Technology @lemmy.world PrivacyDingus @lemmy.world 2mo ago

Bing Search and Bing Custom Search APIs will be retired on 11th August 2025.

learn.microsoft.com Bing Search Services developer documentation

Official developer documentation for Bing Search Services. Learn how to build web-connected apps and services that find webpages, images, news, videos, and more without advertisements.

This is a very low-information announcement here but if this is taken to the extreme, it means that DuckDuckGo, Qwant, and many other so-called "alternative" search engines are going to either have to look for a new provider of results, or die.

31 comments

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates?id=492574

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/bing/apis/pricing

So all tiers are getting discontinued.. Unless there is an unlisted custom tier? It's hard to imagine duckducgo only processing 250 requests per second. But then maybe that is enough and didn't they make their own index anyways? Maybe that was to ease the load

Oh and they suggest using ai instead
- DuckDuckGo, Startpage, Qwant, Ecosia... the last two have been working together to make their own index, hopefully it's going to be usable by then.
  
  I hope so, I don't trust MAGA owned Brave.
Shiiit, I really don't want to go back to Google and all their sponsored/AI/tracking bullshit. Any other privacy-focused search engines out there that don't rely on this?
- Kagi
  
  American company though. Not supporting that
  
  Yeah I'm far too used to getting my search for free to pay for it. I'll fuckin' use chatgpt before I pay a subscription fee for that shit, even if it is a substantially better option.
- Shiiit, I really don't want to go back to Google and all their sponsored/AI/tracking bullshit.
  
  I can tell you with confidence that I simply just won't.
  
  What's the alternative? I guess you can use chatgpt or whatever as a sort of search engine? shrug
- Brave Search has its own index
  
  Is that something built into the browser? i dropped Brave when I heard Google was forcing the adblock-gimping shit in Manifest V3 into Chomium. Also I was never entirely keen on their crypto-hawking bullshit.
- Mullvad Leta is at least google minus the tracking.
- You think Microsoft gives you privacy?
  
  They make billions on targeted ad revenue.
  
  No, I use duckduckgo which is powered by Bing's API. Hence why I said other privacy-focused search engine.
Thurott's article on this implies that "big customers like DDG will be unaffected". Though he also says information is scarce.

31 comments