
Gnome's Web Browser Ditches Google For DuckDuckGo - jeena
https://people.gnome.org/~csaavedra/news-2013-08.html#D27
======
cromwellian
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.

~~~
teaneedz
Personally, I prefer this: [DuckDuckGo
Privacy]([https://duckduckgo.com/privacy](https://duckduckgo.com/privacy))

To this: [Incognito mode (browse in private) - Chrome
Help]([https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95464?hl=en](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.

~~~
fatjokes
> Personally, I prefer this: [DuckDuckGo
> Privacy]([https://duckduckgo.com/privacy](https://duckduckgo.com/privacy))

Ahh, but if the NSA got a secret court order commanding DDG to start
collecting data quietly, would users know? Do you think DDG would go the way
of Lavabit and shut down voluntarily?

~~~
teaneedz
That's a really good question. My impression is that Gabriel Weinberg and team
are building something on the side of privacy and users. I don't know with any
certainty what Mr. Weinberg would do in such a face-off, but at this moment in
time, I personally feel more comfortable with DDG than Google. My feelings are
simply mine and based upon what I've observed so far with DDG and Google.
Google just won't close shop - DDG might close shop. I trust DDG more.

------
milesf
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.

~~~
fetbaffe
Firefox must make it easier to switch the default Google search engine for the
address bar.

~~~
Svip
They've changed the behaviour of that in the address bar now. Perhaps I have
done something wrong, but it appears that what you type in the address bar
searches by the search bar's choice. So if I have Wikipedia selected, it
searches on Wikipedia from the address bar. This behaviour was initially very
confusing.

At first I thought I had done something strange to my Firefox (on Linux), but
then I noticed both on my workstation (Windows) at work, and on my laptop
(Linux and Windows). I hope someone else can confirm this.

~~~
therealunreal
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=873734#c2](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=873734#c2)

------
supermatou
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?

~~~
jeena
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.

~~~
khill
I remember the days when Netscape Navigator had all the market share.

Get off my lawn. :)

~~~
zanny
But then you consider that in the mid 90s, the raw number of devices regularly
running Netscape Navigator was probably on par with todays usage statistics of
Opera.

~~~
robin_reala
Out by half. Opera claim an active 300m users per month[1]; it doesn’t look
like Netscape ever exceeded 130m (combination of [2] and [3]).

[1] [http://business.opera.com/press/faq](http://business.opera.com/press/faq)

[2]
[http://www.allaboutmarketresearch.com/internet.htm](http://www.allaboutmarketresearch.com/internet.htm)

[3] [http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Netscape-navigator-
us...](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Netscape-navigator-usage-
data.svg)

------
overshard
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?

Overall I think this is a great change though!

~~~
BitMastro
Honest question: if DuckDuckGo doesn't track the users, how can it improve
when more users are using it?

~~~
fhd2
Working for a company that takes privacy very seriously, I can say that it can
be a PITA. Worth doing, but still a PITA. We had to resort to some clever
trickery just to count monthly active users without any sort of unique
identifier. I bet DDG faces similar challenges.

~~~
grey-area
Out of curiosity, what solution did you hit upon?

Google uses a cookie to tie visits to a certain user for analytics.

The other solution I've come up with is to use a hash of IP + other
identifying info, so not recording the IP or anytihng to tie it to a person,
but still recording a relatively unique ID. What sort of techniques are you
using?

~~~
fhd2
Well, we have daily update requests (it's not a web app), so we knew the
number of daily users already. But we really wanted to know the monthly users,
gives a way better idea of the actual user numbers. What we ended up doing is
to transmit the timestamp of the last update check with each update check,
that way we can see which requests are the first over an arbitrary period.

Granted, the situation is probably not that similar to what DDG faces, but it
was just one issue that came up. What we use for web analytics is based on
awstats, which operates on access logs with anonymised IPs. Not as good as
Google Analytics, but as useful as it gets without JS/tracking, I guess.

~~~
grey-area
Thanks

------
chatman
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.

~~~
hkmurakami
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?

~~~
zachlatta
I highly, highly recommend Linux Mint (with Cinnamon) to those looking for an
Ubuntu alternative. Cinnamon is a great desktop environment and Mint, in many
ways, is Ubuntu without the privacy issues.

~~~
sampo
As far as I have understood, the default way to upgrade the distro in Mint is
to reinstall the whole OS? Feels a bit primitive to me.

You're fine for a year or so, but when a new version of Mint comes, if you
want to upgrade, you'd need to reinstall everything.

~~~
zachlatta
I'm not entirely sure how the upgrade process works in Mint. I think of it as
a "transition" distro in many ways. Most of the people I've recommended it to
moved on to Crunchbang or similar after a few months of use.

------
unclebucknasty
I immediately feel "freer" just reading this.

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
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.

~~~
bad_user
Depends on where you live. In my city and its surroundings, OSM data is far
better than GMaps. And on my Android I paid for both OsmAnd and Skobbler.
These aren't as polished as Gmaps, but at least they work offline.

------
nilved
The newsworthy thing to me is that this hadn't happened already.

------
eloff
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.

~~~
fhd2
> 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".

Nothing to hide, nothing to fear, eh?

~~~
superuser2
Mass surveillance is watching everything and fishing for illegal activity.
That is not the same as filing subpoenas for data on persons of interest.

If you think everything that generates records the government can eventually
access is "real harm," what exactly are you doing on HN?

~~~
fhd2
> Mass surveillance is watching everything and fishing for illegal activity.
> That is not the same as filing subpoenas for data on persons of interest.

There are several cases of exactly that, fishing people's online movement
profiles for illegal activity, e.g.:

[http://www.digitaltrends.com/lifestyle/googling-how-to-
murde...](http://www.digitaltrends.com/lifestyle/googling-how-to-murder/)

> If you think everything that generates records the government can eventually
> access is "real harm," what exactly are you doing on HN?

I post my comments knowing full well that anyone can read them. I do not think
my web browsing and searching behaviour is quite the same thing. I cannot
decide what to share and what not.

To come up with a stupid analogy, it's like saying: "If you don't like being
watched, why do you go to the supermarket?" It's not the same as being watched
in my bedroom.

------
ubojan
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/](https://startpage.com/).

------
DigitalSea
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.

~~~
ok_craig
...how?

------
Kiro
Time to stop using the Gnome browser then.

------
fedvasu
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?

~~~
fedvasu
No seriously, tell me[with citation] that it is not bing front-end. I am all
for it.

~~~
rickr
I think they may have gotten their data from bing in the past but these days
it looks like that isn't the case.

[https://dukgo.com/help/en_US/results/sources](https://dukgo.com/help/en_US/results/sources)

------
jlgreco
Why the hell does Gnome even have a webbrowser? Projects that are _dedicated_
to working on webbrowsers fuck it up often enough...

Whatever, good for them I guess. I wonder if would have noticed if not for
this article.

~~~
qq66
A built-in browser is the best way to download the browser of your choice.

~~~
BCM43
No, the package management system on just about every distribution running
gnome is the best way. A web browser is a good way to get info on why the
package manage is broken though.

------
benbristow
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.

------
burmask
Gnome is not a popular browser, but every little bit matters.

~~~
yeukhon
This is stupid. Someone downvoted you just because you called it not a popular
browser. Man. HN is becoming shit.

~~~
brokenparser
It's more likely because Gnome != a web browser.

~~~
yeukhon
That's playing word Nazi.

~~~
brokenparser
No it's not because it's bleeding obvious. You could have known by just
looking at the title.

------
Aldo_MX
Kudos to DDG :)

------
anxiousest
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.

~~~
andyroid
"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?

~~~
s3r3nity
Search is based upon machine learning algorithms that use stored data as
signals. Google is not only REALLY good at what they do BECAUSE of the amount
of data they have on the individual doing the searching, but the benefits of
machine learning are that they will get even BETTER as more and more data is
incorporated and stored.

Without proper machine learning on the individual level, DDG will never
improve beyond a point. They're already kind of shitty, and even if they get
millions of more queries they won't be able to improve at the rate that Google
does.

It's a trade-off ('privacy' vs. 'quality') that 95% of the world doesn't give
a shit about. Therefore I see this sort of move to DDG as just short-sighted
and unreasonable overall.

~~~
ChuckMcM
This pretty much captures it. Google knows a lot about you, and it knows a lot
about the people you hang out with and the kinds of things you read and the
kinds of things you don't read. In knowing all of that stuff they can
ascertain that you are part of a community (well a cohort at least) with
certain preferences and proclivities, and as soon as a new user identifies as
also part of that cohort they can tweak the user experience to "improve" it.

And don't get me wrong, it does improve. I'm glad that I'm not bombarded with
ads for TJMax on Google properties but think Digikey could back off a bit.

From a feedback perspective though it gets weird. And you can see that when
you search without any identifying information enabled. I found the whole
'Don't Bubble Me' campaign quite creative.

The challenge for search engines though is that being the reference
librarian's favorite tool for objectiveness doesn't woo the mass market. And
search is a game of numbers if nothing else.

~~~
engrenage
Google is a great search engine because what it knows _about the web_.

Google is a great advertising business because of what it knows _about you_.

~~~
thrownaway2424
No. Google is a great search engine because of what it knows about you.
Trivial example: search on DDG for "ramen": useless generic information about
ramen. Search on Google for "ramen": general information on the right, TEN
laser-accurate local results for ramen shops. Search on DDG for "tires": ten
results for sites that sell tires. Search on Google for "tires": shopping
links for tires for _my motorcycle_. Nice.

~~~
engrenage
Geolocated search results are hardly what it knows about you.

However knowing your motorcycle is interesting. How do you think it got that
information?

~~~
dylz
Google Now indexes things like your mailbox, calendar, contacts. If you have a
local motorcycle shop or something in your contacts or whatever, [.......]

~~~
engrenage
Presumably all available when the NSA wants it.

------
icantthinkofone
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.

