Looking over their Wikipedia page, DDG looks like they’re reasonably independent.
Why is everyone saying they’re just Bing?
Anon has a tip
Submitted 3 weeks ago by kali_fornication@lemmy.world to greentext@sh.itjust.works
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/f6c29bda-a413-46ce-9bcf-de521756fafe.png
Comments
DahGangalang@infosec.pub 3 weeks ago
rtxn@lemmy.world 3 weeks 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 3 weeks 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 2 weeks 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.
Unleaded8163@fedia.io 3 weeks 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.
Whostosay@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
With all due respect, I don’t enough enough about butchering but it sounds far less complicated than what we’re talking about
DahGangalang@infosec.pub 2 weeks ago
I can’t find any sources to corroborate this claim. Can you link some sources?
carpelbridgesyndrome@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
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)
DahGangalang@infosec.pub 2 weeks 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).
excess0680@lemmy.world 3 weeks 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 2 weeks ago
The whole tank man stuff is fucking stupid
new_guy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I use DDG just because they have !bangs and it saves me so much time.
!yt <keyword> searches YouTube !imdb <keyword> searches IMDb
And so on.
Alaknar@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
I just have that in my browser. If I type
y search termI get a YouTube Search page for “search term”.nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
you can do this with most other search engines i think by prefixing your search with the URL of the website
festnt@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
no, bangs take you to the website and searches it in there
kender242@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
If bangs are used for positive searching how do I search for things without the name. I thought !youtube filters out YouTube.
dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
-YouTube.com should filter it out. !yt actually takes you to YouTube and then searches the keyword(s).
BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz 2 weeks ago
DDG has the ai summary too
irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Its easy to disabled. Also, check noai.duckduckgo.com
endless_nameless@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I fucking hate ai but ddg’s ai summary is the one place I don’t mind it. It doesn’t open unless I click it, and I only click it when I don’t actually give a shit about the correctness of something. It’s great for throwaway factoids that you’re curious about in the moment but won’t remember or care about an hour later lol. Often saves me from wasting time going down a wikipedia rabbithole when I need to be doing something else
stevedice@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
It’s great for throwaway factoids that you’re curious about in the moment but won’t remember or care about an hour later
Not even the greatest Sci-Fi writers of, this, and all future times could ever hope to conceive an idea of an intelligence, not of human origin, that would be able to answer such riveting questions as “what’s the name of that guy in that movie?”. Cutie, eat your positronic heart out.
Apytele@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
lite.duckduckgo.com is my default search engine. I have other more specific searches for stuff like Wikipedia and sepiasearch, and I use duckduckgo regular for shopping.
festnt@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
yeah idk what theyre talking about
idogoodjob@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
DDG at least has a setting to disable it and I believe a separate URL if you don’t wanna use an account or cookies to save the setting
timestatic@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Thats honestly why I use Qwant. They’re from europe (France) and even tho they still rely on Bing they are working with Ecosia to build their own independent european search index
saimen@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
So ecosia doesn’t rely on google nor bing?
timestatic@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Ecosia does still rely on Bing, and will for a while. But they are building their own search index and started rolling it out for more and more search queries and languages last year.
SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
I use Ecosia. There’s just a regular setting to turn the AI thing off. It’s like 1 of 5 settings they have in total.
zeezee@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
[which is also bing…](“Search results and related ads on Ecosia come from our partners Microsoft Bing” …ecosia.org/…/579-search-results-providers#%3A~%3…)
Marinos@feddit.nl 2 weeks ago
It’s not just bing. It’s results from bing, Google and eusp.
timestatic@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
No they’re building their own search index currently with Qwant
JoeBigelow@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Bing, the porn search engine of your dreams.
some_kind_of_guy@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Ah, a fellow Bing Boy
Staden_@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
On DuckDuckGo there’s this weird phenomena where if my query includes words that are even slightly related to porn themes all my results will be porn. Does this happen on Bing as well?
JoeBigelow@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
I don’t know, if I’m not looking for porn I don’t use bing.
steeznson@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
just Bing it bro!
for real though if you ever want to watch a movie for free online it is by far the best for finding copywrited material (due to not filtering it out and letting you search for videos > 20 mins in length)
Kolanaki@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
Fuck everything, I’m going back to Ask Jeeves.
fibojoly@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I just want altavista back.
fibojoly@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I just want altavista back.
fibojoly@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I just want altavista back.
Dudewitbow@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
in bings credit, it gave me the archive links to rock band 4s removed content for uhh… file existance purposes that google outirght scrubs out.
slothrop@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
ddg has always been bing, but it’s always been pointless pointing. They laugh at maga, though, and wonder about sheep.
pyre@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
DDG is not bing. using bing’s database and being bing are two different things, and by the way, I’d use bing over Google’s shitty ass shit every day.
ChicoSuave@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Does Bing not work? Because DDG gets results for me
yata@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
At least as good as google. The belief that google is a better search engine is antiquated, based on a situation that no longer exists. Google has long since fallen to ad algorithms and bloat.
Alaknar@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
People have this weird fetish for “Microsoft Bad”. If it comes from Microsoft, it’s bad by default. Reality doesn’t matter.
The fact that Edge is just objectively a better browser than Chrome is irrelevant, because “Microsoft Bad”.
The fact that Bing now provides just as good, if not better, results as Google, because Google enshittified its own product is irrelevant, because “Microsoft Bad”.
The fact that Copilot runs on the exact same models as ChatGPT and gives practically identical results is irrelevant because “Microsoft Bad”.
Etc., etc.
festnt@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
microsoft is bad. google is too. and so is openai.
edge used to be internet explorer, which used to be known as the worst browser ever. and if you care at all about privacy, the chrome-based microsoft browser isn’t a good idea.
bing used to be really bad.
copilot gets shoved down every window user’s throats.
halvar@lemy.lol 3 weeks ago
They could use Google as far as I’m concerned. From a privacy perspective if 1 million people are proxied through DDG, Google won’t be able to collect any personal data as long as DDG can be trusted with their security. And as far as I’m concerned they can be.
festnt@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
startpage does that
UntimedDiffusion@piefed.zip 2 weeks ago
DuckDuckGo has ai btw
lessthanluigi@lemmy.sdf.org 2 weeks ago
UntimedDiffusion@piefed.zip 2 weeks ago
I’m aware. To be clear, I use DuckDuckGo. But I think it’s disingenuous to recommend it to people who are looking for a browser without ai without also warning them that you need to type in the special codephrase to remove its ai as well
FinjaminPoach@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Vague… they’re going to gouge their eyes out or they’re going to become oedipus and fuck their own mom?
Kkk2237pl@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
There are other options, qwant, ecosia…
RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Didnt DDG get in trouble for selling user data without telling anyone? Or was that Brave Browser? Maybe it was both, I don’t remember…
massi1008@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
What’s even the point of writing the comment when you don’t remember? Just stirring drama for the sake of it isn’t helping anyone.
TheGreenWizard@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
God I love searx
Psythik@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I don’t. It never returns relevant results.
TheGreenWizard@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Searx is a metasearch engine, if you have it aggregate results from ddg/bing I’d imagine you’d get results similar to ddg/bing.
Hupf@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
God I love ar
ICastFist@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
I only use ddg to watch youtube from their video search tab
SolacefromSilence@fedia.io 3 weeks ago
Ok fine, point me to where I should be searching?
yakko@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
I mostly try to find something on Wikipedia first whenever I can (surprisingly often) and go from there.
fibojoly@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Wow, turns out I’ve fucking Anon’s mum all these years? Amazing!
wander1236@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Google’s been getting worse, but it’s not like Bing has been getting better. Maybe it’s just the way I search for things, but I can never get Bing to work.
criss_cross@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The problem is you have so many SEO slip makers gaming the algorithm that no one can keep up.
And most of the decent content is gated behind walled gardens now.
CuriousRefugee@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
I use DDG, which works for about 90% of my searches, but when it doesn’t work, I go back to Google, often in a private window. I do agree that Google is still just, I dunno, better?
Black616Angel@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
Just use the !s bang in your ddg search. It forwards your search to startpage, a google proxy. Same results but more protection.
Damage@feddit.it 2 weeks ago
When I used DDG, the !g bang to search on Google became wired in my brain to “get me better results, please”, so much that I sometimes tried using it in Google search too.
SlurpingPus@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Idk what I’m doing wrong, but any time I can’t find something in DDG and turn to Google, I get exact same results.
Exceptions are:
localized search (obviously), however I don’t use that in Google either and just do ‘searchterm cityname’ or use the local map service instead.
searching on Reddit: Google has an agreement with Reddit for vacuuming all new content immediately.
looking for a meme image by its description or caption. This definitely works in Google and pretty much doesn’t in Bing/DDG.