I'd rather see an investment. Maybe by providing a really good deal on maps[0]. Seems like this is a win-win for both. Apple wants to focus more on services and DDG gets a bit[1] of validation by being able to provide Apple maps.

[0] Obviously I have no idea if this is the case.

[1] As if they needed any.

Separate discussion from last week, most argue against it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18816748

+1 - acquisition by a FAANG would be a instant turn-off for someone like me. I value its independence.

Not to mention it would probably be a literal turn-off. Apple would redesign it to require their OS and HW in order to search with, to correspond with Apple lock-in philosophies. Your ability to use it would be turned off.

Probably not, but they just aren't good at services, so I'm sure they would botch it in short order.

I'd argue for it. Apple is missing a search engine, has deep-enough pockets and resources to build its own engine if DDG API contracts were stopped, and is favored by people who value their privacy.

Apple is missing a search engine. That doesn't imply that Apple needs a search engine, nor does it imply that acquiring one would be the most profitable thing they could be doing with their available resources.

Arguably, a key part of Apple's success is that they don't behave like Microsoft.

DDG doesn't even -really- have a search engine, they are using Bing's API. So the acquisition wouldn't even make sense.

DDG uses Bing as well as a bunch of other sources, including their own crawlers. Portraying it as a sort of "Bing in disguise" is incorrect.

Their own crawler is not used for organic search results. See sibling comment.

Wait, really? I thought DuckDuckGo merely implemented APIs ("bangs") to fallback search engine providers in case a user preferred it.

Surely DuckDuckGo has implemented their own search engine, crawler and indexer apart from other providers?

> Surely DuckDuckGo has implemented their own search engine, crawler and indexer apart from other providers?

No. They have their own crawler but it's only used for Instant Answers and other widget stuff.

https://duck.co/help/results/sources

> In fact, DuckDuckGo gets its results from over four hundred sources. These include hundreds of vertical sources delivering niche Instant Answers, DuckDuckBot (our crawler) and crowd-sourced sites (like Wikipedia, stored in our answer indexes). We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we also source from a variety of partners, including Oath (formerly Yahoo) and Bing.

So in other words, all organic search results come from Bing and Oath.

But then what's the point?

EDIT: This is an honest question, not snark. I'd appreciate an honest answer instead of a blind drive-by downvote. I don't learn anything about why a thin UI layer over a bunch of search engines I can access directly is useful for privacy if you just downvote my comment.

Because you're not accessing the search engines directly, you're going through a sort of proxy that hides your identity.

I have to agree I’m dissapointed by this. I thought there was at least one party with an independent web search engine.

With Apple pushing privacy as a major feature of iOS compared to alternatives, if the company continues taking a consumer focused, privacy respecting approach acquiring DDG could help strengthen branding, and maybe bring together an integrated privacy solution competing with Google’s integrated ad solution.

Would DDG improve apples AI work? Google seems to be ahead of Apple with smart assistants, maybe that only a result of bad privacy policies on Googles part.

Duckduckgo is not a search engine. It's an UI layer for search APIs provided by other players like Bing and Yandex.

I'm a privacy nut but their search engine is unusable, i feel like for every 3rd search i need to switch back to Google to get proper results, Bing is a lot better for programming/computer answers.

Can you give an example of a search that works in Google, but not in DDG? It must be a couple of months since I last searched with Google.