier than using Duck Duck Go's bang feature.
Suspicious as heck to have enough money for supporting +300 employees plus all other operating costs without an obvious money cow for those costs.
Rather use Qwant, Brave or even Ecosia.
Who is "we"? Don't they get their results from Bing?
Eg, DDG always fail the "watch (specific movie or tv show) online" search query test. Many other search engines like Bing and Google also fail. It's a quick censorship influence test. And DMCA takedown requests have a clear track-record of being abused.
One search engine that succeeds is Russia's Yandex. I'm sure they censor plenty of things (eg, material sensitive to Russia), but that censorship set may not intersect with that Google, Bing and DDG's sets.
In terms of money, as the article notes we have 3% of U.S. search market share. That's a lot if you consider how much Google makes. Now, in part because of our search privacy, we make way way less, but it is still enough to be profitable. That said, that means we could be way way more profitable if we tracked people, which we don't.
Do you have plans to build an email service without the tracking? Would love to hear thoughts about this. There may be users willing to pay a small monthly fee for this.
I really like Kagi, becuase I can pay for the search and my searches aren’t being leaked to third parties.
majorchord•3h ago
neilv•2h ago
Maybe you meant to type "fluff piece"? That could be a matter of opinion.
yegg•1h ago