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Comment by stefanos82 | Hacker News Reader

The day I saw this output, I never looked back.

    mtr -t -c 3 -w duckduckgo.com
    Start: 2022-05-26T18:29:55+0300
    HOST: debian                             Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
        ...
        ...
        ...
      6.|-- microsoft.mrs.franceix.net          0.0%     3   56.2  56.5  56.0  57.3   0.7
      7.|-- ae22-0.ear01.mrs21.ntwk.msn.net     0.0%     3   56.3  56.8  56.3  57.0   0.4
      8.|-- be-21-0.ibr02.mrs21.ntwk.msn.net    0.0%     3   78.4  78.4  78.3  78.5   0.1
      9.|-- be-7-0.ibr02.gva20.ntwk.msn.net     0.0%     3   78.2  78.7  78.2  79.3   0.5
     10.|-- be-4-0.ibr02.zrh20.ntwk.msn.net     0.0%     3   78.5  78.7  78.4  79.0   0.3
     11.|-- be-6-0.ibr02.fra21.ntwk.msn.net     0.0%     3  159.7 158.0 136.6 177.7  20.6
     12.|-- be-8-0.ibr02.ams30.ntwk.msn.net     0.0%     3   78.4  79.0  78.4  79.7   0.7
     13.|-- ae126-0.icr04.ams30.ntwk.msn.net    0.0%     3   78.7  78.9  78.5  79.4   0.5
     14.|-- ???                                100.0     3    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0

If I wanted to use Bing, I would have done so in the first place!

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I'm not sure what sort of conclusion you're trying to make by looking at traceroute data. Every website hosted on Azure is going to show this similar network path. It's known that DDG uses Azure and other Microsoft services. They also happen to have a contractual agreement to use Bing's search results. That doesn't somehow mean DDG is owned or operated by Microsoft or in any way gathering the same data as if you were to just go to bing.com

This will show you the exact same type of data. Are you saying Southern New Hampshire University is the same as Bing?

mtr -t -c 3 -w snhu.edu

  HOST: mbp                            Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
  
    7.|-- be-122-0.ibr02.ch4.ntwk.msn.net                0.0%     3   49.2  50.1  46.8  54.3   3.8
    8.|-- be-9-0.ibr02.atl31.ntwk.msn.net                0.0%     3   53.4  55.6  52.4  61.0   4.7
    9.|-- be-8-0.ibr04.bn6.ntwk.msn.net                  0.0%     3   56.5  54.2  51.8  56.5   2.3
   10.|-- be-12-0.ibr04.bl7.ntwk.msn.net                 0.0%     3   56.3  55.7  50.2  60.7   5.3
   11.|-- ae162-0.icr02.bl7.ntwk.msn.net                 0.0%     3   56.9  53.8  49.8  56.9   3.6
   12.|-- ???                                           100.0     3    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0

> It's known that DDG uses Azure and other Microsoft services.

Known to whom? Certainly not to most users who think they're getting privacy from "Big Tech" by using DDG, yet are ironically getting the complete opposite.

That's an incorrect assumption on your part. DDG allows you to execute search queries without associating those queries or results with any of your personally identifiable information or accounts. Its claim is to provide private search. No part of their mission claims to never use "Big Tech" companies for infrastructure, transport, etc.

Again I'll come back to my example. Do you think that SNHU being hosted on Azure means Microsoft just gets free access to all of their grades, research data, user/student/faculty information, PII, logs, to use for their own business purposes? If that's what you believe is happening, then this applies to every company who uses any public cloud provider.

Seriously, I'd love more proof or sources for these claims that Microsoft (or any company) is using its position as a cloud provider to harvest information from private companies. Otherwise it's nothing more than a conspiracy theory driven by traceroute output, thrown together with misinformed news articles about business contracts.

Given that DDG depends on Bing index, it seems reasonable to host it on Microsoft infrastructure. Would you also avoid DDG if it was hosted on public Azure? Is Google Cloud any better?

I still see a huge difference between the DDG web page and the Bing web page, different positioning, different defaults, different ads, different approach to engage with the user, different ranking (different search results), different search tools.

Even if at some point DuckDuckGo is acquired by Microsoft, I think the differentiation will be maintained.

So instead you are using Google?...

In my experience the Google Search became awful enough around ~2014 so I switched to Bing as a default search provider. I can always search on another provider if I need, but overall Bing was good enough and somewhere around 2018 I moved to DDG, which allows to use '!g' prefix to search in Google.

Sometimes I use that for some obscure results, but it is not that often. And [not] surpisingly enough I have a better experience with IT tech related queries.

Yup this is why I’ve never went to duck duck go and just stuck with Google.

Do you use google only in private browsing mode and via a vpn? Because although DDG are using Bing as a backend, presumably they are not forwarding on cookie data or my ip address to Bing.

> Because although DDG are using Bing as a backend, presumably they are not forwarding on cookie data or my ip address to Bing.

Why would anybody default to believing that to be the case?

DuckDuckGo has built their faux privacy-focused search engine on Microsoft's not-privacy-respecting Bing foundation. They use, benefit from and monetize whatever privacy abuses Microsoft have utilized to provide Bing results (to get the data to the point where it's at now). I've never seen any evidence they have qualms with the moral stench of that, of swimming in that sewer.

No, we don't get the oil from Russia, we buy it from a guy that buys it from Russia. Our hands are clean.

> presumably they are not forwarding on cookie data or my ip address to Bing.

Why would you presume this? The data is already on their infrastructure - literally on computers owned by Microsoft, who has one of the worst records for privacy.

DuckDuckGo's infrastructure is owned by Microsoft? The servers that serve duckduckgo.com are owned by Microsoft? This is news to me.

Indeed, just dig A/AAAA records for DDG and see for yourself.

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