Comment by ludocode | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ludocode | Hacker News Reader

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Before I bought a robotic vacuum cleaner, I read lots of reviews from people saying it wasn't as good as vacuuming manually. It misses areas, it has a hard time in corners, it takes forever. I bought it anyway. The simple fact is it doesn't matter how much worse it is than vacuuming, because I'm not vacuuming.

I kind of feel that way about DuckDuckGo. Instead of lazyness, I guess you'd call it ideological purity. I don't care how much worse DuckDuckGo is than Google. It doesn't matter. The simple fact is the privacy implications of Google make it a deal breaker, so I'll use any alternative no matter how much worse it is.

In my mind they're not even competing services. Just like comparing a robotic vacuum to manual vacuuming. It's like saying "What's better, a square or the color yellow?" It doesn't compute.

I'd be lying if I said I never use !g. I do, when I don't find what I'm looking for and feel like I should. Half the time, I don't find what I wanted on Google either. I always hesitate though, thinking "Do I want Google to log this about me?" I rarely hesitate when searching with DuckDuckGo. There's a certain comfort and peace of mind that is worth any drop in the quality of search results.

Give this person a cookie, for exhibiting sheer resolve, something that's becoming all too rare in the manipulated, instant-gratification culture we're heading deep into.

Given their privacy focus, do you think that poster is just going to accept random cookies on the internet? ;)

Hah! I heard Santa dropped 120lb when he found the 'do not accept from third parties' checkbox :)

It's not resolve. It's experience. At a young age, you think through short timelines. Crises don't happen. At an old age, once you've been through a few crises, wars, pandemics, law suits, and whatnot, you start calculating expected outcomes a bit differently.

I use DuckDuckGo not out of resolve, but because I used the Internet in the nineties, and saw how data I put out then came back in some cases a decade or two later in counter-intuitive ways.

I am curious to know more about such experiences.

1) Interacting in online forums, pre-search engine, where such discussions where considered more-or-less ephemeral, and only available to a closed group of "Internet users" wasn't super-public. All of that is now archived and indexed. If you search for me, you'll find it.

2) Giving my data to super-credible companies, pre-spam. Wouldn't you know it? A few went out of business, and my data was neatly packaged up and resold to the highest bidder. One was an enterprise database company.

3) Personal web page ended up on archive.org, before anyone really knew others were grabbing/indexing/archiving things. It had more of the feel of your front yard. Yes, someone could take a photo, but it wasn't common.

4) The whole Yahoo thing. My emails become property of some data broker who now mines them for marketing and sales.

I obviously won't talk about more personal ones. And no one will talk about litigations. But those sorts of things happen too.

The things I worry about now are the really sophisticated fingerprinting mechanisms, where your typing patterns, your vocabulary, your linguistic quirks, etc. become biometric identifiers. I'm not sure how all that data will be archived, integrated, and combined 25 years from now.

History suggests Google won't be Google forever, though.

Oh, and let's not forget what happened with data, Jewish people, WWII, and Germany. That's beyond my timescale, but these things happen.

Thank you, added to favorites to show to skeptics.

It sounds like you're keeping a list. What's on your list so far?

You can look at anyone's favorites list here: https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=USERNAME&comments=... (replace USERNAME with the actual name of the user).

For my username it is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=fsflover&comments=...

> history shows Google won't be Google forever

Hmmm, that one got to me.

You should be able to take your personal webpage off archive.org if you don't want it there. I think the mechanism is via the current robots.txt file.

Sidenote, i am with you fully - and you may be interested in `!s` - Startpage. I know very little about them, so please - do your own research, but supposedly they straight use Google, so your results are basically Google without giving your info "directly" to Google.

Of course the question arises, should you trust them? No idea, please - do your own research, maybe let me know hah. But i basically never touch Google these days, as i use DDG for all my searches and !s for any fallbacks.

I use Startpage for certain escalated queries as well.

Irrespective of Startpage's motives, using them provides a layer of indirection between me and Google associating every search with a Google account.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21371577

Startpage is now owned by an advertising company (reddit.com)

182 points by rahuldottech 10 months ago | 82 comments

If Duck Duck Go is free, doesn't it fundamentally have the same business model as Google. I don't understand how there can be no privacy implications, and search is free. At some point, something has to give for DDG to be profitable-- it is a business, after all. There is no way to measure if they're living up to privacy claims, either.

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-revenue-generation-model-f...

Insightful. When DDG hits critical mass and investors expect greater returns, or if they ever go public, there will be immense pressure to collect/store user data. It's too valuable to pass up.

But until future happens, we're stuck with the present. And in this present DDG doesn't do weird tricks with your data.

Privacy is the reason they're growing at all, it's their competitive advantage. I think even investors are smart enough to not kill the chicken that lays golden eggs.

The comparison for me is more like a bicycle, which is really nice, but when going cross country, a car is required.

agree. Mostly I stick with DDG, but, especially for nitche queries, if I don't like the DDG results I give it a try again with !g. And as you say, 1/2 the time it doesn't give better results (but, 1/2 it does)

Why are you concerned about search engine privacy but also happy to have a robotic vacuum that likely sells maps of and data about your home (such as Roomba does)? Seems to invalidate your point about convenience over purity a little bit.

You don't have to tell your wi-fi password to your robotic vacuum. It will work without it.

This is something I think as well. But what's stopping manufacturers from putting 4G chips inside of it?

I have no clue how trivial this is. But I'd assume it is, in which case you're only really "safe" if you open it up and inspect it yourself I guess.

I have an older Roomba from before they did mapping and before they had internet connectivity. I would never buy an appliance that required an internet connection.

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