[HN Gopher] Debian's Chromium changes default search engine to DDG ___________________________________________________________________ Debian's Chromium changes default search engine to DDG Author : nobodyCloak Score : 274 points Date : 2022-08-24 16:55 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.mail-archive.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.mail-archive.com) | smm11 wrote: | Oh, no! All the people buying Debian desktops at Best Buy will be | locked into issues with DDG forever. | seydor wrote: | tbh if we want some competition to google we should support bing | codetrotter wrote: | DDG relies heavily on Bing, I think | Liquix wrote: | The big reasons people seem to be looking for alternatives are | privacy concerns and increasingly aggressive optimization for | NLP. DDG and Bing both have ~1% market share and both return | decent results - why support the one that will ostensibly | become Google II if given the opportunity? | Nuzzerino wrote: | DDG already pays Bing for use of their API though? | TLLtchvL8KZ wrote: | Didn't DDG recently have some controversy about censoring things | they didn't like related to Russia or Russian sites/news? | | I don't have links stored in history but it was fairly recent, it | was their CEO on twitter I believe and they got a LOT of | backlash. | blamazon wrote: | > "At DuckDuckGo, we've been rolling out search updates that | down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation. In | addition to down-ranking sites associated with disinformation, | we also often place news modules and information boxes at the | top of DuckDuckGo search results (where they are seen and | clicked the most) to highlight quality information for rapidly | unfolding topics." | | https://twitter.com/yegg/status/1501716484761997318 | melony wrote: | Need to make sure we are fed the right flavor of neoliberal | propaganda. | yegg wrote: | I realize that due to own my unfortunate phrasing, how our | news results rankings work have been highly misinterpreted | since then. I subsequently put out a clarification thread | (https://twitter.com/yegg/status/1515635886855233537) and | then we (DuckDuckGo) made a help page to explain how our news | rankings actually work. I suggest anyone interested check it | out (it's short): https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo- | help-pages/results/ne... | | In hope to quickly clear up some common misconceptions about | them though: we don't censor, we don't move things so far | down that they are effectively censored, we don't have any | definition of misinformation, and we don't rank based on any | political agenda or opinions (that includes mine!). This is | just a summary though so would read the help page for | details. | torpid wrote: | You still haven't convinced me, or many others who used | your service to the contrary, and your explanation like in | this thread here doesn't match what you are preaching. | | https://twitter.com/pkm_inc/status/1515677462251945986 | yegg wrote: | I'm honestly not sure what you are referring to as the | contrary or contradiction here. The referenced help page | is the most complete explanation of how our news rankings | work. Put another way, what would it take to convince | you? | ncmncm wrote: | There was a posting on HN not long ago warning that DDG was run | by spammers, and that the "privacy" focus is purely a marketing | ploy. | | This should be predictable on the basis that it is a free | service, making you the product, and _somebody else_ , therefore, | the customer. | | It is hard to know what else one can do to get useful search | functionality. It has been a long time since Google dropped any | emphasis on usefulness. Any useful results seem purely luck | nowadays. You cannot even buy a subscription to "useful" from | them or from, AFAIHF, anybody else. | GuB-42 wrote: | Privacy and ads/spam are different things. | | DDG has ads based on your search query, that's how they make | money. The difference is that they don't profile you, at least | that's what they say. You can spam and respect people privacy, | just by not looking who you are spamming. | | And yes, "privacy" is a marketing ploy for anyone who is not | Google. As for general purpose search engines, there are only | two: Google and Bing, most others (including DDG) are just a | front for Bing. There are other, more specialized crawlers | including Marginalia whose author often posts on HN, and there | is Yandex for Russia and Baidu for China, but the general idea | is that if it is not Google, it is Bing. | ncmncm wrote: | "At least that's what they say" is exactly what is at issue. | You offer no reason to believe what they say. | zaphar wrote: | I can find no actual evidence that DDG is run by spammers. This | does not strike me as credible. | ncmncm wrote: | I can find no evidence that DDG is _not_ run by spammers. Any | claim that it is not is clearly what would demand solid | evidence. | cmeacham98 wrote: | That's not how the burden of proof works here. | cmeacham98 wrote: | Regardless of whether you are right or wrong about DDG: | | Doesn't this line of logic lead to every free site being evil, | including the one we're talking on? | vladcodes wrote: | How about removing every search engine and letting a user decide? | I believe Debian users can handle this technical challenge. | Koshkin wrote: | Halleluiah? | radium3d wrote: | Drop the default search engine and show us a list of search | engines with the option to add our own instead of setting it for | us on first run. | gouggoug wrote: | Wouldn't changing the default search engine to "no default" be a | solution too? | | I'm sure many people have thought about it, so, I wonder, what is | the issue with this approach? | judge2020 wrote: | The year of the Linux desktop gets further away as people try | to use their browser and go "why can't I search" and drop it | all together. A lot of people really don't have the patience to | configure their computers, they want it to 'just work'. | gouggoug wrote: | Yea I guess. Though I'm having a hard time with the idea that | someone who went through the trouble of running on Debian in | the first place would have this reaction to the browser not | automatically opening a search engine. | kube-system wrote: | Not everyone who uses Debian also was the same person who | installed it. | | There are a few people (like me) who are crazy enough to | give Linux desktop systems to real end users. Although I | suppose I could just set their search engines for them, but | that's just a pain. | tinus_hn wrote: | For a solution to be required there first has to be a problem. | Then it has to be shown the new solution is better than the | current implementation. | | You're not happy with the default which you can trivially | change but no one has to change, so you propose having no | default so you still have to change it but now everyone has to | change it. | lingotec wrote: | Nuzzerino wrote: | Interesting how every post ever made on your account is to spam | that link, which also happens to be the first time I had ever | heard of it. | jonas-w wrote: | Best approach i think is, they way "ungoogled-chromium" does it. | | They don't enforce organization policies, but they set the | default config to "no search" and then leave it up to the user to | change it. | bastardoperator wrote: | ^This, let the user choose. If you can run Debian you can | change your default search engine. | [deleted] | canadaduane wrote: | This is only useful for people who know what a search engine | is. (Seriously, many people equate "googling" = "search | engine", and don't know there is a general category of this | thing). Unless there are two big bold buttons on start-up--one | that says "Use Google for Search" and the other that says "Use | Duck Duck Go for Search"--it would appear broken to them. Even | then, almost everyone would pick "Google" just for name brand | recognition. | lohfu wrote: | i would argue most people that install chromium, not chrome, | no what a search engine is. unfortunately, since chromium | lost google account login capabilities, i do not install | chromium anymore. now i just think "search engine" means | "google". | xuhu wrote: | Is it common for distros to have deals with search providers in | exchange for keeping them as the default in their browsers ? | aasasd wrote: | Pretty sure the negotiations would go approximately like: "Best | I can do is fifty bucks." | bityard wrote: | Do you believe Debian has made a deal with a search provider? | BeefWellington wrote: | Common? Probably not. | | It's not unheard of though. See: Ubuntu. | oblak wrote: | It was so cool to have amazon snoop on your presumably local | searches... | groovybits wrote: | Citation? | | Lots of folks misremember how the Unity Home Lens feature | actually worked, and that the Ubuntu installer explicitly | asked you whether you wanted it enabled. | | If enabled, there was no presumption of local-only search. | It was front and center in your search results, and the | affiliate revenue was only collected when you clicked on | that Amazon result. | | Canonical claimed that the search was forwarded to them, | and then anonymized to Amazon. That's more than what | Microsoft seems to do with Bing results in Windows search, | which you can't seem to disable without installing third- | party scripts. | | Was it a perfect solution? No - But it was a way to make | revenue in an otherwise open-source project and free of | cost. Its interesting how on some days, people argue for | more money towards FOSS devs, and then others argue that | revenue-building systems shouldn't be implemented. Yeah, | Canonical makes enterprise investments, but they're | obviously weren't in the realm of Red Hat in terms of | enterprise support. | silisili wrote: | I agree that some talk at the time was overblown, most of | it even. | | That said, it was a braindead idea to begin with. Not one | person in existence wants or expects shopping links when | searching their computer via a dock like interface. This | is meant for applications or files. | | When shopping, most are going to research on Google...or | perhaps search a category on Amazon itself before | choosing a product. | | I'd be curious it Ubuntu even made a single sale from | that venture. | rvnx wrote: | It's hosted by Microsoft now, not Amazon anymore | tristan957 wrote: | As reported in an earlier comment, DDG did not make a deal with | Debian for this. | | Prior art is that Linux Mint at one point had Yahoo as the | default search engine in their Firefox builds. I am not sure | whether that is currently the case. | kornhole wrote: | I don't know, but that seems like a reasonable funding solution | given that Google is expected to pay Apple ~$20B this year: | https://dazeinfo.com/2022/01/05/google-pays-apple-for-not-la... | pb7 wrote: | Apple has hundreds of millions of wealthy customers. Debian | does not. | kornhole wrote: | They have a few though. Certainly they don't have captive | users who only install what they are allowed to and use the | default settings. Linux users are probably the worst target | market for advertisers. | pb7 wrote: | >Linux users are probably the worst target market for | advertisers. | | Yes but not for the reason you are imagining. I can think | of a few things in common between everyone I've ever | known to use Linux for personal use and general | consumerism to improve quality of life is not one of | them. | rlpb wrote: | DDG is a more practical default than Google simply because I | don't get a "We'd like to abuse your personal data" pop-up that | gets in the way every time I open an Incognito window to search | for something. | unknownaccount wrote: | Can someone please explain why we are supposed to trust DDG? Isnt | it just a random website that popped up out of nowhere claiming | to be private yet no audit has ever been conducted which | substantiated those claims? | yegg wrote: | Recently the National Advertising Division looked into our | privacy claims and found them supported, see | https://bbbprograms.org/media-center/newsroom/duckduckgo-pri... | & https://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/privacy- | protection/12106... | | Also a lot of what we do is open source on GitHub. We recently | put out a help page detailing or web tracking protections that | link to a lot of the relevant repositories: | https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/privacy/we... | | And finally, I'm not sure that random or just popped up is an | accurate characterization for us. We're pretty well established | at this point, having been around for nearly 15 years! I was an | early user of this site and a frequent contributor during the | early days of DuckDuckGo. | unknownaccount wrote: | Those aren't proper audits. And again, bringing up the fact | that it's open source is a meaningless piece of information | since there is no way to verify it's the same software code | on production. It only serves to trick the average user who | doesn't understand how web servers work into trusting your | service more. | | The best thing you could do, if you actually care about | privacy and not just $$$, is to open-source the entire search | index db and accompanying webserver software, making it easy | for users to setup their own local instance of DDG which is | actually auditable. Additionally, posting a notice on-site | which notifies your users that their searches may be recorded | and tracked in spite of what the privacy policy says(due to | the USA jurisdiction of the company making it susceptible to | National Security Letters and secret gag orders) would be the | right thing to do. | no_time wrote: | You aren't supposed to. Even if you assume they lie in every | sentence about their data collection, with their current setup | it would be much harder for them to build a valuable shadow | profile about you. | | They haven't been caught running fingerprinting scripts yet and | they dont have an account system to tie to your searches. At | best they could use your ip to build a shadow profile and thats | wildly inaccurate in our mostly ipv4 world. | unknownaccount wrote: | How do you know what server-side profiling occurs or does not | occur? There is no way to know that. DDG gives people a | completely misplaced and false sense of security, when they | are just as easily | comprimisable/corruptable/subpoenable/susceptible to NSLs, | EDRs and secret court orders as any other company. | | And I disagree with your premise that it's particularly | difficult to link a persons IP to their real world identity. | There are organized fraud gangs who have it down to a | science. know exactly what dept. of the ISP to call, what to | say, etc. Basically if someone knows your IP and your ISP | account is registered in your name it's game over. | no_time wrote: | I am aware that they are susepctible to nation state level | data collection, just like every site on the internet. I | conduct all my non e2e encrypted | communications/interactions with this in mind. | | I just want to avoid my data being monetized. | unknownaccount wrote: | I'm more worried about teenage crooks equipped with | Emergency Data Request PDF templates than any nation | state. We know Google, Facebook, Snapchat etc were all | giving up information on users without a court order to | these crooks. All it took(probably still) was a EDR | notice alleging an imminent threat to human life is about | to occur -sent from a real or fake police dept email- and | companies will hand over your data without second | thought. | tremon wrote: | Even if they do server-side profiling, they can only track | you on duckduckgo.com. Last I checked, DDG did not also own | an analytics service that has infested half the world's | websites. | MichaelCollins wrote: | > _Last I checked, DDG did not also own an analytics | service that has infested half the world 's websites._ | | uMatrix shows a 3rd party request to | improving.duckduckgo.com every time I visit a page from | DDG search results, ostensibly to measure click-through | rate. This is claimed to be anonymous, but in principle | it gives DDG the opportunity to log much about their | users' browsing habits. | dec0dedab0de wrote: | It is a legit company based in Pennsylvania, not some random | website. Their privacy policy explicitly states they do not | collect user info. If they are caught doing it anyway they | could be open to legal action. While they may be lying, at | least it's better than other search engines where collecting | data is explicit and built into their business model. | | edit: I should have just down-voted and moved on. | unknownaccount wrote: | That doesnt mean anything. I can go ahead and register an LLC | in Pennsylvania too for a few hundred bucks and then put up a | website with a completely fictional privacy policy. I could | collect everyones IPs depite claims that we do not, and no | one would be able to prove it. | jader201 wrote: | > _While they may be lying, at least it 's better than other | search engines where collecting data is explicit and built | into their business model._ | | Just to be clear, are you saying that given the choice | between collecting data and lying about it vs. collecting | data and being explicit about it, you'd choose the first | option? | dec0dedab0de wrote: | _Just to be clear, are you saying that given the choice | between collecting data and lying about it vs. collecting | data and being explicit about it, you'd choose the first | option?_ | | Yes. Absolutely. Because that would give me some legal | recourse. | | Would you hire someone who hides in the fine print they can | steal from you and you can't do anything about it, or hire | someone else and accept the chance that they might steal. | | The choice is between a bad thing definitely happening, or | a bad thing possibly happening. | aendruk wrote: | Some unintended consequences: | | > This change caused my chromium browser to report that it's | being managed by my "organization". I thought that my machine was | somehow compromised. This is terrifying! I wound up deleting my | entire chromium profile before I discovered that the root cause | was this DuckDuckGo config change. | | https://bugs.debian.org/956012 | DiabloD3 wrote: | That sounds like a Firefox bug (and a common one I've seen in | other software). | | Tell me _what_ organization. "Debian" would have been | perfectly fine to show here. | mattashii wrote: | How is that a Firefox bug if the software it is reported on | is Chromium? Those are two very distinct projects. | aendruk wrote: | Surely they meant the browser in question. Feigning | cluelessness isn't helping anything; at best the | distinction you're highlighting is orthogonal to their | point. | lohfu wrote: | how can you be sure? feigning verity isnt helping | anything; at best you will not get downvoted. | aendruk wrote: | People sometimes absentmindedly misspeak. Either that | happened and you can politely s/Firefox/browser/ so that | the comment reads as a reasonable, even insightful | contribution to the discussion, or the comment is utter | nonsense and you can feel smug that you're not as stupid | as they must be. Granting the former interpretation is | the more charitable option. | chippiewill wrote: | Mozilla's never been the same since they started putting | bugs in Chromium | nazgulsenpai wrote: | Perhaps it reminds them of a similar bug in Firefox? | [deleted] | candiddevmike wrote: | Sounds like a Chromium bug, not a Debian bug--it's an insidious | way to keep Google search as the default. | unknownaccount wrote: | The only bug here is the changing of the search engine to a | sketchy website without user input or consent. | DannyBee wrote: | Uh, no? This is managed policy, and this is a 100% good way | of letting the user know that someone else has control of | their settings | | Just because Debian thinks that they are doing the right | thing, they are in fact, controlling the user's settings | through a policy It's just telling you that, as it should. | | The notion that it has anything to do with keeping search the | default or not is like, such a silly assumption i don't know | where to begin. | | The feature overall came from a desire of enterprises to | manage browser settings. Back then, Google was one of the | first to tell you someone was doing that to you so that you | knew your organization could see and control your settings. | | IE had a deployment kit that let you deploy managed browser | settings, but you didn't get told (this changed, eventually, | i think, it's been a while) | | Letting orgs change the default search engine was an | explicit, designed goal, since some wanted to redirect people | to their internal searches by default, etc. | | There is in fact, another way to do this that is easy and | doesn't give the user the same warning, and is meant for | software distributors | | You can just use master preferences here for this kind of | thing and it is meant for this use case. | | Google in fact, made this easy and officially supported, | despite your claim. | | It would likely be pretty silly to make this hard - end users | aren't using these interfaces or tools, and distributors | always know how to change this stuff . | | As HN as grown in popularity, the sheer number of kneejerk | reaction comments has unfortunately kept pace (IE the overall | percent has not dropped. Even sadder, nobody ever goes back | and edits it or replies and was like "you know what, i was | probably wrong". | | They feel comfortable moving on and doing it again. | fabianhjr wrote: | > Uh, no? This is managed policy, and this is a 100% good | way of letting the user know that someone else has control | of their settings | | So Google's defaults are "un-managed" and imply no control | over users' settings? | | Why shouldn't the Google built Chrome binaries display the | same warning and a binary from a specific linux distro | should? | encryptluks2 wrote: | Because those are the default browser settings. As | explained, there is another more appropriate way to | change default settings for distributions. The way Debian | did it is more for enterprise management. | blibble wrote: | > a 100% good way of letting the user know that someone | else has control of their settings | | ah, so it should also be displayed if it's set to Google's | preferences | | they're "someone else" as equally as Debian | sascha_sl wrote: | Reporting that there is a policy is no bug, but maybe there | should be a way to signify that it's customized by your | software vendor (i.e. signed and keys are compiled in) and | that it just sets the default search engine. | | Chromium does change the message to "This device is managed | by <google workspaces domain>" if attached to Chrome | Enterprise. | brnt wrote: | Being "managed by" and loading a policy config do not | equate in meaning, unless we let PR departments redefine | words. | | Moreover, defaulting to Google is also a policy. | sascha_sl wrote: | The intent behind policy loading in Chrome is to allow an | MDM to configure the browser, not for distros to not | write a real patch. | kccqzy wrote: | The policy config is designed for enterprises, not | software distributors. It's Debian that's taking an | unnecessary shortcut here. They could've patched the | source code to change the default search engine. | yunohn wrote: | Preconfigured profiles are the right way to solve this, it's | just that the message could be worded more kindly. | nightpool wrote: | No, preconfigured profiles are not the right way to solve | this, as the message clearly indicates, pre-configured | profiles are designed to be managed by the owner of the | computer, not the software distributor. The right way to | solve this would be to change the built-in default that | applies before any profile is processed. This also would | allow any other profile to override it if they wanted. | | EDIT: Apparently the Debian team agrees: | https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=956012#72 | vetinari wrote: | If it was implemented by managed policy file, then | Chrome/Chromium will complain exactly this way. | | You can see the details in the chrome://policy page. | neilv wrote: | Yeah, that was alarming. Figuring out that it was innocuous | took me 15-30 minutes of urgent, drop-everything-else work. | | I should've thought to post a Debian bug report after that | (especially since the Debian bugs database was one of the first | things I checked). I'd reported the cause informally to some | colleagues, and then must've gotten distracted with what I was | trying to do before I saw the suspicious message. | sascha_sl wrote: | Fedora did this for a while to inject the word "Fedora" into | the User Agent. They eventually stopped because users were | similarly spooked. | MichaelCollins wrote: | Putting _even more_ identifying information into User Agent | strings seems completely insane, who 's interests is that | meant to serve? The number of people in any town with Fedora | in their UA must be minuscule, that blows a huge number of | 'privacy bits', and for what? | bravetraveler wrote: | I think it's for installation tracking to some degree -- | they do this by the browser user agents but _also_ machine- | ids sent with DNF (the package manager) | | I love the project, I really dislike this 'gather things | that might be useful to someone' behavior and having to | MITM my system to see what it's actually doing | fbhabbed wrote: | They still do it | babypuncher wrote: | I'm on a fresh install of Fedora 36 (KDE Spin) and my | Firefox UA is currently showing as "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux | x86_64; rv:103.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/103.0". | lohfu wrote: | cool, so don't switch to chromium. then the internet will | know you run fedora. | bravetraveler wrote: | This is actually not that uncommon... I've stumbled on a | similar thing with the browsers as shipped by Fedora | | It's superficial but I completely understand the alarm | | For those noticing this, be aware that you'll likely see it | elsewhere. Don't panic. | teloli wrote: | Context and rationale here: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi- | bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=956012 | chasil wrote: | ...slightly related question, what is the benefit of using the | Debian package, versus the Ubuntu snap? | | As a CentOS user, the Ubuntu snap is updated much more often | than the EPEL package. | drexlspivey wrote: | TLDR | | > Hey let's change the default engine to DDG | | > I've used DDG for a week, let's do it! | edward wrote: | Better link: https://tracker.debian.org/news/1355283/accepted- | chromium-10... | jchw wrote: | This leaves me with conflicting emotions. I don't know where the | easiest place to find the actual explanation of the change is | (not very familiar with Debian development practices) but I | wonder if it clears things up. | teloli wrote: | https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=956012 | jacooper wrote: | If anyone uses the debian chromium package that is. Because its | always out of date, just use Flatpak. | wheelerof4te wrote: | Did they fix the bug that did not allow you to log on to your | Google account and sync from Chromium? | | Or was that intentional? | striking wrote: | That's something Google did to Chromium, not Debian. | wheelerof4te wrote: | Ah, thank you. | | That's a shame. | kyrra wrote: | Googler, opinions are my own. I don't work on chrome or anything | related. | | Many companies put out free software to drive people towards | their products, and Chrome with Google Search seems to be one of | those. As many know, improving and maintaining Chrome is not | free, and having Google Search being a default is one part of | what helps pay for this work. | | Yes, this is Google, yes, this is likely a tiny drop in the | bucket for them, but at the same time, it's taking away potential | revenue from Google. | | If this was some smaller company that produced a product that had | some default that pointed to one of their SaaS offerings or the | like, there would be potential issues raised over the Debian | maintainers changing this default. | guipsp wrote: | > If this was some smaller company that produced a product that | had some default that pointed to one of their SaaS offerings or | the like, there would be potential issues raised over the | Debian maintainers changing this default. | | Well, thankfully this is Google, and not a small company then. | mtmail wrote: | > it's taking away potential revenue from Google. | | Google still has 92.5% global market share, 10x more than all | other search engines combined | https://radar.cloudflare.com/notebooks/searchengines-2022-q1 | josefx wrote: | Microsoft also has people contributing to Chrome and apparently | DDG searches go to Bing. So no difference. | dchest wrote: | Nah, it's just a fork of KHTML. | bityard wrote: | Chromium isn't just gratis software ("free" has a different | meaning), it's open source software. There is no implicit | expectation that downstream users can't change it any way | want[1] and redistribute the result, that's the whole point of | the open source license that Chromium is released under. | | 1. Within existing legal boundaries, of course | kyrra wrote: | Chromium is distributed under the 3-clause BSD license, so I | totally agree with you that distros can do whatever they want | with it (more details here: | https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/licensing/ ). I'd | imagine many people that work on Chromium would agree with | this and are happy for distros to do what they'd like. If | Google wanted to be pushy with the software, it could do some | other kind of licensing saying people couldn't modify it and | still use the Chromium branding, but they obviously chose not | to do this. | | My take from a business perspective is that Google produces | Chrome and Chromium for a number of reasons. Good will to the | community (with how permissive they are with the license), | and having a stable platform to be able to build things like | GMail and Search on-top of. But there is also the Ads side | that benefits from Google Search being the default. | | So I guess there are really many benefits for Chrome's | existence, and Google Searching being a default is only part | of that. But I still stand by my original post and reasoning. | blibble wrote: | it's also a derived work of KHTML | | so complaining that it is being modified to restore it back | to its demonitised form reeks of entitlement | tremon wrote: | _it 's taking away potential revenue from Google._ | | Wow. Yes, that's how competition works. Are people at the tech | monopolists really that entitled that they consider the entire | world's purse strings theirs to control? | blibble wrote: | > but at the same time, it's taking away potential revenue from | Google. | | many of us see this as a positive | yazzku wrote: | What a bizarre way to justify surveillance. Who said the web | browser can't be sold instead? The browser and the search | engine should not be developed by the same company, there are | clear conflicts of interest there, but we all know why Google | provides all of these products and services "for free". | zzo38computer wrote: | I think that they will need to fork the web browsers and maintain | the forks instead of the originals, in order to make | improvements. This is one of them but is not only one. To | actually make the web browsers good, will require further changes | (sometimes involving adding stuff back in that was removed in | older versions, or removing some of the newly added stuff while | keeping some of it). | | However, I would prefer the default to be "no search", and to | only search if the user explicitly specifies which search engine | to use. (This does not necessarily mean that Debian has to do | this; it only means that it is what would be my own preference. | Some other people will agree with me, although some people will | disagree.) | | Regardless of the default settings though (sometimes different | default settings might be suitable due to the distribution; in | this case it doesn't matter, but for some settings of some | programs, it will matter), the end user should have the | opportunity to change all of the settings. | bla3 wrote: | DDG is for-profit and serves for the most part Bing results. Why | not pick something truly open, like search.marginalia.nu? | rvnx wrote: | Money. | | DDG earns money through Yahoo/Bing Ads & Amazon affiliate | links, and then they share revenue with Linux distributions | (side-note: DuckDuckGo, litterally, can precisely knows what | items you bought via the Amazon affiliate link). | | More explanations here: https://lwn.net/Articles/490517/ | | Btw, 25% or 50% revenue-share is outrageously low for such | partnerships. I hope Debian negotiated better. | yegg wrote: | We (at DuckDuckGo) actually have no current relationship (or | commercial deal) with Debian. They did this on their own. | That is, there is no revenue share here. | | Also, we no longer use the Amazon affiliate program, or Yahoo | for that matter, and we don't (and never have had) any idea | what any individual bought. | flatiron wrote: | They know the types of items you buy. You don't get the exact | items from Amazon. They can guess if you click a link to an | iPhone and then later bought a $1,200 electronic but if you | click on an iPhone and buy a PS5 they don't know what you | bought. | jbman223 wrote: | That's not exactly true - as an Amazon affiliate you do see | the exact items purchased under each of your specific | tracking IDs, as well as the price it was purchased for, | category and device group it was purchased using (desktop, | tablet, mobile). This also includes any purchases the user | makes in a 24 hour session of browsing after clicking your | referral link to Amazon. | | I'm unsure how many tracking IDs you can create in your | account, and as far as I'm aware and can tell, you cannot | pass specific UTM codes or other identifying information | along with a click to Amazon that is passed back to you on | the reporting side. Meaning, you could track users you send | to Amazon, and where you're sending them, and you can see | outcomes, but Amazon only provides the tracking ID back to | you as a reference (this ID is meant to be used on a | site/channel wide level, but as I mentioned above could | possibly be abused depending on how many you can create) | nortonham wrote: | that lwn.net article is from 10 years ago...is it still | accurate? | GekkePrutser wrote: | Is that really the case here? I really doubt it considering | how careful debian is when it comes to privacy. Even the | popularity contest is opt in. | goodpoint wrote: | > I hope Debian negotiated better | | Do you have any evidence that Debian negotiated a deal? | Debian is not a company. | RockRobotRock wrote: | Why are you spouting off accusations without any evidence? | This blind cynicism makes HN a worse place. | marginalia_nu wrote: | Flattering. | | Unfortunately my search engine is far away, both in terms of | functionality and hardware capacity from being able to deal | with that. Maybe some day, who knows, but not yet. Even if I'm | destined to make the Linux of search engines, we're | metaphorically living in 1992 or so. | | Would be funny though because it's both developed on a Debian | workstation and hosted on a Debian server. | isaacremuant wrote: | After DDG decided they would censor material they considered | misinformation from Russia I went out search engine shopping | and I'm using brave search. I value transparency and fairness | and can make my own mind about things (I remember when being | against the Iraq or Lybia wars made you a terrorist | sympsthizer). | | Do you have any stance there? (I'm not saying you should have | one or agree with mine, just curious. Every search engine | might have its time and place). | marginalia_nu wrote: | In general I'm not a big fan of censorship. I think it's | ultimately counterproductive. It sends the message that the | "truth" needs to be protected from independent scrutiny, | effectively undermining the credibility of the | institutions, while enabling crackpots to develop a | persecution narrative. | | That said I do block some sites, mostly nazi stuff if it's | designed in such a way that it crops up in regular | searches. It's a fairly small number of sites though. | brnt wrote: | A Debian (or FSF, or ...) hosted SearX instance would indeed be | interesting and perhaps most Free. | aendruk wrote: | risiOS hosts a searx instance for its users and configures it | as the default search engine. | | I worry about the sustainability of such a service though. | Don't they inevitably get blocked upstream? | | It might work better for more local organizations to host | such projects. I've always liked the idea of community | centers and churches and whatnot hosting shared services for | their community. | bj-rn wrote: | /e/OS does too. https://spot.ecloud.global | zagrebian wrote: | > DDG is for-profit and serves for the most part Bing results | | What's the problem? What matters is that my searches aren't | recorded and added to a profile. | garciasn wrote: | Because the results from search.marginalia.nu are absolutely | irrelevant? | mrweasel wrote: | It would also crash marginalia I think. Which would be sad. | | What would we have Debian change the default search to? I get | that DuckDuckGo might not be ideal, but it is better than | Google, Bing, Yahoo or Marginalia. The results need to be | good enough, but also not obviously anti-privacy. It | basically leave you with DuckDuckGo, Qwants or Ecosia. | Personally I might had picked Ecosia, had they not had a | cookie banner. | aendruk wrote: | Probably because one doesn't exist? That particular example | isn't a general purpose search engine. | nanna wrote: | I think you're confusing for-profit, opensource and, as I | assume would be the motive behind this switch, at least | relatively privacy protecting? ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-08-24 23:00 UTC)