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Comment by EastSmith | Hacker News Reader

Looks to me as an effort to make any user visiting google.com to not actually leave google.com FOREVER.

Users will get portal-ed to a result page (with the browser's url bar showing foo.com, instead of google.com), but the user will be tracked the entire time from google, since they would be still on google.com.

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I'm so happy that duckduckgo.com is getting better and better over time.

I tried to use it for a month 2 years ago and switched back to Google.

Now it has been 3 months and I don't notice -- which is a very good thing!

I've been using duckduckgo as my sole search engine for years. I've been totally satisfied with my results. In fact I've had other people mention how my googlefu is exceptional since I'm always finding stuff that they can't seem to find. It just occurred to me that maybe it's the search engine that I'm using instead of my search skills.

Either my google-fu is failing me, or Google changed so much that my fu isn't working anymore. I feel Google is so fucking terrible now, I was looking for an obscure DOS game, and the word "game" lead it to show me games on the app store...

Or, it would show pages with just 2 out the 3 search terms I give it. And guess which word they'll leave out? The word that makes the search specific instead of broad... god effing damnit!

Doesn't duckduckgo use Bing on the back end?

DuckDuckGo has their own crawler (DuckDuckBot), and they also serve modified results from other search engines (including Bing and Yandex).

https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so...

This keeps getting said, but the 500 or so 'sources' they mention are at best a distraction. The vast majority of the compute and storage needed to maintain a global index comes directly from Bing and Yandex. DDG is nothing more than a middleman.

With a portal, you are not on the original origin at all, you are on the new site once it's activated - I think you're thinking of signed exchanges which enable CDNed like experiences.

Portals are essentially iframes, but once activated they become the top level origin.

If portals really were iframes, there would be no reason to create them.

Google is completely open about their intentions. Citation from https://github.com/WICG/portals/blob/master/key-scenarios.md:

> After being activated, a portal opened by the news aggregator will now receive the input events. This means that it will have to co-operate with the news aggregator in order to maintain the desired user experience.

Why exactly does it _have_ to cooperate? And _how_ can it cooperate? Will it be enough to include a script from parent domain? Will analytics be part of "desired user experience"? Will parent domain ban a site from it's index for trying to "break out"?

It is essentially impossible to build relationships of mutual trust to the point when one website can freely embed another... unless one party has overwhelming power advantage. Who is the target auditory of <portal>? What "news aggregator" has enough leverage to make pages switch back to it as told to? If such "aggregator" existed, I would not trust it to make web browsers or dictate, how they should work.

Doesn't it just mean that both sides have to maintain postMessage() handling? Just like host and iframe with different origins. Google will not be able to receive any events/messages unless they're sent by not-google.com. That's what I understand from it, please correct me if I'm wrong.

> Google will not be able to receive any events/messages unless they're sent by not-google.com

Exactly: the integration requires cooperation from both websites, and there is zero reasons, why child website would want to cooperate. Unlike, say, using Google Analytics, letting user leave you via <portal> tag is against website's best interests.

Feels more like a way to recreate FB's in-app 'Instant Experience' - especially given the example videos are mobile and look very similar UI.

I can see a lot of value in serving a mobile ad, and then having clicks open this overlay experience which was pre-loaded.

This is for all of the sites that either won’t use AMP or made the mistake of adding it and had to get rid of it.

If mywebsite.com embeds the portal for othersite.com, and user navigates into it, is there a way for mywebsite.com to keep tracking user interactions inside othersite.com?

No, after you navigated to the portal page it is like you have clicked a link - whole browser context is replaced with portal's.

Combine them with this announcement, I think your pretty much correct.

https://venturebeat.com/2019/05/09/google-creates-dedicated-...

"Don't be evil" is now well in the rear view mirror.

How? I understand that you're expressing a sentiment, but why do you think it's relevant here?

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