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Comment by jsnell | Hacker News Reader

> Among other measures, the letter asserts that users should be prompted periodically to confirm their preferred service

Thanks DDG! I'll really enjoy not having my explicit choices be honored, and to be repeatedly nagged to confirm them.

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Their idea of accomplishing "user preference protection" is very modern, meaning designed to distract the user and steal their attention. It sucks.

But the overall goal seems to be user preference protection after all and in today's world where UIs are being unnecessarily changed on a weekly basis, less tech-literate people may not notice search engine change.

Mozilla - company which gets about 90% of profits from Google - at least once pulled a global search engine RESET resulting in Firefox search engine being set to "default" which is Google's. If memory serves, they downplayed it ("so what? if you don't like Google, change it back") afterwards.

> at least once pulled a global search engine RESET resulting in Firefox search engine being set to "default" which is Google's.

Yeah, I’ll need to see a source here.

FWIW, I've used Firefox since version 1 and I've seen it happen personally more times than I can count.

There's always some kind of excuse and in some cases I believe them, but it's happened so often that it's hard not to wonder...

I’ve been using a non-google search for around 5 years and FF since Quantum (which also seems to have been 5 years ago), I have never had it happen.

From time to time, Firefox Developer will prompt you to "get a fresh experience" by resetting all the settings to their defaults. It still requires the user to say "Golly, sure!" and click the button, but it resets everything.

If you're paying just the slightest bit of attention, you don't click that button.

I'm cognizant enough to know that is not what is taking place for me. I've used Firefox much, much longer than 5 years and it happens much less frequently now. I use Firefox across over half a dozen machines concurrently all day and if it's going to happen to anyone, it's me.

It's honest-to-god bitflips/malconfigurations after updates or whatever. I want to believe it's not some secret deal with Google.

What do you know, today my default search flipped to YouTube Video Search. This is how you know it's just incompetence and not maliciousness.

But only if you stopped using it. I’ve only ever seen that when visiting my parents, as my FF there only gets used once or twice a year.

> Yeah, I’ll need to see a source here.

I'm not "sourcing" this information from any news site which I could share a link to, but from a personal experience. May have screenshots showing the issue but not where I can find them at this time.

I was incorrect however, but not so much. The effect was as stated - my searches were going to Google which I have never previously visited on the browser and which I did not intended to share any information with.

In 2020, Firefox version 80.0 (or a minor version under 80.0) introduced changes to search which included Google icon appearing as the first, pinned, position on shortcuts (Top Sites) list with a little blue magnifying glass icon sticked to it. At the same time address bar searches started going to Google despite DDG being configured as a main search engine.

Google being inserted as a top position of "top sites" somehow made Firefox use it as a first dropdown position in address bar and all searches typed into the address bar were going to Google as it was the top choice. This was happening while DuckDuckGo was still set as the default search (this I didn't remember correctly - default search engine was not changed but ignored when using address bar) and the only way to remove this behavior was to enable top sites (which I had hidden), remove Google icon from new tab / top sites list and then it disappeared from search bar dropdown list.

The fact which I think should not be ignored here is that Mozilla renewed their deal with Google just weeks prior to this "incident". This makes me think that this was an intentional not incompetent move.

They've certainty done it when dropping support for search engines:

https://www.ghacks.net/2022/02/18/mozilla-will-replace-the-d...

Very different from the FUD GP was spreading.

Meanwhile I have to deal with Google maps prompting me to enable GPS to get my current position and then leaving it on permanently.

Apparently no amount of analytics by the company with the most widely used analytics package can make a connection between me closing Google maps, clicking through settings and turning of GPS again.

I would almost consider this proof that analytics are a waste of time if it weren't for dark UI design patterns and the very likely motivation to make this "explicit" choice an intentional pain to deal with.

I have a tasker rule to enable location when maps is opened, and disabled when closed. Works fine

DDG has all the same profit incentives that Google has. They just get the benefit of the doubt for having underdog status.

Sure, DDG's privacy policy and their privacy blast radius is better than Google, and I do use them over Google. However, I don't usually trust when for-profit businesses claim to be leaving money on the table out of respect for principles and values.

It might be nice to have a competitive non-profit search engine akin to Wikipedia.

Yeah, I would think that just having the user explicitly choose their search engine at the start should suffice (thus having no problematic default option). I think DDG's fear is that most users will just choose Google because everyone wants to get through onboarding ASAP, and their assumption is that users will be more likely to choose a more privacy-conscious option in the future.

Agreed. I saw that and immediately ignored the rest.

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