The Search Engine that Vows Not to Track You [video] | Hacker News Reader

The Search Engine that Vows Not to Track You [video]

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65 pointstmslnz34 comments

But the problem is that Google works so well because it tracks me! Search is local and contextual.

Not my searches. If I need something location sensitive, I have no problem adding the location in the query.

While I have myself made the decision to start using DDG and abandon Google for these very privacy issues, I will voice another devil's advocate argument that there's another big plus to personalization (and data tracking): If I search "go" or some equally generic keyword which has one technical meaning besides a host of other ones, Google will actually be pretty smart about giving me results that I'm after, thus saving me lots of time.

Searching for these sorts of things is the one thing I still use Google for. Even when I'm not logged in, Google still does a better job with somewhat ambiguous queries. That being said, it does a better job for me. When I search for "go" I'm looking for the programming language, not the game(s). Someone else might feel differently.

As an aside, whenever a new search engine comes out, or there is an update to an existing one (Bing, mostly), the test I always use is to search for "python" with no other search terms. If the results are dominated by articles about the animal (as was the case with Cuil a few years back) then the search engine and its weighting choices probably isn't a good fit for me, personally.

Right, that's the point.

Google will increasingly give you better results the more you use it because of data-tracking and search personalization.

But I'm talking about using Google anonymously, incognito. Sure, they might guess who I am from my IP address or font list or something weirder, so who knows. But assuming they don't know who I am, or at least act like they don't know who I am, Google still works better for certain types of query. I think this has to do with the way the software itself is tuned, or perhaps what their other customers search for.

I know I'm probably an odd user out, but I find myself annoyed more often than not that Google tries to make every query I have return local results. I agree with Skalman that I can add a location if I want to search locally.

I feel about the same. I recently switched back over to DDG (and Firefox). I'm happier with their privacy conscience philosophy (even if turns out moot because of it's location) and will give it my search queries going forward. Ducking it works for me. A Googleopoly display of local results and products is not always beneficial for me. I agree that adding location in the query is easy enough.

For "local", it seems quite feasible to add optional location personalization.

For context, I find DDG's top-of-the-results-page "did you mean this foo or that foo" fairly reasonable most of the time.

I've always hated the personalization Google does, because I don't want local results.

Literally the only "local" searches I do are on Google Maps, after I have navigated to the place I'm interested in. I have absolutely no use for a search engine that tries to cram local results down my throat. If I want local, I'll ask for local. Explicit is better than implicit.

import this

Agreed -- I love the fact that it just works. However their social experiment with integrating Google+ and search has always been a lousy experience for me.

Every search engine suffers from a particular paradox which I will describe, but Google suffers from it twofold by virtue its contextualized searches. The paradox is simply this: it fundamentally cannot, for instance, offer a meaningful search on something like "cheap car insurance." It can only tell you who the best advertisers are. If the cheapest company has little to no advertising budget, you'll never find them on Google. Your best bet will be to find them through a secondary insurance search engine which, by virtue of its massive advertising budget, does show up on Google.

I don't know if DuckDuckGo solves this problem. It probably doesn't because the problem is driven by keyword searches and only exacerbated rather than created by advertising-centric filtering. I'm not even sure it can be solved. It's something I'd like to see tackled, though.

Don't worry, you can use DDG and still be tracked by Goolge! With content of some sort loaded from Google's servers on around 80% of all sites, this mostly happens without you doing anything. But if you're really concerned, just use Chrome and/or set your name servers to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.

Hmm, interesting point about the Google DNS servers. I'm not too familiar with DNS servers; anyone can give more details on how they could be used to track people? Does a DNS request contain enough information to allow for the kind of thing?

DNS is a service that resolves a domain name to a specific IP address that handles requests for that domain, and is transparently invoked when visiting websites and other services.

See Google's FAQ: https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/faq#privacy

That's a very well written FAQ.

Makes me feel much better about using their DNS.

Just piecing together known data here but...

My IP address requests a particular site form DNS, in theory that request could be recorded. Even if Google doesn't know that I'm at that IP (which they could have gotten from some other site I'm logged into (say Amazon)) they know that my particular ip address has requested certain sites. They can then serve ads to that IP based on context

it is safe to assume that Google record IP information (among other things) from Google Adsense and Google Analytics... which you probably visit at least one site that use one or the other at least once a day..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_server

personalized searches is the second thing that I hate most about Google search ... the first being not being able to use the "+" and "-" operators... thanks to Google+ (it happened at the same time)

As nice as the privacy aspect of DDG is, I cannot see it sustaining the traffic over a long period. The main issue here is Google did a lot of vertical integration which DDG did not do yet. The biggest feature lacking is directions. Searching for an address on Google automatically shows it on a map and you can immediately go to the map and get directions. The number of searches just to get information (like code search etc) should be less compared to searching for services and directions. They need to build these features in to sustain the interest and to get more regular users.

Searching for an address on ddg shows a map, it's just not a google map. It also has links to investigate the address at Bing, Google, and MapQuest. Also, you can use !gm ADDRESS directly, and it passes your data to google over ssl via DDG's server.

I think a big issue for DDG is this type of exclusivity complaint. And while it's a valid concern for some use cases, I really don't see DDG telling you to stop using other search services - they actively promote it.

I use DDG all the time, but I don't think twice about searching for "!gm ADDRESS" if I know i want to investigate an address via Google Maps. The benefit is that I can easily bounce to whatever service I know will respond to my query best.

If the concern is that DDG should know what service to send me to automatically (Addresses go to google maps, for example), then I think it's just a disconnect with their goal, and probably you should stick with Google - it sounds like it works well for you and the privacy aspect of DDG just isn't compelling. And that's fine.

Searching for information should be less than searching for directions/services?

Also, google maps and google are completely different things. I have no trouble going to google for maps and directions and search elsewhere...

But directions are searches.

If I know what directions you're searching for, that's more than enough information to build a profile of you that includes everything from what you eat, to what hobbies you have, or whether you're having an affair.

It's all the same thing. There's no point in going half / half on search engines if your goal is privacy.

Only if I search for every place I go to. If you had an affair you might search for an address once, which hardly implies anything. I don't need directions and couldn't for the life of me be bothered to google an address I already knew how to get to. I don't use google maps to find out where my work is every morning...

There is a great point in limiting the number and kind of searches if your goal is privacy. There is a great point in going half / half on search engines. Especially on something as directions, if that was a big issue you could hardly live with an android phone (or iOS for that matter).

Now, cell tower location tracking - that the EU forces my ISP to keep track of, could tell an automated algorithm all the things you've mentioned. And the only way to opt out of that would be to abandon mobile phones altogether which is quite a sacrifice (just leaving the phone when doing the stuff you'd rather no one would find out is a huge red flag).

Huh? Who searches Google for addresses? I search Google Maps for addresses... I guess my mom, or someone else who thinks that the Google search bar is "the Internet" might do that, and perhaps other savvy people have workflows that I have never picked up, but I just don't see this as a big deal from my perspective.

Wait, what's your workflow here, that you find searching GM more fluent than searching all-of-Google? (I'm genuinely curious, hoping to improve my workflow).

Here's my approach: I type the address I want into Firefox's "awesomebar" (i.e. the URL bar). It loads Google, with a search result, with the top result being the address I want. I move my hand to the mouse, click for GM, it loads my search, and I continue using the mouse to navigate GM.

The alternative (afaik) is loading GM somehow (bookmark? type URL and hit enter? other?), waiting a surprisingly long time for GM to load, then typing the address, then hitting enter, THEN I can move my hand to the mouse and start the mouse-oriented navigation.. It seems to me it has inferior flow. AND it requires me to either allocate screen space to a GM bookmark, or else type "maps.g" every time. So that's extra work.

So although I don't think Google is "the internet"... I'm having trouble figuring out what workflow you're referring to that improves on my do-the-dumbest-thing approach.

I too go directly to a search engine's map service for location stuff. One reason being that I don't want to become addicted to the overly accessible nature of Google's AI and service integration; becoming addicted would make an eventual switch to a competitor far more jarring. It's for the same reason that I use email clients rather than a service provider's webmail interface. Or Open Office over Google Docs.

I made "m" a search keyword in Firefox which queries google maps directly. So I just do ctrl-l m <address/query> enter. No cache misses, ahem mouse clicks, involved.

Well first of all, I seldom search for an address. 99% of the time I'm either looking for a general category (places to eat or sleep, that sort of thing) or directions from one town to another (specifics can be worked out later on a mobile device once I get there).

So, if I'm looking for, say, a place to eat, I just go to Google Maps (I just tested it, I only need to hit "m" to make it auto-complete in Chromium) and then type "restaurants" or whatever and hit enter. Or, if I'm looking for a place to eat in another town, I type the town name, hit enter, then type "restaurants" and hit enter again.

An alternative, since I have DDG configured in Chromium, is to type "!m <place> restaurants", which gets me the same result, no clicking. But frankly, I don't even usually take advantage of the shortcut because it just doesn't seem that much better for the frequency with which I search Google Maps (probably twice a day, on average).

I will take this speech with a fair share of reservations. Not discrediting his ambition, but I will let time to tell. For example, Google started with 'Do No Evil' and has (had?) decent ambitions. However as it grows and pressures start to grow from shareholders, internal war for turfs, etc, market economy is slowly but steadily gaining an upper hand. What I meant is: when a company grows to a certain size, it will slowly morph into something that cannot be changed easily. Look at MS, Zynga, Novell, IBM, HP, Intel, AMD, and so on and so forth.

"We've seen that most of our users are connecting from American IP addresses... shit! Can we redo that?"

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