The relevant points:
The filing reveals some details we already knew about DuckDuckGo — for example, that it’s been profitable since 2014 and that its source of operating revenue is currently search advertising, namely search ads provided by Microsoft in the U.S. However, Google’s proposal also attempts to paint a picture of a startup that didn’t invest in search innovation but instead focused on returning investment to its shareholders.
But it contradicts this point, too, noting that a third of DuckDuckGo’s 50 employees in 2018 were working on improving the search engine, for example.
It also dismisses DuckDuckGo’s approach to privacy as one of its failures, claiming that the approach leads to “significant trade-offs to search quality,” by not utilizing data like search sessions, a signed-in experience, and more. If anything, though, these details and others the filing includes show how difficult it is for a competitor to build a search business to rival Google’s.
Neeva was generating less than a million dollars in subscription revenue at the time and was growing, but was still a small part of the search market, the filing also informs us.
The startup exited to Snowflake for approximately $184.4 million in cash, more than double the amount that had been invested, the filing states. This is slightly higher than previous reports that had pegged the number at $150 million.
There’s a bit of editorialising that’s a little too disguised in between facts, but that’s not unusual for Tech Crunch. They’re apparently trying to push against Google’s filing and the arguing that they are indeed a monopoly - not that they’re wrong, mind.
It also dismisses DuckDuckGo’s approach to privacy as one of its failures, claiming that the approach leads to “significant trade-offs to search quality,
This is a bold claim to make considering Google’s search is almost entirely useless now. They’ve let AI-generated SEO trash completely destroy their search results and have turned a blind eye to it.
Thanks chat for restoring my faith in you.
Yes Google search is more useless now than when it was before spiders when it was simply a directory index.
Pot (Google) & Kettle (DDG), they’re both shitty controlled opposition under the new Cable TV Death Grip. The Internet is enshitified, I guess we fucked up killing cable, the parasites simply followed along and made this shit too.
Yeah I don’t foresee Google staying on top for Search unless they make drastic changes.
Definitely not useless but it does make finding things 10, harder
“[Google] also dismisses DuckDuckGo’s approach to privacy as one of its failures, claiming that the approach leads to “significant trade-offs to search quality,” by not utilizing data like search sessions, a signed-in experience, and more.”
gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross
This marks a cultural shift. In 2018, DuckDuckGo wrote about the Filter Bubble, explaining how Google hides relevant results based on personalized, biased preconceptions about you.
Even though people searched at the same time, people were shown different sources, even after accounting for location.
Google hit back, implicitly admitting filter bubbles would be bad, but claiming they weren’t guilty of it.
From Google, which manages to entirely ignore the critiques:
Why might two different people searching for the same thing see results that are different? That’s often due to non-personalized reasons: location, language settings, platform & the dynamic nature of search.
But now, search personalization is no longer a taboo. Google is attacking DuckDuckGo for not doing it. And other corporations, like Kagi, dream of a day when data acquisition can be done so readily that the filter bubble will only ever tell you what you already believe:
[W]hen you ask your own AI a question like “does God exist?” it will answer it relying on biases you preconfigured… [W]hen you ask it to recommend a good coffee maker - it will know the brands you like, your likely budget and the kind of coffee you usually drink. All this information will be volunteered to the AI by you - similar to how you would volunteer your information to a human assistant - but this time to a much larger extent. And you will also do it without fear…
Google Search gives me nothing but trash these days. Poisoned by SEO and advertisements, while DDG often gives me at least real results.
Reading the article, I think the biggest hurdle for adoption of DDG in Europe is simply that the search results in non-english suck in comparison to other search engines. Not only that, but if my language contains characters outside of ASCII, performing a query and then repeating the query with a bang to get better result from another engine results in failure to redirect. Now I have to cut the query, repeat the bang and then paste the query into the other engine manually.
I think the biggest hurdle for adoption of DDG ~in Europe~ is simply that the search results ~in non-english~ suck in comparison to other search engines named Google.
:(((
Still use it though, just expect to add !g half the time.
Two tildes have to be enclosed around text to get a strike-through styling.
~~like this~~like thisduhthanks :)Voyager iOS tricks me, still shows strikeouts with single tildes!
I’d prefer !sp for mostly Google-accurate Startpage results, or something that redirects to a living SearxNG insurance, please.
Ddg still has its issues, but it can be useful for avoiding some types of SEO targeting articles
Sorry, had to clarify. The results suck for non-english content.
I get better results when asking an offline AI like a 70B or 8×7B for most things including commercial products and websites. I’m convinced that Google and Microsoft are poisoning results for anyone they can’t ID even through 3rd parties like DDG. When you see someone’s search results posted about anything, try to replicate and see if you get the same thing. I never see the same thing any more. It is not deterministic, it is a highly manipulative system without transparency.
