Almost all of DDG’s software is proprietary, and they’ve demonstrated gross incompetence in privacy in what little software they have made open source. Who knows what else is going on in the proprietary code?
DuckDuckGo is not a search engine:
It’s more aptly described as a search engine frontend. They do handle features like bangs and instant answers internally, but their actual search results come from third-parties like Bing. They don’t operate a crawler for their search results, and are not independent.
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Also, if you are using ddg, consider using their html version ddg/html to avoid this:
DDG is currently collecting users’ operating systems and everything they highlight in the search results. (to verify this, simply hit F12 in your browser and select the “network” tab. Do a search with javascript enabled. Highlight some text on the screen. Mouseover the traffic rows and see that your highlighted text, operating system, and other details relating to geolocation are sent to DDG. Then change the query and submit. Notice that the previous query is being transmitted with the new query to link the queries together)
Yes, we can do better than DDG, but for now there’s not really anything better. Maybe Qwant can be great, though it mainly uses Bing’s results (and it’s french, which is a quite better than the US in terms of privacy), though there have been some controversies surrounding it recently and it has been strongly supported by the french government.
Maybe mojeek will grow to become something usable.
Great! That means it’s minimal and works well in text based web browsers. Loading tons of JavaScript, having flashy colors and adding tons of features most people will never use isn’t good design, there was nothing wrong with the old way of doing things.
They have had roughly 1 commit per
year in the last few years on GitHub
It could be because there is nothing to add? It’s a search engine, it’s supposed to search stuff. As long as index is up date everything should be fine.
having flashy colors and adding tons of features most people will never use isn’t good design
Their UI is full of flashy colors!
Having no JS doesn’t mean that the website needs to look like shit. If you want normal people to use your website, you need to have a design that appeals to the majority (and it is possible without JS). For example, Gitea works fine with JS disabled while still having a fantastic looking clean UI.
It could be because there is nothing to add? It’s a search engine, it’s supposed to search stuff. As long as index is up date everything should be fine.
Yes and no, if it doesn’t evolve anymore, it means that the search results will never become as relevant as they are in other search engines. This means that it can never appeal to a larger crowd.
In my opinion the colors they use are fairly flat and ui in general looks good. Results are decent, I might switch to this thank you for the suggestion.
Also this will never appeal to the larger crowd, not without tons of marketing. They simply don’t have the resources for it.
We can do better than DuckDuckGo
…
Also, if you are using ddg, consider using their html version ddg/html to avoid this:
from https://lemmy.ml/post/31321
Yes, we can do better than DDG, but for now there’s not really anything better. Maybe Qwant can be great, though it mainly uses Bing’s results (and it’s french, which is a quite better than the US in terms of privacy), though there have been some controversies surrounding it recently and it has been strongly supported by the french government.
Maybe mojeek will grow to become something usable.
That may be true, but there is a mindset in many that they are some valiant knight.
Mojeek is proprietary, even if it becomes usable that doesn’t mean they will protect your privacy.
That’s true, but I still prefer having the choice between many proprietary services than having the choice between just 2 proprietary services.
A FLOSS one would be great. There’s Gigablast, but it seems like it’s not really evolving much. Though its index is quite up to date.
What do you mean by “not evolving”?
They have had roughly 1 commit per year in the last few years on GitHub, and their UI seems to be stuck in the 90s
Great! That means it’s minimal and works well in text based web browsers. Loading tons of JavaScript, having flashy colors and adding tons of features most people will never use isn’t good design, there was nothing wrong with the old way of doing things.
It could be because there is nothing to add? It’s a search engine, it’s supposed to search stuff. As long as index is up date everything should be fine.
Their UI is full of flashy colors!
Having no JS doesn’t mean that the website needs to look like shit. If you want normal people to use your website, you need to have a design that appeals to the majority (and it is possible without JS). For example, Gitea works fine with JS disabled while still having a fantastic looking clean UI.
Yes and no, if it doesn’t evolve anymore, it means that the search results will never become as relevant as they are in other search engines. This means that it can never appeal to a larger crowd.
In my opinion the colors they use are fairly flat and ui in general looks good. Results are decent, I might switch to this thank you for the suggestion. Also this will never appeal to the larger crowd, not without tons of marketing. They simply don’t have the resources for it.