There are really only two usable search engines actually indexing the entire Internet: Google and Bing. Yandex also does but I’ve never seen it recommended for anything other than Russian language content (the company itself seems to be falling down a mineshaft at the moment). Baidu also does some although every Chinese exchange student I talked to about it (admittedly not many) advised only using it when Google is blocked. Every other engine is just wrapping Google or Bing (yes that includes Yahoo and DDG)
Comment on Anon has a tip
DahGangalang@infosec.pub 1 day ago
Looking over their Wikipedia page, DDG looks like they’re reasonably independent.
Why is everyone saying they’re just Bing?
carpelbridgesyndrome@sh.itjust.works 20 hours ago
DahGangalang@infosec.pub 6 hours ago
Can you link any sources on this?
I think that’s my big hesitance to believe it, there just doesn’t seem evidence (besides other commenter mentioning an anecdotal tank man reference).
carpelbridgesyndrome@sh.itjust.works 4 hours ago
In the wikipedia article:
DuckDuckGo’s results are a compilation of “over 400” sources according to itself, including Bing, Yahoo! Search BOSS, Wolfram Alpha, Yandex, and its own web crawler (the DuckDuckBot); but none from Google.[69][7][70][71][72] It also uses data from crowdsourced sites such as Wikipedia, to populate knowledge panel boxes to the right of the search results.[71][73] During a Bing API outage in 2024, DuckDuckGo stopped showing results, indicating that Bing provided a substantial portion of DuckDuckGo’s results.[74][75]
Unleaded8163@fedia.io 1 day ago
My understanding is that they outsource the search part to bing's search back-end. Saying DDG is just Bing is like saying two butchers are the same because they get their meat from the same supplier.
DahGangalang@infosec.pub 6 hours ago
I can’t find any sources to corroborate this claim. Can you link some sources?
Unleaded8163@fedia.io 1 hour ago
It looks like Bing is just a part of the answer: https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources
Most of our search result pages feature one or more Instant Answers. To deliver Instant Answers on specific topics, DuckDuckGo leverages many sources, including specialized sources like Sportradar and crowd-sourced sites like Wikipedia. We also maintain our own crawler (DuckDuckBot) and many indexes to support our results. Of course, we have more traditional links and images in our search results too, which we largely source from Bing. Our focus is synthesizing all these sources to create a superior search experience.
Whostosay@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
With all due respect, I don’t enough enough about butchering but it sounds far less complicated than what we’re talking about
Rug_Pisser@piefed.zip 1 day ago
Outsourcing back ends is one of the key parts of being a butcher.
rockerface@lemmy.cafe 1 day ago
Some people get paid good money for outsourcing their back end. Some also get paid for outsourcing other peoples’ back ends, but that is generally frowned upon.
excess0680@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Nobody else has mentioned this but there have been several times that Bing censored something and it propagated to DDG, most notably when Microsoft censored Tank Man (intended for China, probably) but then Tank Man also was censored on DDG.
Partly because of these incidents, I could never consider DDG reliable.
Lileath@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 hours ago
The whole tank man stuff is fucking stupid
rtxn@lemmy.world 1 day ago
DDG gets its results from other search engines. Bing is one of them.
There was also a big thing about DDG allegedly selling user data to Microsoft, which the 4chan primates probably interpreted as DDG being a different front-end to Bing.
Ganbat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
It wasn’t exactly selling, but it also wasn’t alleged. They made an exception for Microsoft’s tracking scripts in their tracking script blocking settings on their phone apps and extensions in exchange for utilizing bing as a backend. Here is the blog post where they walked it back after backlash.
DahGangalang@infosec.pub 6 hours ago
I have heard about them selling search data to bing. While concerning, I don’t think that’s quite the same thing. I get how 4Chan could blow that out of proportion.