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Like you said, the value of Google is the algo. The index is worth little.

The limits of Bing, Qwant, DDG, etc. are not the number of the indexed pages.

It's that, give them the same pages, and the same search terms, and they don't return results as good.

> the value of Google is the algo. The index is worth little.

But it's worth something. Giving DuckDuckGo direct access to Google's index, including the ability to train models on said index, would improve the competitive landscape.

Or, you know, they could innovate by themselves instead of relying on Google to do all the heavy lifting?

Yeah it seems like this would spawn a lot of weak competitors who only exist because of the protections and would die off the second they're cut off from the API.

Maybe the practical indexing ability is worth more than the index itself. Most site owners happily let the Googlebot into their websites, while a competitor is likely to be caught into some sweeping anti-bot/Captcha measures.

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