

DuckDuckGo's new privacy policy tried to explain why you should care - kn0thing
http://duckduckgo.com/privacy.html

======
kn0thing
There are clearly a lot of DDG fans here on HackerNews, but it hasn't yet
broken out into the mainstream. That said, providing a great search engine (I
took the DDG Challenge -- tried it as my default search for a week -- and I'm
still using it months later) is step one.

Beyond that, explaining things like this in plain English for people who don't
normally think about things like search privacy are doing a great service for
DDG.

~~~
city41
Yes but my anecdotal evidence suggests average people really don't care at
all. It seems like only technically oriented people concern themselves with
privacy issues.

~~~
axod
I don't think it's true that only technical people concern themselves with
these things. Only a small but overly vocal subset of technical people do...

I'm technical, and I couldn't care less about search security/privacy.

The page screams out to me "solving a problem that doesn't exist". Why do I
care that Amazon knows that I searched google for "shoes"??? Surely that's
useful info to pass on to Amazon. In what instance would I care? I can't think
of any...

The way a startup will win against Google is by doing what Google did 10 years
ago. Give users better, clearer, faster, more streamlined results.

Whilst Google is chasing silliness like 'real time update results' - WTF do I
care what people are saying on twitter? - a startup can stick to what people
actually want - clean search results.

Pandering to an _extremely_ small niche of privacy freakouts, I don't think is
a scalable strategy.

(just my 2c)

~~~
kmt
Don't forget that this guy (still) works alone. He only needs a small niche,
he doesn't need to beat Google at all. His users don't even have to be loyal;
they could just be (temporarily) frustrated.

~~~
axod
Sure, but targeting 'privacy freakouts' isn't very monetizable IMHO.

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ars
Today is my first time trying it out (although I've heard of it before), but I
feel a little tricked with the image, map, and news searches. They are google
links, but don't use the google logos.

Some people will use DDG specifically for the privacy, and those links will
forward the search query without asking any questions.

At least use the standard logos, or say google. Or proxy the search (not sure
if that's practical).

If it's simply a better search then fine, but if the draw is the privacy then
you need to be much more strict about the external searches.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Thx--those are new, and I'll probably go with something else as the default as
well as let you choose which provider you want in the settings. Any ideas for
the best default?

~~~
joeyh
FWIW, I also dislike that those don't point out they're using google.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Will fix.

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amichail
The main page doesn't state why you should use the search engine over Google.
If there are two or three compelling reasons, then they should be mentioned
there.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
The current about page (<http://duckduckgo.com/about.html>) is dedicated to
answering that question. Are you saying you think I should add a summary
sentence on the homepage? I just haven't because I don't want to introduce
clutter.

~~~
city41
Maybe something really simple that might attract the curious? "A better search
engine, learn why"

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mburney
I know a lot of people that would use DDG if they actually read this page, but
I think the problem is that most of them won't find it or read it. They are
not hackers and they don't read blogs or meta/about pages of sites.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Any ideas for how to reach them? Somehow incent people like you to spread it
to them?

~~~
clintavo
That's a difficult one - we can see how hard Yahoo and Bing have tried against
Google - it's hard to get mainstream users to change - maybe if DDG could be
positioned to drive site search for some more mainstream sites so that when
people searched they would see the DDG branding especially with a "web search"
option in the site search results. There might be some wiggle room to move
into the territory Yahoo BOSS was targeting now that it seems like that
project is abandoned after the Bing deal.

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wildmXranat
Question: Does anonymizing/cleaning of the searches break a site owners
analytics report, where it doesn't show which keywords drive traffic to the
site ?

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Yes it does.

~~~
Encosia
I wish there were a balance between privacy and providing site owners with
some sort of analytics. Correlating search terms to destinations on my site is
something that I find very valuable.

For example, I recently noticed that searches for "invalid JSON primitive"
were bringing users to a page on my site where that error was briefly
discussed a few places within its over 200 comments, but no where within the
body of the post. I think people may have eventually been finding their
answers by searching on the page, but I can't imagine that it was a very good
experience.

So, I wrote a new post that directly addresses that error in more detail, and
now that newer post is ranking for the query instead of the older one. A win
for everyone involved.

If I had been unable to see what search terms were bringing people to my site,
I couldn't have done that.

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BobbyH
Gabriel, have you thought about linking your privacy policy from the front
page of your site?

On a broader note, have you thought about focusing your branding on the "we
are insanely private" aspect? You could add "the world's most private search
engine" to your Title tag. I just looked it up and saw this search engine uses
that angle: <http://ixquick.com/>

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Thx. I have thought about it, but just don't want to clutter the homepage. It
is on the about page, though. In any case, I will reconsider this.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Why not simply create another front-end that's seriously branded and with a
secure sounding name?

If you're about it too you could create a serious but not privacy-targeted
front-end too and do some A-B testing on take up, retention, et cetera.

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shasta
Is there a shorter URL variant than "duckduckgo.com"?

~~~
rtp
<http://dukgo.com>

~~~
natep
even better, just type dukgo.com/(search terms, no parens needed) and it takes
you straight to the search page you want. So far it hasn't failed, no matter
what punctuation I've used (Chrome)

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akshat
I wonder how they are ensuring that the searches I do are completely
anonymized.

I understand that that they do not store IP address/cookie/etc, but often by
just looking at as little as a few searches you can zero down on the person in
question. For example I have often searched for:

Citrix Blogvault

I am possibly the only person who will be searching for both those things.

~~~
mtigas
If _only the search itself_ is stored, without any separate and possibly-
identifying information (IP, sesssion, time), then it doesn’t matter if you
are the only one that searches for these things.

By their account, if you search something (A) and then you search _something
else_ (B), there is no way to link A and B. They are two separate searches and
they could have been performed by separate users.

Granted, given a ton of disparate searches, you could theoretically group
searches by possible users — or at the very least, by similar users — by
statistical means.

(Edit: Actually, now that I think about it, while they mention timestamps in
terms of other search engines, they do not mention their own policy regarding
them. Timestamps are not directly “identifying information” but they still
significantly boost the likelihood that a specific user is performing a given
set of searches.)

~~~
akshat
Actually now thinking about it, hopefully if they are not storing IP(or cookie
etc)at any point of time, even temporarily, two searches will not show
relationship with each other.

But I can imagine the benefits of keeping track of all searches done by one
user. It can definitely be used to improve the search engine itself.

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levesque
This convinced me to give DuckDuckGo a try.

I can't say I love the design though. I'd prefer a more professional look.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Thx. I've toyed with having themes, and a "more professional" look would
certainly be among them. If anyone wants to take a stab at one, let me know.

~~~
orblivion
I like this professional theme you already have:

[http://duckduckgo.com/?v=c&q=professional](http://duckduckgo.com/?v=c&q=professional)

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u48998
Duck Duck Go should seriously consider adopting a serious sounding name.

~~~
icey
Yeah, something with gravitas like Yahoo! or Bing, right?

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Herald_MJ
A reddit founder posting on Hacker News? Controversial.

~~~
kn0thing
Eh? This reddit co-founder <3s Hacker news. I lurk here as much as I read
reddit.

