DuckDuckGo browser beta for Windows bakes in a lot of privacy tools
DuckDuckGo browser beta for Windows bakes in a lot of privacy tools
No extensions yet, but it can fight spam, tracking, and YouTube's algorithm.
I've been doing a lot of reading about DDG since this dropped and ad blocking, a major privacy factor, was not included, and simply, I don't trust DDG anymore. If they were willing to disregard user privacy once, chances are they'll do it again. Hell, I'd bet they already are.
I think Duck Duck Go has been doomed to be subservient to Microsoft's whims ever since Google blocked them from aggregating search results from Google's index. Now the only way to run a private search engine is to use a private index like Xng or Metager. Of those, I'd rexommens Xng
I've had a private SearXNG instance for about a year. Never going back, if you want no ads and to not be tracked by your searches it's the way to go. I host it on a cloud server to further remove myself from being tracked via IP. It's pretty easy to spin one up and I highly recommend it.
*While using edge as the rendering engine
Which unless they're using the old/deprecated Edge engine (I don't even think that is possible), they're basically using Blink/Chromium which I find to be a bit ironic.
I wonder if it would've been possible for them to use Firefox's Gecko engine instead, but I don't know how feasible that idea is.
I wonder if it would’ve been possible for them to use Firefox’s Gecko engine instead, but I don’t know how feasible that idea is.
Considering that Firefox is actually FOSS unlike Chromium, there's absolutely no reason they couldn't have done this. They likely made this choice because it was the easiest, as everyone else is already using Chromium so there's plenty of existing reference material.
If you want a search engine that you can actually control and maintain privacy, while also still having access to DDG, Google, and Bing search results, check out SearXNG.
I host my own instance on a $5/month Linode, so in effect I'm paying $5/month to have completely private search without any influence from corporate overlords.
from the article "utilizes the Blink rendering engine"
when googled you find "Blink is the name of the rendering engine used by Chromium"
so edge rendering engine? not looking like it.
Edge is also Chromium now, so this is technically correct lol. There are literally three browsers in existence right now: Firefox, Safari, and then the 100 faces of Chromium
There's a fair bit of skepticism about DDG in here, and I've heard it before, but I feel like a lot of people are being pretty unfair to them. Are there search engines that don't ultimately use Google or Bing? Yes, there are. Are they good? It depends on what you mean by that.
It takes enormous resources to index even "most" of the internet on a rapid, ongoing basis. This is the main reason why Google and Bing overall provide the most thorough results. The only independent search engine I would trust is perhaps Neeva, because it's subscription-based. An engine claiming to be as thorough as Bing or Google that doesn't take money directly from you is up to something.
A lot of what DDG is trying to do with its browser and search-ancillary features is find some way of making money because they have to pay Microsoft for Bing results.
It's worth thinking about what our expectations are for search engines. If they must be free, but also not ad-supported and data-gathering... How can they afford to exist?
I'm surprised they are just now releasing a browser for PC. They had one for IOS and Android for years, with the only thing available for desktop users was a browser extension.
Being built on Windows' own rendering engine, it's largely relying on Windows' own updates to keep it secure.
I wonder if this is because of their ads partnership they have with Microsoft atm, they kept that avenue open by relying on their engines and security updates??
It's the same on macOS too, using Webkit, and they released that first.
