I've heard that a few times on DDG-related articles this past week but I was under the impression that the duck had its own crawlers and used Bing on top of that to complete its results. Do they really solely proxy Bing results?
Mostly Bing for any non trivial query. As far as I see, they never give actual numbers / breakdown and try hard to divert attention from this. If they do i would love to know.
Without the personal information being recorded and sold.
Kind of goes to show that the personal information we are giving away may not be that important when it comes to finding what we need, even as it makes us a bigger and juicier target for ads.
My guess, <1%. I would be happy to be refuted with real data. Creating and maintaining a global scale high quality search engine requires a huge team with billion dollar level resources. They have neither, for now.
If you want to know how much of a real, self-sufficient search engine it is, just look at the hardware footprint. You need a lot of computing and storage just for the crawling and indexing (webspam included), let alone the serving.
Apparently they only use this data for simple question and answer queries, because they do not disclose breakdown of query types i can not certainly know the numbers, and i made an optimistic guess. Also i don't think my points regarding building a real search engine were unfair. Do you disagree with any of these? I express cynicism because of lack on transparency on their side.
Even though a lot of the indexing data is from Bing, doesn't DDG do extra stuff to guarantee privacy?
I don't particularly care who is giving me the data as long as the results tend to be OK; I don't run any MS crap at home but if their search service tends to work alright, then power to them.
Sure, but in my eyes this makes them a proxy, not a search engine.It is nice to have alternatives, but it looks at the moment they are at the mercy of Bing. Maybe one day they will evolve and become an actual search engine. who knows.
And what's your point, exactly? You aren't tracked by Bing because they are proxying. DDG gets ad revenue (who cares that they are Bing ads?) which pays for this service. If the results are good, what do you care?
Sure, I don't want to use bing behind a proxy, a lot of people here is acting as if it is something else. They are acting as if it is something else. You like it? Use it.
I don't know your intent but the link basically confirms that it's all Bing and Oath.
> We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we also source from a variety of partners, including Oath (formerly Yahoo) and Bing.
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