The filter bubble thing is overstated. There are times when you want a filter bubble, when you found a piece of information and want to dig deeper on related subjects, a "conversational" interface that has at least short term memory offers big benefits. Do you really want to ask questions to an entity which acts like it has anterograde amnesia? Can you imagine Captain Picard having to continue to remind the computer of the enterprise about context?
Google's 'long term memory' offers lots of benefits too, and 90% of the time, the filter bubble is the correct answer. Like when I search for a particular business on the desktop, and then later I search on my mobile device in Google Maps, and the very first auto-suggest after typing 1-2 characters it the business I searched for yesterday. This is awesome given how irritating it is to enter stuff on mobile devices, especially when in motion, the fewer characters typed the better.
Most of the privacy issues can be solved just by opening up an incognito window. You can choose with 1 stroke whether you want a bubble or not.
The privacy issue I have is that governments can come in and request all data companies have about me, and there is nothing companies can do about this. There is no privacy promise they can make to me that can withstand a government request.
The only defence is to ensure the data does not exist.
In practice, this means using an incognito window almost all the time. Simply the fact that I'm on the other end of an IP logged in to a service is information I'd rather not share. And that's just too onerous, so instead I ensure my main browser isn't logged in to any services, amongst other defensive measures.
I really think we need a search command to break out of the bubble on google, you are right 90% of the time its the right choice but the other 10 your screwed, some trial and error with removing the offending terms but sometimes it just doesnt.
Exactly, the bubble it's not bad in all use cases. Nevertheless it would be really great if you actually have a real control over it: switching from one "bubble" to another for different contexts or disabling it altogether.
I've switched from Google and Chrome to DDG and Firefox. Very happy with the switch. I've started recommending to my non-techie relatives to switch as well.
We've seen this sort of thing before. I've gone from no search engines, to Webcrawler, to Lycos, to AltaVista, to Google, and now DuckDuckGo. No biggie.
I've made the exact same switch. I'm loving the combination of FF & DDG. I've also set DDG as the default search engine in Chrome and use it on iOS from the app and Mercury browser. DuckDuckGo deserves all the great publicity it's receiving.
Same here, FF and DDG. Might have to use Bing or Google a few times but Google isn't /wasn't perfect on every search either.
I now do get referrals from DDG on a few on my websites so anecdotally and from a very small sample I see the increase. Google has become very commercialized and too tied up with the FED big boys now.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for keeping my private stuff - well, private. But, really, will this matter? I mean, how many people used Gnome's browser in the first place? and how many people, after trying DDG won't simply switch back to Google?
Had Gnome's browser been no.1 or no.2 in the browser arena, the gesture may have had some impact (albeit just symbollicaly). But right now... do they think Google would even care/notice?
The gesture is noteworthy not because of market share but because of who the user base is. It's exciting to see folks in the technology field (often the same ones who were educating others about Google in the early days) promoting DDG now. A browser that ships with DDG as its default, adds immediate cred to its brand image, IMO.
Sometimes we need to be the ones willing to sacrifice a little bit of "convenience" to stand up for products and services that are at least attempting to travel a better road for users. Maybe I'm being a bit naive, but I believe that lines are being drawn and those products on the side of users, have a renewed opportunity to shine.
DDG is right there - in a great position. I get the results I want from DuckDuckGo without bloat and "personalized" crud. If I really want to massage the DDG query results, I can add !sp and get a "Google" perspective with privacy.
The !bang syntax just makes DDG more powerful.
All in all, I think that Gnome's decision is more than just a gesture. It's the beginning of a shift and the big players can either read the message that's being sent or ignore it to their data loss.
I think they are aware of what you're suggesting they wrote:
"Then again, knowing the humble size of our userbase, we should let neither our expectations nor our imagination run wild on this front."
Still it is the first browser which chooses DDG as its default search engine that I am aware of. This is quite a thing for such a small company like DDG. Now others can follow (or not) when they see that it worked (or not) for Gnome. And even if on Linux more people are aware of the fact that they can change their search engine in the browser, still there is a fair amount who just use what is there. It is therefore browsers nowadays are developed, do sell the default search engine position.
I remember the days when IE had 98% of the market share.
I've been using DuckDuckGo for months now and over the past few weeks it's results have gotten considerably better. I wonder if this is because a massive amount of new users are consistently using it overall improving it's results?
Very welcome step. User privacy should be of utmost importance for all GNU/Linux distros. Unfortunately, users of Ubuntu are subjected to privacy intruding malware (that sends their queries to Amazon). Its about time the distros followed GNOME's step and override Firefox's default search engine to DDG as well.
"User privacy should be of utmost importance for all GNU/Linux distros."
Why? It's a feature which takes a large amount of work to implement, has a series of poor tradeoffs, won't actually increase the size of the user base much, is incredibly hard to do well and is very hard to market to users. Not to mention the fact that a large number of GNU/Linux distros are aimed at markets where such user land improvements are largely immaterial (e.g. on servers).
The simple fact is that most users don't care about privacy in the same sense that DDG cares about privacy. If they did, then there would be a huge economic incentive for everyone to make these sorts of changes.
I'm a new Ubuntu user who's not super savvy but am considerinng moving to another distro due to these malware issues. Which distro would you recommend I move to? Mint?
I have heard of DDG intermittently, but never remember to try it out with any consistency. I generally have my default browser page set to about:blank, but I just updated it to DDG. Maybe that will prompt me to try it for a while.
But, here's the thing: As an avid Android user (phones and tablets), it feels a little "insufficient" to just switch over my search engine in the name of privacy. After all, I use the big G for nav, contacts, and other stuff. Of course, it is easy to use their sevices by default, and I don't know what a viable alternative stack woukd look like. I disabled Verizon's Navigator because its click agreement seemed at least as onerous as what I have seen from G.
So, even in trying to find alternatives, it does bring up the questions: to whom am I willing to provide my info, how much am I willing to provide, and in exchange for what?
It is relatively easy to run your own contacts/calendar server. Just buy a Raspberry Pi, set up DynDNS, and hit apt-get install owncloud. This is really the way to go here.
Also, there are plenty of email providers out there that are not Google (but it is often unclear whether they are any better privacy-wise. Also, arguably, no one is providing as slick a web interface for email as Google). I am not living in the US, so it makes sense for me to choose an email provider in my own country.
Mapping is more difficult. Tomtom etc. have great navigation apps. But if you just want to look at a map, GMaps is still far superior to most OSM based map apps. Skobbler has a few great ones.
This is trading imagined harm for a real harm. You trade off a loss of privacy that has zero practical implications currently for almost everyone (a few terrorist suspects might have to worry) against lost time due to inferior search result quality.
I don't follow the logic. It seems like idealism for the sake of idealism to me.
> This is trading imagined harm for a real harm. You trade off a loss of privacy that has zero practical implications currently for almost everyone (a few terrorist suspects might have to worry) against lost time due to inferior search result quality.
So you argue that slightly inferior search results are "real harm" and mass surveillance is "imagined harm"? I'm afraid we don't agree on the definition of the word "harm".
This might be workable for some people, I tried DDG and results aren't on the same level. DDG is getting better every day, until then my temporary solution is using "Google proxy" (anonymised Google search) like https://startpage.com/.
I think the NSA have proven if a particular data provider (in this case Google) doesn't agree or can't provide the info the NSA wants, the NSA have the capabilities to sniff the traffic on a multitude of levels. Privacy is an illusion, but I can attest to the fact DuckDuckGo is the more secure option.
DuckDuckGo is nothing but a bing front-end. I do not see an upside with this switch, so basically, you are making M$ more stronger on Web. I am not being snarky, I am concerned.Google is evil sure, but is M$ better?
KDE has a web browser too, Konqueror which uses KHTML and KJS which then Apple forked into Webkit to use in Safari. Google then got into the Webkit action with Chrome. Now Google is forking Webkit itself.
So yes, nothing good ever comes out of rarely used web browsers.
The Web browser is WebKit via WebKitGTK+ (the reference is a little oblique, but it's mentioned in the article, or you could do a basic search), so no need to fret over other people working on a browser you don't even use.
DuckDuckGo is great. I always end up after a while using Google though as I find Google generally has better results and I enjoy the 'sort in the last...' functions for example that DDG lacks.
I have nothing against the entities involved but reading the comments here I get the impression that many simply ignored the "cooperation" bit i.e:
Cooperation: It's been some time now since we were first contacted by DuckDuckGo regarding the possibility to partner with them in order to share a percentage of the revenue that they make from the traffic originated on their search engine links ...
So DDG made a deal they could afford and got their partner to hold water for them and link to one of their PR websites, they've been ramping up their marketing efforts to try and capitalize on certain fears, which I suppose is logical.
Generally speaking I think ddg went with the "we don't store data" route because it's the niche they were left with and that ultimately means their search won't improve beyond a certain point.
>Generally speaking I think ddg went with the "we don't store data" route because it's the niche they were left with and that ultimately means that their search won't improve beyond a certain point.
I'd have to agree with this sentiment. After using ddg for about two years, I was kind of expecting something more to come from the whole zero click thing that could change the way users interact with search and how websites and information is discovered (like a different take on SEO).
Now they could totally ride (and should) the "we don't store data" wave, but I wonder how far the ddg team thinks it will take them and does the general population of people equate that to being a better search engine?
Why would storing personal information be necessary (not beneficial) to improve a service? There are plenty of ways to improve user experience, including actually communicating with users.
"Generally speaking I think ddg went with the "we don't store data" route because it's the niche they were left with and that ultimately means that their search won't improve beyond a certain point."
As they will all be too busy not storing peoples data, or how does this line of reasoning work?
Bad move. It creates an extra step in the installation process. It forces users to then reset it back to Google search, which most everyone will do. Just like when you reset Bing in IE to Google.
[+] [-] cromwellian|12 years ago|reply
Google's 'long term memory' offers lots of benefits too, and 90% of the time, the filter bubble is the correct answer. Like when I search for a particular business on the desktop, and then later I search on my mobile device in Google Maps, and the very first auto-suggest after typing 1-2 characters it the business I searched for yesterday. This is awesome given how irritating it is to enter stuff on mobile devices, especially when in motion, the fewer characters typed the better.
Most of the privacy issues can be solved just by opening up an incognito window. You can choose with 1 stroke whether you want a bubble or not.
[+] [-] barrkel|12 years ago|reply
The only defence is to ensure the data does not exist.
In practice, this means using an incognito window almost all the time. Simply the fact that I'm on the other end of an IP logged in to a service is information I'd rather not share. And that's just too onerous, so instead I ensure my main browser isn't logged in to any services, amongst other defensive measures.
[+] [-] teaneedz|12 years ago|reply
To this: [Incognito mode (browse in private) - Chrome Help](https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95464?hl=en)
Sometimes it's better to pay the price of a few extra characters to retain some control.
[+] [-] taproot|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marbu|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fetbaffe|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bsullivan01|12 years ago|reply
Especially to NSA and local police. NSA can't store everything forever so Google chips in.
Are you a Google employee by any chance? If so, your tune would change if Apple was doing it and Google wasn't.
[+] [-] milesf|12 years ago|reply
We've seen this sort of thing before. I've gone from no search engines, to Webcrawler, to Lycos, to AltaVista, to Google, and now DuckDuckGo. No biggie.
[+] [-] teaneedz|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fetbaffe|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] weslly|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bsullivan01|12 years ago|reply
I now do get referrals from DDG on a few on my websites so anecdotally and from a very small sample I see the increase. Google has become very commercialized and too tied up with the FED big boys now.
[+] [-] supermatou|12 years ago|reply
Had Gnome's browser been no.1 or no.2 in the browser arena, the gesture may have had some impact (albeit just symbollicaly). But right now... do they think Google would even care/notice?
[+] [-] teaneedz|12 years ago|reply
Sometimes we need to be the ones willing to sacrifice a little bit of "convenience" to stand up for products and services that are at least attempting to travel a better road for users. Maybe I'm being a bit naive, but I believe that lines are being drawn and those products on the side of users, have a renewed opportunity to shine.
DDG is right there - in a great position. I get the results I want from DuckDuckGo without bloat and "personalized" crud. If I really want to massage the DDG query results, I can add !sp and get a "Google" perspective with privacy.
The !bang syntax just makes DDG more powerful.
All in all, I think that Gnome's decision is more than just a gesture. It's the beginning of a shift and the big players can either read the message that's being sent or ignore it to their data loss.
[+] [-] jeena|12 years ago|reply
"Then again, knowing the humble size of our userbase, we should let neither our expectations nor our imagination run wild on this front."
Still it is the first browser which chooses DDG as its default search engine that I am aware of. This is quite a thing for such a small company like DDG. Now others can follow (or not) when they see that it worked (or not) for Gnome. And even if on Linux more people are aware of the fact that they can change their search engine in the browser, still there is a fair amount who just use what is there. It is therefore browsers nowadays are developed, do sell the default search engine position.
I remember the days when IE had 98% of the market share.
[+] [-] knappe|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] overshard|12 years ago|reply
Overall I think this is a great change though!
[+] [-] psbp|12 years ago|reply
It can't be improving so quickly and still pretty shitty for such a long period of time.
[+] [-] BitMastro|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hkmurakami|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] chatman|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] richardwhiuk|12 years ago|reply
Why? It's a feature which takes a large amount of work to implement, has a series of poor tradeoffs, won't actually increase the size of the user base much, is incredibly hard to do well and is very hard to market to users. Not to mention the fact that a large number of GNU/Linux distros are aimed at markets where such user land improvements are largely immaterial (e.g. on servers).
The simple fact is that most users don't care about privacy in the same sense that DDG cares about privacy. If they did, then there would be a huge economic incentive for everyone to make these sorts of changes.
[+] [-] hkmurakami|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unclebucknasty|12 years ago|reply
I have heard of DDG intermittently, but never remember to try it out with any consistency. I generally have my default browser page set to about:blank, but I just updated it to DDG. Maybe that will prompt me to try it for a while.
But, here's the thing: As an avid Android user (phones and tablets), it feels a little "insufficient" to just switch over my search engine in the name of privacy. After all, I use the big G for nav, contacts, and other stuff. Of course, it is easy to use their sevices by default, and I don't know what a viable alternative stack woukd look like. I disabled Verizon's Navigator because its click agreement seemed at least as onerous as what I have seen from G.
So, even in trying to find alternatives, it does bring up the questions: to whom am I willing to provide my info, how much am I willing to provide, and in exchange for what?
[+] [-] Derbasti|12 years ago|reply
Also, there are plenty of email providers out there that are not Google (but it is often unclear whether they are any better privacy-wise. Also, arguably, no one is providing as slick a web interface for email as Google). I am not living in the US, so it makes sense for me to choose an email provider in my own country.
Mapping is more difficult. Tomtom etc. have great navigation apps. But if you just want to look at a map, GMaps is still far superior to most OSM based map apps. Skobbler has a few great ones.
[+] [-] nilved|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eloff|12 years ago|reply
I don't follow the logic. It seems like idealism for the sake of idealism to me.
[+] [-] fhd2|12 years ago|reply
So you argue that slightly inferior search results are "real harm" and mass surveillance is "imagined harm"? I'm afraid we don't agree on the definition of the word "harm".
Nothing to hide, nothing to fear, eh?
[+] [-] thrownaway2424|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ubojan|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DigitalSea|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ok_craig|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kiro|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fedvasu|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fedvasu|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jlgreco|12 years ago|reply
Whatever, good for them I guess. I wonder if would have noticed if not for this article.
[+] [-] aestra|12 years ago|reply
So yes, nothing good ever comes out of rarely used web browsers.
[+] [-] magicalist|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qq66|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] benbristow|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] burmask|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Aldo_MX|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anxiousest|12 years ago|reply
Cooperation: It's been some time now since we were first contacted by DuckDuckGo regarding the possibility to partner with them in order to share a percentage of the revenue that they make from the traffic originated on their search engine links ...
So DDG made a deal they could afford and got their partner to hold water for them and link to one of their PR websites, they've been ramping up their marketing efforts to try and capitalize on certain fears, which I suppose is logical.
Generally speaking I think ddg went with the "we don't store data" route because it's the niche they were left with and that ultimately means their search won't improve beyond a certain point.
[+] [-] cinquemb|12 years ago|reply
I'd have to agree with this sentiment. After using ddg for about two years, I was kind of expecting something more to come from the whole zero click thing that could change the way users interact with search and how websites and information is discovered (like a different take on SEO).
Now they could totally ride (and should) the "we don't store data" wave, but I wonder how far the ddg team thinks it will take them and does the general population of people equate that to being a better search engine?
[+] [-] nsmartt|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andyroid|12 years ago|reply
As they will all be too busy not storing peoples data, or how does this line of reasoning work?
[+] [-] icantthinkofone|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MOB98|12 years ago|reply
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