Re:Google Search Is Dying
by dwighteb on Tuesday February 15, 2022 @03:16PM
(#30352033)
I see your point. I would have sworn that DuckDuckGo was added as a search entry when I installed that app on my ios device, however my memory is hazy from that long ago, so perhaps that search engine was added at a different point, like when it became big enough for Apple to notice them.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
I'm a huge fan of DuckDuckGo. My understanding is that it took a significant amount of effort and public lobbying for them to get added to that list, and it was back in 2014 that was announced.
I suspect the big problem is that even if your search engine succeeds, once you get enough traction you'll just sell up to Google and everything slots back to normal 'do some evil' mode.
I don't want to get too off-topic, but personally I can promise you we will never sell to Google. This problem is very personal. As well as being a programmer, I used to work as a journalist, and I've seen friends in media have their lives and businesses destroyed by Google's ad-tech. And I've seen the Internet turn from a wonderful thing to become a cesspool of content farms, clickbait and seo spam. I can't speak for other search startups, but we will never run ads or use ad-tech or sell user data or invade people's privacy. We're just two people. But we're two people on a mission.
Re:Google Search Is Dying
by donnythecroc on Tuesday February 15, 2022 @03:44PM
(#30352429)
Duckduckgo uses Bing and they also pay millions to be included.
Re:Google Search Is Dying
by ColinHayhurst on Tuesday February 15, 2022 @04:08PM
(#30352748)
We pay nothing so are not included. On the other hand we are happy to provide a one click search from our search engine or eight other search engines/services, currently from our web app [0]. One click for Google (if that's your thing), one click for Bing or Gigablast search engine results, one click for Brave and some of the many Bing and few Google syndicates - DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, Startpage.
[0] https://blog.mojeek.com/2022/02/search-choices-enable-freedo...
Source on the ‘pays millions’?
Even if DuckDuckGo and Bing pay absolutely nothing, it's good leverage to make Google pay even more, and its already public knowledge Google pays a lot to remain the default search engine on iOS, to the tune of billions of dollars a year:
> https://9to5mac.com/2021/08/25/analysts-google-to-pay-apple-...
> https://www.npr.org/2020/10/22/926290942/google-paid-apple-b...
etc, etc. Given Google pay a lot more for this privilege today than in years past, this may well have been part of the strategy.