using DuckDuckGo means paying microsoft tax?

[fedvasu]

Don't get me wrong , i was and still i am DDG fan ,

i knew that it used yahoo apis, had bing back end for some searching , but this post though paranoidal (please ignore that IE?windows FUD) , points out one simple fact that DDG has a statement of not investing *any* resources in web-crawling and hence will use Bing , that inevitably ,means *filtered , biased and censored results* , which fails DDG. and would help fund Micro$oft.

what's the truth (as you know or conceive it)? , if had to choose between , two Micro$oft and Google i would choose the lesser evil (As i concieve) : Google.

additional DDG post A close look on DDG

[bob]

Read that yesterday, since DuckDuckGo is installed by default on Mint's Firefox. Apparently, Google doesn't feed back anything to the distro (as yet), so they've opted for one that does. MS: "You pays me now or you pays me later...."

[fedvasu]

Originally Posted by bob

Read that yesterday, since DuckDuckGo is installed by default on Mint's Firefox. Apparently, Google doesn't feed back anything to the distro (as yet), so they've opted for one that does. MS: "You pays me now or you pays me later...."

yeah , true dat , Micro$oft tax is inescapable , only if those guys made kick-the-butt software, i wouldn't have complained much .... Mint guys are doing whatever to support their project , even if they had directly accepted *bing* i wouldn't have said a word , everyone knows they are pragmatists.

.... and @bob u are using ubuntu really? i knew that your fedora box died and had only windows , but now Ubuntu , Unity love?? (nah .. kidding )

[bob]

Actually, I'm in Mint 12 at the moment. Gnome3 "done right". Dual-booting with F16, of course. You might want to try it, Clem's got things working that Fedora still has issues with (alacarte, mail-notification, picasa, etc.). BTW, the new linux box is working just fine.

[fedvasu]

Originally Posted by bob

Actually, I'm in Mint 12 at the moment. Gnome3 "done right". Dual-booting with F16, of course. You might want to try it, Clem's got things working that Fedora still has issues with (alacarte, mail-notification, picasa, etc.). BTW, the new linux box is working just fine.

I have tried Linux mint in the past , for the distro itself it is ok , but i think some upstream ubuntu repos are badly broken and apart from the fact that apt-get spits on me every time with broken , mirrors.

with all this Mint worship going on , i might try their MGSE spin in a virt-machine. I would recomend this to any noob though!!

[kona0197]

Last time I checked Bing doesn't filter anything and is not biased on search results.

[Dan]

Uhm ... Yeah. About that. http://searchengineland.com/bing-ban...s-sites-102856

[kona0197]

Interesting. I use Google for the most part. Sometimes I use Bing for images.

[Dan]

I use both ... at the same time.

http://www.dogpile.com/info.dogpl/search/home

[BBQdave]

Originally Posted by fedvasu

what's the truth (as you know or conceive it)? , if had to choose between , two Micro$oft and Google i would choose the lesser evil (As i concieve) : Google.

Maybe it's me, but the past few days DDG's results to queries have been odd

An example: if you enter fedora linux it gives results for articles and everything else possibly referring to fedora linux but not fedoraproject.org. In this example it is in the red box, you have to sort through DDG's profile of fedora linux. Not a big deal, but DDG used to list results to relevance of search.

So now I guess, the relevance of search is in the red box. Again, not a big deal, except sometimes you click on what you have searched (in the red box) and it takes you to a wikipedia article... where you then click on the website of what you have searched. So a few more clicks if you are trying to go directly to the web site of what you are searching.

Maybe this is a better way of showing information on a given search, but it is annoying if you are trying to just go directly to a website.

I have used DDG for awhile, but if it is just going to be a friendly front end to Bing, may have to use Google

[Evil_Bert]

Strange. DuckDuckGo, Yahoo and Bing all displayed the Fedora Project home page as their first link (not in any red box either) when searching on "fedora linux".

[fedvasu]

Originally Posted by BBQdave

Maybe it's me, but the past few days DDG's results to queries have been odd

Maybe this is a better way of showing information on a given search, but it is annoying if you are trying to just go directly to a website.

I have used DDG for awhile, but if it is just going to be a friendly front end to Bing, may have to use Google

yeah, that may be possible , for atleast 15 days there was no result about ask fedora, understandable though!

if DDG relies on so many sources , why just not reduc/remove Bing? it already has Yahoo (which right now is 83% Bing back-end), wolphram alpha , if possible use Google.

And about google not giving back to distros , they are brain-dead morons !! (no focus at all , look at the number of products which came and gone), that may be the reason Mint guys lost 2 months of ad-income and for a project of such small size , it can be fatal !!

and idea behind being concerned about "Bing-backend" is weight of M$

M$ is virtually everywhere desktop,serverOS(window$),virtualization(hyperV),s earch(Bing),Cloud(Azure),
platform (.Net),gaming (xbox), browser(IE),you just name it!!

it is not just OS monopoly , they are in good shape everywhere it would be naive to think that they wont bully competitors,to protect their stronghold (Almost monopoly) on the computing world , we might not realize we are living in a mono-culture !!

Any monoculture is bad either M$ or Google , so DDG please , develop your own crawler or build/collabrate with yacY peer-peer network , for being truly independent and pursuing your goal with the community

I use DDG daily , it's not just mint users!!

---------- Post added at 03:01 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:50 PM ----------

and by the way is there a DDG forum? may be i can troll (ooops complain) there!!

[BBQdave]

Originally Posted by Evil_Bert

Strange. DuckDuckGo, Yahoo and Bing all displayed the Fedora Project home page as their first link (not in any red box either) when searching on "fedora linux".

Yeah, I tried again today on DDG. I searched linux today, and it did not come up in the results, nor was there a red box. On Google, when searching linux today, Linuxtoday.com popped up as a result.

I checked the settings in DDG to see if something odd was going on, I have used DDG for awhile now, everything looked OK.

Not sure what's up? Again, if DDG is just going to be a front end for Bing, No thanks

[RupertPupkin]

I don't know all this new-fangled stuff about Googly, Yazoo, and Bang...I still use Lycos!

[fedvasu]

Originally Posted by RupertPupkin

I don't know all this new-fangled stuff about Googly, Yazoo, and Bang...I still use Lycos!

too old fashioned , it gave proper results for ask fedora though !! , they sold to an Indian company Ybrandt , is their future is secure for sure?!