
DuckDuckGo: Escape your search engine filter bubble - senko
http://dontbubble.us/
======
Matt_Cutts
If I had to tackle the notion of over-personalization in ~5 minutes, I'd say:

\- If someone prefers to search Google without personalization, add "&pws=0"
(the "pws" stands for "personalized web search") to the end of the Google
search url to turn it off, or use the incognito version of Chrome.
Personalization tends to be a nice relevance improvement overall, but it
doesn't trigger that much--when it launched, the impact was on the order of
one search result above the fold for one in five search results.

\- personalization has much less impact than localization, which takes things
like your IP address into account when determining the best search results.
You can change localization by going to country-specific versions of Google
(e.g. search for [bank] on google.co.uk vs. google.co.nz), or on google.com
you can click "change location" on the left sidebar to enter a different city
or zip code in the U.S.

\- We do have algorithms in place designed specifically to promote variety in
the results page. For example, you can imagine limiting the number of results
returned from one single site to allow other results to show up instead. That
helps with the diversity of the search results. When trying to find the best
search results, we look at relevance, diversity, personalization,
localization, as well as serendipity and try to find the best balance we can.

I saw Eli Pariser's talk at TED and was skeptical, although I did enjoy his
example of Facebook starting to return only his liberal friends because he
only ever clicked on the links his liberal friends shared. I had a number of
concerns browsing through Pariser's book, but I would encourage anyone
interested in these issues to pick up a copy; it's a thoughtful read.

~~~
newman314
Here is a slightly different question, how do you get "no country redirect" to
stick reliably?

I cant begin to describe how annoying it is that I am presented with a
different language when travelling to a different country. All I ever want is
Google in English but it keeps going back to a localized search regardless of
the many times that I choose "google in english"

~~~
Sephr
It's a shame how Google completely disregards your HTTP Accept-Language
header. If they didn't, this would be much less of a problem.

~~~
Matt_Cutts
I think in the past we saw a lot of people with their Accept-Language header
set wrong, which is why we haven't used it. But we've been having a good
discussion internally about the "my language won't stick" issues raised on
this thread.

~~~
Sephr
How practical would it be to initially trust Accept-Language but also
prominently display a link to change to the language detected through IP
geolocation (with an easy way to hide/decline the link)?

------
balloot
This entire argument is simply without merit. Google is, and always has been,
a filter.

If I type in "Barack Obama", it will not show me links about The Green Bay
Packers NFL team. This is not because Google is conspiring to keep me from
reading about the Green Bay Packers. It is because it is most likely that I am
not looking for Packers links and will not click. The general idea is that
Google starts with every single piece of content on the internet and filters
to get the content it thinks I am looking for.

Now, this article complains that Google is flawed because it will more likely
show some MSNBC over Fox News, or vice versa. The implication here is that
_you never click on Fox News when it is presented_. Because if you did click
on Fox News and its ilk from time to time, Google wouldn't start filtering it
in the first place. The problem isn't that the search engine creates the
"bubble", it is that the user does!

So if the scenario presented in this article offends you, then start changing
your behavior and browsing more diverse sites. Otherwise, don't blame Google
for noting that you hang out in a very narrow corner of the internet, and
presenting you links from that corner. It's just doing its job correctly in
that case.

------
retube
Yeah this is an important issue. Google apparently ranks results (for you
personally) based on some 57 inputs, even when not logged into Google
services. In short results suffer from a self-reinforcing feedback loop,
forever constraining what you see.

I wonder how easy it is to get "clean" or "default" results from Google?

And I know it's been discussed many times , but just how easy would it be to
maintain real anonymity across the web?

~~~
yanw
No it's a non-issue, and by the way Google probably uses much more that 57
'inputs' (signals) to determine relevance. Personalization is just a different
term for _relevant_ results and this is just FUD, the source of which is
people who don't understand the technical aspects.

~~~
jerf
"Personalization is just a different term for relevant results"

Fine. It's not a "filter bubble", it's "excessive personalization", and it's
still bad.

Arguing about what it's _called_ doesn't do a thing to change whether or not
it exists, or whether or not it's a real problem.

~~~
sorbus
Is it actually excessive, though? You're just assuming that it's a real
problem without any evidence to support that it is.

~~~
jerf
Read my last paragraph carefully; I'm just pointing out the name doesn't
matter, it's a real phenomena that doesn't go away by changing the name.

My personal stance is actually a great deal more nuanced, which is that you
can't _not_ be in a bubble. It is mathematically impossible. _Any_ way of
slicing the torrent of information coming at you constitutes a bias. The
entire idea of "piercing the bubble" is an instance of English misleading you,
it's a concept without a referent. The question is not how to "escape" the
bubble, the question is how do we choose our bubble?

~~~
sorbus
So filtering/personalization is always present; we entirely agree on that
point. Is it excessive, though? If it's not excessive, then, almost by
definition[1], it's not a problem - or at least is not a major one. There is
actually a huge difference between "personalization" and "excessive
personalization", which was what I was trying to get at.

(Also, paragraph != sentence)

[1] Excessive meaning "more than is necessary, normal, or desirable".

~~~
jerf
A paragraph may legally consist of one sentence. It may legally consist of one
word in some cases.

You seem to be trying to draw me into defending a point I'm not making. I'm
making a much more subtle one, which is that you can't escape being in _a_
bubble (not _the_ bubble, which I initially typed, because there isn't _the_
bubble, there's all kinds of them), so in a way arguing about whether it's
"excessive" isn't even the right dimension to argue on; the filter bubbles
simply _are_. (Not "simply ar excessive", simply _are_ ; they simply exists
regardless of whether they are excessive or desirable or anything else.) The
question is, what should be done about that fact, rather than how do we
prevent that fact from being true, and to be honest I'm rather ambivalent
about the answer to that question, because the answer is dominated more by
your preconceptions and pre-existing goals than anything interesting.

I really should just blog this up.

------
igorgue
I heard about this book on NPR a couple of weeks ago [1]. I really don't like
this biased view of ML.

In summary what he said on the show was something like: At least the news
shows (and news pappers, radio) gives the same information to everyone, so
instead of showing Kardashians news they do show you Bin Laden news, even
though, they know the Kardashians are more profitable... this is not the case
with Google Search or Netflix, Yahoo, Bing, etc (all attacked by this author).

I think that ML helps more than it hurts and viewing it in a non-technical way
is wrong, the author gives the impression that Google (the company and their
execs) manually (via algorithms, but very manageable in his opinion) change
the search results to not show things that they don't like, then it raises the
question "do we really trust one company?".

Its arguable that the search results in Google or Netflix are optimized for
profits, but how do you make profits in the customer industry? IMHO you do
that by making their happier, showing useful results, for them, not for
everyone.

I'm waiting for the time when I google: "what channel and time is Conan on"
[2] and I get "channel 43 11pm" as the result. Of course that is very
personalized, and the result will be just for me... but again I'm the one
searching and I'm the one needing the results.

[1] [http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-05-17/eli-pariser-
fil...](http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-05-17/eli-pariser-filter-
bubble)

[2] At the moment I get this 1st result:
[http://articles.boston.com/2010-11-10/ae/29330376_1_conan-
an...](http://articles.boston.com/2010-11-10/ae/29330376_1_conan-andy-richter-
anti-nbc) which is not what I searched for nor wanted...

~~~
qjz
I think there's reason to complain that the reality is far from the ideal.
Take Netflix, for example. I rated hundreds of movies, filled out the taste
preferences to narrow down the genres I was most interested in, but the
"Suggestions for You" were underwhelming, to say the least. Even worse, they
simply never changed. So I went back into my taste preferences and checked
that I "Often" watched every single mood and genre listed. Now I get a vastly
improved range of suggestions, exposing me to some great movies, simply
because Netflix is no longer hiding them from my view. I may have a unique
individual taste for movies, but Netflix sure hasn't fathomed my criteria with
their algorithm.

------
ryanisinallofus
I spent a few hours using Duck Duck Go before commenting. It's been my Chrome
default search for 4 hours.

• The results are less relevant. Bubble or no, it was harder to find things I
look for all the time. For example I had to constantly add the word Seattle to
my search terms.

• It felt like an old search engine. The results, the display, the choice of
Mapquest maps all made me feel like I was using Yahoo or even early Google.

• At first the feeling of not being watched was liberating but I forgot about
it very quickly.

I'm going to continue using it as my default search for the lack of tracking
but Iv'e already had to go to Google a few times to find what I was looking
for. Convenience over privacy right?

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Thx -- in my experience it really takes a week to get into it. If you can
stick it out I'd love to get your additional feedback after that point.

Point of fact: it isn't MapQuest, it is OpenStreetMap served via OpenMapquest,
which uses their resources to forward that project. You can read more about it
at <http://openstreetmap.com/> (left column) and
<http://open.mapquestapi.com/> \- in any case, maps are relatively new and in
process.

~~~
ryanisinallofus
Thanks for clarifying. Open street map is a cool project.

------
mquander
The purpose of search engines is filtering content to give you what you want,
which might be information, or it might be discussion, or polemics, or gossip.
If you want to learn about some topic that has some element of subjectivity,
familiarize yourself with the different points of view and read the writing of
whoever you are interested in. There are lots of tools on the Internet to
facilitate this -- Wikipedia, for example, is built around an ideal of giving
people an objective survey of different things. If you type "climate change"
or "Barack Obama" into Google and form an opinion based on the top results
then fuck you.

~~~
romaniv
_The purpose of search engines is filtering content to give you what you want_

The purpose of search engines is filtering content to give us what we _asked
for_. Unless they developed mind-reading technology, Google doesn't really
know what I _want_ and attempts at guessing it will lead to substandard
results.

*-- Wikipedia, for example, is built around an ideal of giving people an objective survey of different things.

A website where any amount of divergent opinions get edited down to a single
article on the subject (target of edit wars and well-known editorial biases)
is hardly "an objective survey of different things."

~~~
mquander
_The purpose of search engines is filtering content to give us what we asked
for. Unless they developed mind-reading technology, Google doesn't really know
what I want and attempts at guessing it will lead to substandard results._

I think you really hit the crux of the issue here. My opinion is, these search
engines are built around the UI paradigm of "type something into the box and
go find that thing." The user doesn't have one box for finding discussion
forums, one box for finding blogs that have people they agree with, one box
for finding material that appeared in print publications, etc, and yet search
engines are for finding all these things, if you want them.

As long as there's people typing "climate change" into Google, Google has to
guess at what they are asking for because there ain't enough bits in the query
to tell it. There's no _a priori_ reason to expect that they are asking for
the most informative and accurate links covering a wide variety of
perspectives on climate change; many people probably aren't.

Regarding Wikipedia, well, that's why I said it was the ideal. You're never
going to crowdsource perfect objectivity and truth from a million biased
writers with ulterior motives, but they try, and they do an OK job on many
topics.

------
loup-vaillant
Confirmation bias is bad enough already, it's really a shame that powerful
companies like Google _reinforces_ it just for the sake of giving you more
pleasing search results. (Pleasing and Good overlap, but they're not equal.)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias>

<http://lesswrong.com/lw/iw/positive_bias_look_into_the_dark/>

Edit: I didn't intend to bash Google specifically. But they are faced with a
choice in which their own interest conflict with those of their users. And as
Capitalist Bastards are more and more accepted in our society, we don't blame
them for the selfish choice. Maybe not a shame then, but at the very least a
_pity_.

~~~
jarek
Yes, after all the primary job of a search engine is to fight the user's own
biases, and who wants a product that's _pleasing_ to use anyhow?

~~~
loup-vaillant
My phrasing was a bit harsh. I understand that Google (and others) are mainly
out to make money. To do that they have to please users most. Anyway, they
probably can't make the difference between "relevant" and "pleasant", because
user's behaviour only grant them access to "pleasant".

As long as this is done in a neutral way (by delivering the same result to
everyone), any confirmation bias will be averaged across entire populations,
so this should be okay.

Personalized results however make the results noticeably more pleasant, _and_
significantly more biased (this is probably unavoidable). Of course Google,
Bing, and Co would shun that bias thing. Who can blame them?

I don't want blame Google specifically. I want to point out this old, common
moral dilemma: make money, or don't hurt anyone? Google took the money. Many
do. I'm not sure to what extent we should blame them, but clearly, the System™
has room for improvement.

~~~
widget
I cannot see a problem here. Who exactly is being hurt by the "filter bubble"?

The end user is fine - they are more likely to see results they are actually
interested in. If a user doesn't trust a source and won't click on their
links, they'll soon not have to bother scrolling past them.

The sites themselves actually benefit as well. Sure, they may be bumped from
the first page of results for users that are unlikely to visit their site,
anyway, but the tradeoff is that they get a higher position for the users who
may actually visit their site. It's an ideal trade for those being filtered.

I suppose that leaves the idea that the end result is a "biased" internet. I
don't buy it. Google is not removing sites that disagree with them, they are
re-ordering them for different users. If your profile wasn't factored in, then
what options do they have?

They could order on popularity, but biasing towards popular opinion isn't any
better than biasing towards my opinion.

They could randomize the order, this would be without bias, but absolutely
useless to anyone.

They could judge the objective truth of sites, but that's far more biased than
any of the other options.

~~~
loup-vaillant
The end user is not fine. He is more likely to see results that he actually
_agree_ with. See, the original confirmation bias will cause you to seek
opinions you agree with more often than others. The search engine will then
conclude that you are more _interested_ in the kind of sources those opinions
come from. That would be true, by the way, but then comes a point when a quick
glance at your search engine result will show you more of what you agree with,
and less of what you disagree with.

Now go use that as an estimation of popularity and veracity. I bet many people
do, without knowing the result is strongly biased by their own prior
behaviour.

Search engine, as the sole entry point of the web, do bias it. Page Rank for
instance, could trigger a feedback loop: if a site is more prominent in
searches, it will get more links. That will get them more search prominence,
and feedback and _foom_.

Now is the popular bias better than the personal bias? I think it is. One
would at least get to be exposed to other's opinions, instead of just his own.

If you just care about the economy of the web, in the sense of selling,
advertising, promoting, buying… then of course the personal bias is currently
best. That's the most efficient way to milk the tear$ out of eyeballs. The
easiest way to reward the brains behind those eyeballs. When it's all about
money, there is absolutely no problem with the method. But I have other values
besides money. A very important one is respecting curiosity and search for
truth. The personal bias doesn't.

------
mathly
We often forget that, although it's obvious search engines filter results, the
information we see on social sites is also filtered.

Consider users of Reddit. Now most of them would consider themselves very open
minded and enlightened, yet their is active discouragement for radical ideas
without due consideration as to their merits. It's just easier to downvote and
look at Mario cake.

Overall, I think in a way we NEED filters to remove the faff, but be careful
to keep a social circle which encourages radical ideas to be bought out into
the light of logic and due consideration,

------
davidmat
In all seriousness, this is actually my main use case for the private browsing
mode in chrome: to search google without the filter bubble(1)

It's quite shocking to see just how much those results differ from the ones
I'm usually served, actually.

I know it's actually supposed to be 'awesome' to have every search tailored to
_you_, but it just makes me feel uncomfortable that I'm not seeing the
internet "the way it's supposed to be seen" - if that makes any sense.

(1): Or at least a smaller bubble, considering it still knows my location -
even though i use google.com, my os, my browser, etc...

------
markkat
I think this is a real issue, and I am glad that DDG is addressing it. This is
a more-compelling take on the tracking issue IMO.

What I'd really like to see, is a search engine to allow me to do both. I'd
like to have a profile (that didn't use my name), and when I wanted to, I
could click a result as 'useful'. This would go into my personal algorithm. I
could then toggle between filtered search, or unfiltered search, whenever I
like.

It might even be useful to build search filter categories. But I'd keep that a
bit buried for the power users.

~~~
andrenotgiant
Use Incognito mode in Chrome when you would like to search the un-"filtered"
Google.

~~~
huckfinnaafb
Unless I'm mistaken, Incognito mode simply disables local history recording,
and has not much (if at all) to do with search results or the ability for
Google to track your movements.

I suggest Chromium for the paranoid!

~~~
rryan
Incognito mode isn't just disabled history recording. It does not use any of
your cookies from main session, and it deletes the cookies when it is closed.
It also isolates your extensions from running incognito unless you elect for
them to be.

------
groby_b
Of course, I might _want_ my search results to be filtered. To take but one
example: Neither FOX nor CNN are providing any valuable insights at all, so
filtering them out is a good idea for me.

Or, to get all pithy about it, the problem is not the filter bubble, it's the
crap bubble.

If there's a problem with relevance sorting at all, it's the issue that it is
based on history, not intent.

------
hollerith
I heard you can add "&pws=0" to a search query to turn off personalization:

[http://google.com/search?q=paul+graham&pws=0](http://google.com/search?q=paul+graham&pws=0)

~~~
odiroot
It's funny how "Paul Graham" is Hacker News' foo bar.

Also, works well for me.

------
elb0w
I noticed this a long time ago. Suddenly I could ask general programming
questions and it popped up results in the language I use primarily as the top
results (Without me specifying it).

While some may think that this is hiding, do we not often create algorithms to
asses and aide? It seems like disabling this would be against the advancement
of a learning system.

I for one think its a great feature and have no desire to disable it.

------
chaselee
I just had to explain this to my co-founder last night after he freaked out
because our old site with a different name was showing up first in his search
results with our new name as the query . With web history off the old site
wasn't even on the first page.Now I just have to explain that no one searches
for early-stage startups let alone cares if they change their names :)

------
alexandros
What about the filter bubble of me only searching for what i am interested in?
Will DDG throw in some random results in every search to save me from myself?

~~~
adamdecaf
DDG won't build a profile about you; it only returns the most relevant links
to the keywords entered. The original Google search, only on today's web.

~~~
khafra
That's not what he asked. He asked (facetiously) about the higher-order search
bubble: ie, if I only ever search for articles about Erlang innards, I'm never
going to read about The Kardashians, which is relevant to a sizeable portion
of contemporary American culture. To truly pop my bubble, DDG ought to throw
in completely random results every now and then.

------
Kylekramer
It is well known that people seek out information that reinforces their own
beliefs. And while it may not be ideal for an enlightened population, why
should Google/Bing fight this natural inclination? Their job is to ultimately
give their users what they are searching for, not challenge their users'
opinions. Especially since there are tons of benefits to personalized search,
and it may be hard to not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
There are other options, i.e. opt-in vs opt-out, separate sections (only show
in sidebar), instant on/off, and overall greater transparency.

~~~
Uchikoma
Surfing in anonymous mode with Chrome should work as an opt-out, or shouldn't
it?

~~~
idonthack
only as long as you don't log in to google or anything else before you search.

------
tomlin
It almost seems like DDG is trying to get me to think personalization ==
censorship. Sorry, but that ain't gonna fly.

You've just undermined your own search engine's potential to use such a
feature in the future -- people will be spitting quotes back at DDG about how
opposed on this feature they were. Know your audience.

------
derwiki
Sorry to be pedantic, "beg the question" is being used incorrectly. See
<http://begthequestion.info/> ("This begs the question: what are you
missing?"). Doesn't detract from the overall post.

------
the-kenny
The first example is totally borked. They first search for "climate change"
(notice the ") and then search for climate change (without quotes). Of course
the search engine shows different results for different queries.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
I didn't notice that, but will fix ASAP. The base source of that image was
from: [http://www.thefilterbubble.com/what-is-the-internet-
hiding-l...](http://www.thefilterbubble.com/what-is-the-internet-hiding-lets-
find-out)

Update: the quotes vs no quotes doesn't change the top results on Bing (at
least for this search).

------
btipling
Except duckduckgo can't find my project and Google can:

<http://duckduckgo.com/?q=sphela+github>

<https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=sphela>

~~~
ComputerGuru
Doesn't that say more about your project than DDG?

~~~
btipling
Right because you'd only ever want to find things that were notable.

------
Uchikoma
People that don't want "filtering", also want their search results in German,
Chinese or Japanese? Or is "filtering" on language ok?

~~~
qjz
I think it's fair to assume that people want results in the same language as
the search terms they entered.

~~~
Uchikoma
Like Computer, oh well, no Computer in German is Computer. Try Biergarten, oh
well.

------
widget
Any filter at all will result in a "Filter Bubble" as defined here (except, I
suppose, returning a randomly sorted list of all sites on the internet).
Whether the filter is personalized or not doesn't change that fact. What is
the actual benefit of everyone getting the same search results when looking
for a particular term? Search engines are not news sites or research papers:
biasing towards relevant results is not a bad thing.

------
yalogin
DDG is quite good in regular search. I like their commitment to privacy and so
switched my default search engine to DDG. But I noticed more and more that I
use google maps almost as much search. I search for places and directions on
maps end up going to google a lot. That is brilliance of Google. They built
search verticals and so its tough to not use them. If only DDG could do
something about that.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
We are working on integrating OpenStreetMap, and just yesterday launched some
upgrades, e.g. <https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Valley+Forge%2C+PA> or
<https://duckduckgo.com/?q=black+lab+bistro> (map in right column expands to
view). This goes with address detection
(<https://duckduckgo.com/?q=3+ames+st%2C+boston%2C+ma>) and you can always
force an OSM query by adding map to the end. And of course adding !gm will
take you right to Google Maps.

~~~
yuvipanda
Problem with OSM is that it's nowhere near as complete as Google Maps, and I
don't see it growing the way Wikipedia did (contributing to Wikipedia is much
easier than contributing to OSM)

------
mkr-hn
I've been using DDG exclusively for a little while. Half the time the results
are identical to Google. The other half is usually a collection of links from
sites I would have searched on to research the topic.

~~~
util
[http://searchengineland.com/google-bing-is-cheating-
copying-...](http://searchengineland.com/google-bing-is-cheating-copying-our-
search-results-62914)

<http://duckduckgo.com/faq.html#results>

------
mitcheme
I have Google Web History turned off and I'm seeing a pretty good mix of
things in my results. E.g., I'm heavily left-wing, somewhat pro-gun control,
with no personal interest in shooting, but my results for 'gun' are pretty
much all gun shops and fansites. For Barack Obama I get mostly official sites,
although some of the top news is critical (I'm Canadian, if it matters). Egypt
gives me a mix of travel, protests, general info and ancient history. I don't
recall ever turning it off, so is it off by default? And if so, what's the
problem here?

------
Luyt
I noticed a while ago that a collegue and I got different results when we
googled for our company name, but I didn't know that it's now happening in
such an extent.

I've added DuckDuck to my FireFox search engines.

~~~
wisty
I've set it as default on Chrome. Maybe google is better - I'll get more
python libraries and less news stories about sheep (or Darwin laureates)
getting swallowed by pythons, but I can live with that. Besides, I'm pretty
good at typing "google" if I need it.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
You can just add !g to the end (or beg) of your search and it will take you
right there.

~~~
colinprince
Actually, this is super handy! When I know I want the wikipedia article I just
add !w at the end.

Ditto for youtube (!yt) etc etc

~~~
wattsbaat
fyi, you can also use !v to search youtube via ddg ('v' for video)

------
ThomPete
It is the ultimate quest for serendipity.

If you filter by what you want you don't get what you didn't know you wanted.

I will give DDG the benefit of the doubt and try it out for a couple of
months.

Starting now.

~~~
jasonlotito
Long time DDG user here. I highly encourage people to try and make the switch.
I often find DDG gives me the needed information without having to actually
having to visit the site. I still find myself going to Google sometimes if DDG
doesn't give me what I want, but it's smart enough to get me the most relevant
information faster most of the time. Often enough that I don't feel the need
to switch back.

In making the switch, I highly advise you to spend a little bit of time
learning the keyboard shortcuts, especially the !Bang feature
(<https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html>). You'll love the HN search options. =)
There are so many, you won't be able to learn them all.

You can also still use Google if you want, or even Bing (or other engines).
Basically, the !Bang syntax would mean even if you aren't using DDG, it
enables you to quickly use whatever engine you really want.

I'm just a fan of DDG. Hope you find it as useful as I do. =)

------
tathagatadg
From the search engine revenue perspective, how much can be the loss in case
they provide a preference option to show "generic results" (like "safe search
option off") - with an easy to switch ui between the two?

~~~
Matt_Cutts
Normally we don't like to crowd up our preferences page with a bunch of
options that people don't use much, but you can turn off personalization by
adding "&pws=0" to the end of the Google search url.

------
pilooch
There's a personalization / privacy trade-off that needs to be considered. It
is annoying that personalization cannot be achieved locally on the user
machines or browser. Filtering / re-ranking results at home offers much
privacy. My little personal project is to have the ML for personalization done
at home, seeks the Seeks Project, <http://www.seeks-project.info/> Personal
control over the personal bubble matters...

------
cfontes
I would like to use it as default, but I tryed it and it's very very slow...
takes me 5 secs to get a search back. in Google I take 0.035s

So I will stay information sided for a while

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ZoFreX
You're missing a trick by that near-final slide of the DDG input just being an
image - would be neat if it were a fully functional DDG search form.

------
taylorbuley
Does hitting the logout button pop the filter bubble?

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aghilmort
Explicitly named "filter bubble" search - <http://trap.it/>

xref: [http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/darpa-
born_trapit_wants...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/darpa-
born_trapit_wants_to_be_your_personalized_ne.php)

------
yhlasx
Personally, not convinced at all. Looks like saying "We are better because we
cannot do it yet"

------
m_feuz
in our research study, we found the impact/presence of personalization very
strong: after about 3'000 search queries, in some cases more than every search
query received personalised search results. out of the 10 blue links in some
cases we found 6.4 personalised: see for yourself (search for Hypothesis 1 to
get to the data)
[http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/ar...](http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3344/2766)

------
jlft
I don't like the direction Google is taking with Search. My view of
"improvement" is very different from Google's view. I have the feeling that
the more features they add to Search the worst the service gets. I miss the
old simple Google Search. I think there is a big oportunity here for another
search engine focused on: simplicity, speed, relevance (algorythm) and
unfiltered. Back to basics.

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c4urself
In the end (1) technical people will find a way around in when they need to,
(2) The conspiracy-theory loving will use the "Filter bubble"as an argument
for their own ends, and (3) The rest-most people will just not care... I think
the more interesting question is whether this third group will veer off to
become more biased to their own world-view as the article suggests.

------
KristianSerrano
Google should invite Pariser for an Authors@Google event with Cutts conducting
the interview.

------
jerrya
How does duckduckgo.com compare with startpage.com?

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malaka
"But aren't you a part of the relevance equation? The ideal results for a
search like [bitcoin crash] should be different for a Japanese-speaking
searcher in Tokyo vs. a German-speaking searcher in Munich vs. a bitcoin
expert vs. a programmer trying to diagnose why compiling bitcoin is crashing
vs. my Mom who has never heard of bitcoin before, right?"

Maybe, but that is not the point.

Besides, you are mixing localization (japanese vs german) with personalization
(expert vs naive), and what is worst is that you are assuming that Google
knows so well each user so as to be right (and that is either impossible,
either extremely creepy), at every single instant of his life (a person can
change interests).

Furthermore, to grab your example, how can Google know that an expert in
bitcoin and expert in bitcoin compilation and crash solver, is not just
interested in hearing about the "market" crash of bitcoin?

Google CANNOT read the users' mind. And even if it did, there would not be a
need for "personalized search", as the "mind reading" would give enough search
criteria to nail the results more easily (albeit, most people do not know
exactly what they want, so it will still be an iterative process, which is
good, as randomness is the seed for evolution).

So, back to the point, it is that in the quest for "adequate results" for each
person, Google is turning web search into a non-deterministic event ( _).

Imagine the web being a library, and the search being searching for the
library's book database, why would the search for a given book return
different results to different persons? It should always return the same
results, if the person doing the search is not satisfied with the results,
then she/he will add more criteria. In other words, let the person do the
filtering!

Once that Google accepts that in his quest for "better results" (where
'better' is a concept decided by solely Google and whose ranking parameters
and algorithm are unknown) there is a potential (probably demonstrable
already) for a "filter bubble" with positive feedback loop on user behaviour,
which, as with any positive feedback loop, can go out of control, exacerbating
certain ideologies and fueling extremisms.

And there is a fundamental difference between a "self guided" (as in self
controlled) filtering, where users would knowingly filter out results in order
to find those that they like, and a "google guided" (as in externally
controlled), filtering.

(_) strictly speaking, search will not be deterministic as the web is a
dynamic system and it grows, so search results can vary with time, but they
should not vary from person to person at a given time.

~~~
widget
Of course Google can't read minds, that does not mean they should ignore
information that they have when deciding which results to show or what order
to show them in. Sufficient data to provide a better filter for a given user
is not the same as mind reading.

You are absolutely right that more criteria should be used if a user is
interested in better results, but I fail to see why a deterministic base case
is superior. If I never click on news links and always click on travel links,
it makes perfect sense for Google to assume that my search for "Egypt" is
looking for information related to travel to Egypt. If I am not following my
usual search patterns, I can look on the second page, or I can disable
personalized search, or I can search for "Egypt News" all of which would give
me better results.

Why is it preferable to always make everyone clarify their searches when there
is sufficient information to narrow the search down somewhat without requiring
additional intervention by the user? This is usability 101 right here.

~~~
projectsjh
<http://www.google.com/ncr> to disable. NCR=no country redirect.

Works fine, but how do I return to country redirect? Am in Germany, used it
for some global searches, now want my localized (German ) searches back. Must
be missing something obvious here, please help, thanks!

------
yanw
Shame on DDG for endorsing this nonsense.

I understand the quest for a larger userbase but please don't use this sort of
FUD that is being peddled by those who don't understand the technical aspects
of search and are trying to sell their books.

A search engine's prime function is to filter the millions of results for each
query down to the most relevant results for each individual user, and never
the same 10 results are relevant to each and every user.

There is little difference between personalization and the relevance of search
results.

How would you go about ranking then? alphabetically?! it's a matter of tuning
the relevance 'dials' and it's all in early stages so a solution to this
_imaginary_ problem is more research and not to hide behind bullshit
terminology.

And as a bonus a user (regardless of any personalization) can dig through any
initial set of results if she seeks more information.

So please don’t buy into this misleading and ignorant bullshit that is being
disguised as a real issue.

~~~
quinndupont
I think you missed the point. Yes DDG ranks, but it may rank differently. Of
course, there is an implicit slam on them here: instead of showing you what
you want the vast majority of the time, they show you other stuff. This is
good on occasion (so you don't live in an echo chamber), but if this was all
the time it would mean lower quality search results for simple things.

~~~
rogerbraun
This is exactly why I stopped using DDG as my main search engine. My workflow
was often like this:

\- Search for term on DDG \- Look at results, find nothing \- Try to find
better term \- Give up and use original term in Google \- Find result

I tried to use DDG exclusively two time (once 8 months ago, once ~4 months
ago), but the result was the same. I don't know how much personalization
affects this, but Google just gives me the best results.

~~~
MetallicCloud
I have had almost the exact same experience. I want to use DDG, but I too
regularly had to use Google after I couldn't find the results I was after.

------
yanw
This assumes that 'filter bubble' is something more than a nonsense term.

There is little difference between personalization and the relevance of search
results.

How would you go about ranking then? alphabetically?! it's a matter of tuning
the relevance 'dials' and it's all in early stages so a solution to this
imaginary problems is more research and not to create bullshit terminology in
order to sell some books.

~~~
TheBranca18
Most people don't realize that Google and other companies are doing this.
That's my main problem. It's not about selling books in my mind as much as it
about communicating why something is in a search list for person A vs. person
B. I don't want my Internet censored.

~~~
joesb
Do you see search result #1,000,000 on your first page? Congratulation, your
internet is censored.

------
Hisoka
I suspect DDG is having trouble making money hence the need to make a
commotion about filter bubbles and generating some linkbait. No surprise... <
1% of a search engine market is not gonna even make you much at the end of the
day.

