MY default engine is duckduckgo until have a better or same level decentralized search engine
THE YEAR OF THE DUCK
This has always seemed ridiculous to me since they make no-AI searches not even the default, right? There are plenty of search engines that literally have no AI option.
At least you can turn it off.
I take it you haven’t heard that Google is talking about banning schools from accessing search if they refuse AI?
Whoa, no, I haven’t…
It’s in the article, and why ddg is making the overtures to school admins.
lol, nice!
Looks like somebody at DDG doesn’t have their head up their ass and recognizes a golden opportunity when they see one.
A golden goose even.
I like DDG and use them regularly, but how do they make money? Are we not still the product?
While better them than Google, that’s simply because it’s better to have your info spread among many than all concentrated with one. Less potential for evil in theory. But if the only way the company has to pay their bills is selling our data, then isn’t that what they’ll do?
They have a subscription service for some data protection services and their AI.
Yes but I suspect very few actually subscribe. Bottom line is we hope they remain ethical but there is financial incentive to harvest and sell data, particularly if they provide a free service but few pay for it.
Long-term without laws to protect us, we have no protection from corporations and nothing to prevent a different smaller company like DDG from suddenly doing what the big boys do.
Definitely. I was just adding to what I didn’t see the others mention. I had the same fear about proton and turns out it was a valid anxiety.
I think DDG is good for now but until we are better protected by laws (as you mentioned) we will have to continuously migrate to different services as they all become corrupted.
Ads. It’s inherently unsustainable. Try Kagi, it’s not that expensive.
Try Kagi, it’s not that expensive.
I’ve been meaning to do that but haven’t yet. I like the fact that they have stronger European laws to adhere to, though not sure if those laws protect US users similarly or not.
Of course being a paid service at least makes selling user data less tempting for them, but not sure it eliminates the incentive entirely.
as far as i know DDG also serves you ads, but they dont have a tracking network like google, microsoft and meta have
They do serve ads by default, but there’s a setting to turn them off. UBO gets rid of them too, they don’t complain about adblockers
I used to get some (non-intrusive) pop ups saying something along the lines of “hey, we gotta pay bills somehow, turn off the adblocker pretty please”
I use them and like them as a search engine. I just with the noai version was the default, and if they must have an AI version, it be opt in.
I don’t really mind the AI per se. My objection is to the implementation of it where the first returned result is in fact an AI summary which I didn’t in fact ask for.
If I search the term lug nuts it’s probably because I want to buy some, and not because I want to summary of what they are. It must be such a waste so much water every time they do that, only for me not read it.
You can put AI to “on demand”, and it should be the default mode IMO.
I basically never want AI summaries. On top of using 10x energy it’s basically just Wikipedia’s first paragraph with extra steps.
This isn’t the slam dunk win y’all are making it out to be. The school sysadmin only has to change the search engine option to DDG and continue on with Google otherwise.
Go, Duck Duck, go.
Too bad duck duck go duck duck went about 2 years ago. It’s now an ineffective search engine.
Cue the introduction of Duckbooks, and a suite of office tools like Duck Doks and Duck Wings (for spreadsheets).
I think Duck Wings is their line of menstrual pads
Removed by mod
I thought they still use (and push for) AI
Their search is opt-out of AI in settings, instead of google’s approach of always on, and you can also use noai.duckduckgo.com to avoid configuring settings.
Their filtering out AI results is hit or miss, but at least they do provide an option to exclude some of those results.
I get commercials for their AI search.
I also use their non-AI search.
It seems valid to bring this up when they are trying to become the standard for some schools.
I would like to believe that they are above board, but I do not believe anything about corporate values, because corporations are not people. (And even the agendas of people can change. Looking at you, Andy Yen, Proton CEO.)
in schools, i feel like learning how to use AIs and search engines is important. also learning why to avoid them
I wouldn’t put much faith in human values either tbh
If you allow a cookie, you can turn off ai and ads in settings. If you don’t allow a cookie (or for a private window), you can visit https://noai.duckduckgo.com/ and it has ai turned off.
shouldn’t it be off by default?
I would prefer that, but presumably they think it’s a way to generate revenue. Given all the options for search out there, it’s much closer to ideal than many others.
