

DuckDuckGo Challenges Google on Privacy (With a Billboard in San Francisco) - woodrow
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/01/duckduckgo-google-privacy/

======
truebosko
Is the whole privacy on search thing really a big issue?

I, for one, want Google to be all Orwellian on me because it will mean better
search results. I had a scenario like this a few days ago when I googled for
"fabric" -- Being a Python developer I was looking for <http://fabfile.org>
and it shows up as the second result while logged in. If I'm not, it won't
show up.

This may be the outlier state of mind on HN, but I think in general, as-in
billboard advertising, it's not an issue. Am I wrong?

~~~
klochner
There is also a slightly different case - google passing on your search terms
to the website that you click through to.

You may trust google with knowing that you searched for "naked bieber pics",
but you may not want other websites also knowing your search habits.

~~~
michaelbuckbee
Are they passing on search terms for previous searches or just the current
search?

In your (frankly terrifying) example, would the site have had to have ranked
for "naked bieber pics", showing up in the results and then you click it to
pull the search terms? Because that would seem to be pretty innocuous.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Just the current search, but the problem is millions of pages run third-party
ads, and most are run by very few networks. These ad networks can aggregate
the terms and then they have previous searches as well.

~~~
scrrr
Doesn't Incognito browsing, like present in Chrome, remedy all these worries?

~~~
mattmanser
People find ways around it, for example for a while Flash didn't respect
incognito so ad networks just used their cookies instead (I think at one point
html5 storage was being used too, but could be wrong).

There's been various HN posts about how people circumvent browser privacy
settings to track you across websites and even tricks such as generating an
almost unique key by hashing together browser, fonts installed, IP address,
etc.. I'm not sure of the current state of play in that war though.

I guess if you really don't want people to track private searches with your
accounts, use a whole other browser where you're not logged into Google in
incognito mode.

------
coderdude
More FUD from DuckDuckGo about Google and privacy issues. Didn't we come to
the conclusion that the things they are railing against Google for are
applicable to any and every Website?

Matt Cutts stole the comment show on this one:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2063619>

The worst thing about this is how blindly news about DDG gets upvoted around
here.

Edit: To my down-voters: It doesn't make what I said not true anymore.

~~~
potatolicious
That's disingenuous. DDG has legitimate claim to "Google tracks you" beyond
just referrer URLs.

When you search for "athlete's foot" on DDG you won't see an add for foot
cream the next time you're watching a video on YouTube. That's the sort of
tracking Google undeniably _does_ do that users may find troubling (I know I
do).

Most users _don't_ know about this level of tracking. Moreover, while referral
URLs containing search terms has been the norm for a long time (and IMHO, is
not an evil move, just legacy from a privacy perspective), there is no real
reason why things must stay this way.

~~~
coderdude
Then that is their ONLY claim against Google (yet not Google alone).
Everything else on that donttrack.us page is applicable to any and every
search engine or Website. I believe DDG is being disingenuous by making it
sound like this a Google-only thing. Even if Google is the big guy they want
to go after, they should be up front that this is not something that makes
Google evil or is specific to Google.

~~~
potatolicious
donttrack.us also rips on third-party ad networks that are non-Google for
extending the tracking even further. This also seems to be the core reason why
DDG rails against search terms in referral URLs, since it's a major enabler
for third-party network tracking.

So yes, DDG is targeting the 800# gorilla in its marketing, but it's not
unjustified, nor has DDG claimed on the donttrack.us page that Google is the
sole culprit in the destruction of user privacy.

There's a certain amount of opportunism in this billboard/privacy ad campaign
here, that much is obvious. But, as a search engine it does not seem
unreasonable to call out the failings of your main competitor.

~~~
coderdude
>donttrack.us also rips on third-party ad networks that are non-Google for
extending the tracking even further

On the site it says "Those sites usually have third-party ads. and those
third-parties build profiles about you,"

How are they able to do this? _Because Google lets them._ That's the message
they are sending across to people. The entire campaign is anti-Google only in
nature. It's not this fair and balanced reporting on privacy that you're
making it out to be.

>nor has DDG claimed on the donttrack.us page that Google is the sole culprit
in the destruction of user privacy

Their campaign only talks about Google. That's the only name and logo they
ever show or speak of.

~~~
potatolicious
> _"That's the message they are sending across to people."_

Which is true.

> _"The entire campaign is anti-Google only in nature."_

Well, yes. DDG is a search engine. They are targeting their chief competitor,
_a search engine_ , in their marketing.

> _"It's not this fair and balanced reporting on privacy that you're making it
> out to be."_

Correction: it's not a _comprehensive_ guide to everything online that
violates your privacy. But donttrack.us never claimed to be. You seem to be
under the impression that the intent for donttrack.us is an entirely selfless,
complete, and comprehensive guide. Now, I'm not affiliated with DDG, but it
seems absurd to derive that from the site.

The way I see it is: yes, they're targeting Google, but that's not exactly
unfair given that Google is DDG's chief competitor. If you were Subway,
running attack ads on McDonald's on the obesity angle, why would you waste
your breath also ripping apart I Can't Believe It's Not Butter?

Nothing DDG has said is false, nor (IMHO) have they deceived their users by
omission. Everything in this campaign is accurate. I simply don't see the
outrage.

Now, whether or not the privacy issue is even worth fretting about, or whether
using DDG will reverse the tide of privacy destruction that you're exposed to
everywhere else, that's another issue entirely. DDG hasn't claimed that
switching from Google will fix all of your privacy woes, but what they _do_
claim is that it will fix the privacy violation that Google directly allows.
That seems fair enough.

~~~
coderdude
>it seems absurd to derive that from the site

I'm not deriving that aspect of my argument from the site. I'm deriving it
from your argument that it is balanced and makes mention of things outside of
Google ("third parties").

>If you were Subway, running attack ads on McDonald's on the obesity angle,
why would you waste your breath also ripping apart I Can't Believe It's Not
Butter?

If Subway ran an anti-obesity campaign and only mentioned McDonald's I would
feel the same way about it because you're making your largest competitor seem
worse than they really are by failing to tell the whole story. If you're not
going to disclose the entire truth about an industry you shouldn't bother
delivering the half-truth simply because it's not worth your time to attack
smaller fish.

>Nothing DDG has said is false, nor (IMHO) have they deceived their users by
omission

But it is disingenuous to make it appear that Google is the sole search engine
or Website that does this or affects users in this way, which is what you said
I was being when I made the claim that this is just anti-Google FUD, which it
is.

>DDG hasn't claimed that switching from Google will fix all of your privacy
woes

That's the impression that I get from donttrack.us and I'm sure that was
intentional.

------
jeremymims
This is surprisingly inexpensive advertising and will likely generate the
value of its price in press coverage alone.

~~~
tlrobinson
See that billboard directly behind it with "San Francisco Chronicle" along the
top? That's for the auto show in November... 2010.

It couldn't have been very expensive if they're still advertising an event
that ended _two months_ ago...

~~~
JacobAldridge
I doubt the _Chronicle_ is still paying for that, it just means no paying
replacement has been found so it hasn't been covered / removed. That could
mean it's REALLY expensive to advertise there, though it's more likely it's
just not a prime advertising site.

Still, what's a full page ad in Wired set you back? Solid PR play by DDG.

------
latch
I know this comes up every now and again...but I find the length of the domain
name a barrier to entry. I think building a brand around "DuckDuckGo" is an
upward battle.

~~~
cmelbye
This is one of the biggest reasons I don't use DuckDuckGo yet. Seems trivial,
but for me it's certainly a barrier to entry. I'd say the second biggest
reason is the annoying user interface (gaudy effects like large lime green
backgrounds when you roll over search results, etc.)

~~~
hrabago
> I'd say the second biggest reason is the annoying user interface DuckDuckGo
> is the first website that made me want to install a browser plugin to change
> the way the page looks. (As for other websites that had a look I didn't
> like, I simply stopped visiting them.) The problem with installing plugins,
> though, is that I use several browsers on several computers, and to get a
> consistent look, I'd have to customize all of them (if possible).

~~~
aperiodic
You can customize a fair amount DuckDuckGo's UI using the settings page[1],
most notably hover highlighting, color scheme, and header placement (fixed vs
scrolling).

[1]: <http://duckduckgo.com/settings.html>

~~~
hessenwolf
Not good if you operate on several different computers & browsers.

------
samstokes
I'm surprised he's only paying $7000 to put up a massive billboard next to a
major consumer route for a month. I'm sure billboard advertising doesn't have
great conversion rates, but I still imagined that would cost more.

Anyone care to comment on their experiences with billboard ads?

~~~
Matt_Cutts
Consumer Watchdog paid to put their message up on a Jumbotron in Times Square:
[http://blogs.forbes.com/oliverchiang/2010/09/02/consumer-
wat...](http://blogs.forbes.com/oliverchiang/2010/09/02/consumer-watchdog-
times-square-animation-on-googles-privacy-abuses-may-get-a-sequel/)

That article says they paid $25000 for their cartoon that tried to make Eric
Schmidt look creepy: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ouof1OzhL8k>

~~~
rsingel
And as you know, I made it clear that I thought Consumer Watchdog went way
over the line and made unfair claims. I don't see this with DDG and its
campaign. <http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/09/in-defense-of-google/>

~~~
yuhong
Yea, I remember reading that it was likely paid by Microsoft.

------
peteforde
I'm all for a good story, and the one-man DDG going up against Google is
certainly a great one. However, considering the number of armchair business
analysts on HN I'm shocked that nobody seems to call out Gabriel for appearing
to fall into a cliched trap: "we don't track you" isn't a product, it's a
feature.

I genuinely wonder what DDG would do if Google simply addressed all of their
referrer privacy issues. Then what, exactly? Would DDG simply pack up and go
home?

It's a fair question.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Privacy is just but one aspect of DuckDuckGo:
<http://duckduckgo.com/about.html> <http://duckduckgo.com/goodies.html>

I spend the vast majority of my time improving the search experience. I would
welcome you trying it for a week and giving me your feedback!

I would _love_ it if Google reacted to this by stopping this search leakage.

~~~
jonknee
I changed to Duck Duck Go in Chrome a couple weeks ago to do just this and
didn't make it past three days. I was looking forward to getting rid of
content mills (which was the reason I wanted to try DDG for a week), but the
lack of things like local results and search completion drove me absolutely
batty.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Thx -- both of those things we're actively working on and should have
something for this year (probably earlier than later).

~~~
jonknee
Great to hear. I like what you're doing and will definitely continue to check
it out when you add new features. I don't agree with your stance on referrers
(which isn't a Google problem any more than it's a HN problem), but I like
rooting for the little guy.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Thank you, and I can appreciate that position. However, I think it is a search
engine problem because search terms often contain sensitive personal
information and they're embedded in the referrer, whereas HN links don't
contain such info.

------
noelchurchill
I am inspired that one man is pulling off DuckDuckGo

~~~
adityakothadiya
This is really big deal. Every time I fail to find a great co-founder, I just
look up to Gabriel and decide to not give up even if I've to run my company as
a solo founder. Running a company as a solo-founder is not new. We've many
successful solo founders on HN. But running a Search engine is a really big
deal, where many big companies have failed. So respect to Gabriel is even
more...

------
jarek
Some questions...

\- is DDG profitable right now?

\- is it going to be profitable if their user base grows by 10x? 1000x?

\- do they ever expect a need to be profitable?

\- if required to be profitable, do they have or foresee a solid business plan
that doesn't involve de facto "tracking"?

~~~
epi0Bauqu
No, yes (10x), yes, grow the user base.

------
dools
Turning off HTTP_REFERER doesn't sound like a very good idea. How would you be
able to tell how people found you? Knowing what link someone came in from is a
great way to see where your site fits into this world wide web of ours.

It sounds to me as if the only issue is 3rd party ad networks. The antidote to
this seems to me to be more reasonably the web browser's jurisdiction, ie.
making the cookie policy more restrictive by default.

~~~
dauphin
*referrer

~~~
jarek
Heh, no. The header really is "HTTP_REFERER", and is somewhat notorious for
the misspelling.

~~~
dauphin
Open an English dictionary (the Oxford one if you're serious), and come back.
Note my fault if tbl didn't know how to speak English corectly backed then.

~~~
jarek
Surely whether or not the RFC's authors know how to spell a word has no
bearing on how sensible it is to correct the spelling of "HTTP_REFERER"? I
mean, if dools had said "HTTP referer" then you might have had a point, but
"HTTP_REFERER" unambiguously refers to the name of the header field.

~~~
ezalor
No need to be pedant dude.

~~~
jarek
At the risk of taking the joke too far, "pedant" is a noun and requires an
article preceding it.

------
storborg
I think Wired picked entirely the wrong privacy issue to highlight in this
article. Yes, my browser spews the refer(r)er all over. So what?

The referer isn't giving away any private information that the _URL of the
site_ isn't giving away already, and as a web publisher, I understand the
value of knowing the exact set of terms the user used.

However, I love DuckDuckGo, and try to use it wherever possible, because of
other privacy concerns that matter much more to me. The biggest thing I like
about DDG is that it doesn't collect or store search history.

------
ladon86
That's awesome! Does anyone (Gabriel...) know if there has been a noticeable
bump in traffic as a result?

~~~
idoh
Check here in the coming days: <http://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html>

------
waqf
I have nothing against GW and I wish him well, but what kind of guarantee do I
have of his claim that he doesn't log my search queries? (I realize that the
"Referer" thing is indeed verifiable.)

~~~
jackowayed
Why would he? He has no advertising to use it for. He doesn't want the
government to be able to subpoena him. (They can't ask for information he
doesn't have.) And it would pretty much kill the business he's been building
for 3 years if it came out that he was logging information that he's been
loudly claiming that he doesn't.

He also wrote a blog post on how to change nginx's defaults to not log IP and
user agent: [http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/11/how-to-not-
log-p...](http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/11/how-to-not-log-
personally-identifiable-information.html)

------
jeremydavid
Not knowing which keywords referred visitors would be terribly annoying to
webmasters. Unless you're using dodgy 3rd party advertisers, I don't see
what's so bad about aggregating referrer data.

I have a feeling Google might be keen to hold onto their duck.com domain a
little longer :)

~~~
burgerbrain
_"Not knowing which keywords referred visitors would be terribly annoying to
webmasters"_

Why should I, as a user, care about that?

~~~
Goronmon
You don't directly. But if the internet landscape becomes unusable to content
providers, you'll care when there is nothing worth finding anymore.

~~~
gloob
If I don't buy the "Feel sorry for me! Prop up my business!" argument when the
newspapers make it, and I don't buy it when the record companies make it, why
should I buy it when people running websites make it?

~~~
Goronmon
I'm nor sure where I argued that propping up business was a good thing.

I just think it's silly to pretend that the only concern when making a
business or technology decision is the short-sighted impact on
consumers/users.

------
rottendevice
It strikes me as kind of odd that the billboard says "We", implying that
DuckDuckGo is a company of multiple people.

Then again, saying "I don't track you" would sound extremely strange.

I guess we (as a society) have become so accustomed to companies requiring
large groups of people to be successful. I guess Gabe's ability to take on
Google, the biggest tech company this decade, by himself, is a testament to
computer programming being so empowering.

~~~
cmontgomeryb
Many people do this. If you see a website for a product developed by a single
person, more often than not they will use "we".

------
jemfinch
I've never seen so many typos in a mainstream web media article. Wired should
be ashamed.

------
lysium
I understand the privacy concerns, but not the FUD about the referrer. Just
turn it off and you're done! There's even a Firefox addon that allows site-
specific settings.

RefControl <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/refcontrol/>

I've been using it for years.

------
radioactive21
I am certain, that the point of DuckDuckGo is not to beat Google. It is for
google or another search company to buy it.

------
brisance
It's not just the privacy angle, DDG also returns much more relevant results
for my searches. YMMV.

------
jjcm
A quick (and perhaps slightly offtopic) question, what's DDG's revenue model?
Is it just an experiment right now, and if so how is Gabriel funding this?

~~~
citricsquid
He has an about me page somewhere, but he sold a business a while back for a
relatively large amount and I assume he could live off that forever, so money
certainly isn't a concern for him.

Edit: found the info, $10m -
<http://investor.untd.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=328835>

~~~
alnayyir
It's rather telling that he gets to work on DDG on his own terms from
Pennsylvania.

(I'm a coder that pines for mudding and visible stars, so the fact that my
career choices are NYC/SF is disheartening at times.)

~~~
maxawaytoolong
Actually there seem to be a good number of jobs in Pittsburgh, but I know
nothing about the natural environs that way.

In California, if you work in Silicon Valley you can always live down in the
Santa Cruz mountains. If you work in SF you can live in Marin. It is often
faster to go from Marin to SOMA than it is to go from the Sunset or Richmond
to SOMA. I can't say it's a quick commute from the SC mountains to anywhere,
but the option is there. I know Apple has a shuttle bus from Santa Cruz to
Cupertino, maybe other firms do, too.

NYC metro is not great for stargazing but I was surprised that there are nice
places for hiking upstate, and in NJ and CT. Even Vermont and the Berkshires
are accessible for weekend trips.

------
Joakal
I think Wired is mocking the HN community subtly.

------
frsandstone
This site is linked from DuckDuckGo.com: <http://donttrack.us/>

------
axod
1\. Concentrate on making your product great, instead of attacking the
competition/market leader.

2\. Don't assume everyone cares about things you do. No one gives a hoot if a
website they click on knows what page they came from.

------
cpeterso
If DDG is highlighting its search privacy, why doesn't the website default to
HTTPS? (I know there is more the search privacy than HTTPS, but it would
reinforce the "secure" search messaging.)

------
huhtenberg
Go, Gabriel, Go! :)

I wonder if you can change the text in a couple of week to ".. still tracking.
We still don't". This should give those curious another push to go and just
try DDG.

------
aditya
I love it when _WIRED_ quotes someone on Hacker News :-)

------
bambax
> * and it’s privacy message seemed to resonate with users*

> _While... but..._

Is there a copy editor at Wired?

------
thiago907
well googlesharing.net (by moxie marlinspike) prevent google from tracking
your searches... its a ff addon if im not mistaken

------
frekri
It gave me better results than google on 3 different searches. Bookmarked.

~~~
ezalor
Which kind?

------
some1else
I would have put that billboard somewhere on the east coast instead.

------
initself
Was that article even edited? So many spelling errors!

------
pedanticfreak
Anyone else think there should be a DuckDuckGo of browsers that is similarly
proactive about privacy? There way more ways than just cookies to track people
nowadays and it's about time we implemented default behavior in the browser to
block them. There's no reason to wait for Google or Mozilla to do it for us
either.

~~~
cyrus_
The EFF has a plugin that uses SSL when available on a number of common
websites (Google included): <https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere>.

AdBlock will get rid of a lot of stuff (you will be depriving some sites of
revenue, use the whitelist if you respect the site.)

There are a few other privacy-related add-ons that I don't have experience
with too.

------
yhmv
Btw epi0Bauqu I love your new ddg logo!

------
prawn
For anyone that just wants to see what the billboard looks like and isn't
interested in the article:

[http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/epicenter/2011/01/ddg_bill...](http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/epicenter/2011/01/ddg_billboard2-660x441.jpg)

~~~
mcantor
Couldn't those people just click on the link, look at the picture of the
billboard and then close the window?

Not being sarcastic... that's what I did.

~~~
prawn
I'm sure I'm not alone in that I read HN comments before I hit an article,
often because so many articles are linkbait, misleading, lacking content,
overly saturated in ads, etc. I very, very rarely click through to TechCrunch
articles, for example, as they're rarely satisfying.

If the comments suggest the article is especially worth reading, then I'll
click on. If they don't say much about the article itself or suggest that it's
not worth the click, I feel as though I haven't rewarded average behaviour
with that page view.

In this case, I checked the HN comments for a direct link to the image because
that's honestly all I wanted to see - the design and wording of the billboard.
I didn't want the article, comments, masthead, everything else that comes with
a news site pageload these days. I use AdBlock so the ads weren't going to
reward the site owner and I'd just be chewing up extra bandwidth. When I
didn't see a link to the image, I wondered if anyone else might've been
looking for one too and thought I'd put one up. Easy to click for those who
wanted it, easy to ignore for everyone else.

I assume the couple of downvotes are people thinking along your lines, or
being against deep-linking?

