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Firefox lost users during “failed” Yahoo search deal, says Mozilla CEO
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2023
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Im also not convinced. If it were a DDG default it would just make the browser better.
To be clear, I'm not even using DDG as my main search.
DDG is just Bing on the backend. Why is the megacorp Microsoft preferable to the megacorp Google?
I was under the impression that DDG is pretty private and while underlying search is Bing, bing can't track the searches to individuals
Maybe not the individual, but you're still training an internet giant, just a different one.
I'd also be fine with Startpage, want, whatever. They have to use something and they can't exactly make some poor selfhosters searing instance the Firefox default
That's not really true. It uses multiple sources, including their own search engine, to give results. Basically the only thing they don't include is Google. In practice Bing often produces the majority of the results, but it's not "just Bing on the backend". I mean, DDG is older than Bing after all, so it would be a little weird if they didn't have their own search engine.
Even if it was just a frontend for Bing that wouldn't really be a bad thing. Ecosia is, and that's a pretty good search engine. Being one of millions of users all privately receiving the same anonymized results already makes Bing much less problematic.
Bing as a brand, sure. But Bing was just a rebranded Windows Live Search, which was a rebranded MSN Search
Sure, but nobody seriously thinks Duckduckgo was originally based off Windows Live Search, because it wasn't. Nobody cared about Windows Live Search, because it sucked. They rebranded when it became halfway competent. I don't think the ancient history of Microsoft search engines is really relevant to the point I was making.
So what if it didn't use Bing at launch? It wasn't privacy-focused then, either. I'm talking about the present, not the past. Even in their own FAQ they acknowledge that results are mostly Bing.
Do you have a response to my point that the data is just going to different megacorp?
Did you even bother to read most of my post? I literally acknowledged that most of their results are from Bing in it, and also pointed out that I would care if that was actually all they did.
The actual point I was trying to make that you completely ignored is that I care about preventing the harm of information collection, not preventing anyone from learning anything out of pure spite.
I don't trust Microsoft as far as I could throw them, but being one of millions of people sending them information that has been anonymized before they receive it doesn't actually harm anyone, so I don't think it's a bad thing. You can be privacy conscious without being completely paranoid and closed off from the world.