Apple considered ditching Google for DuckDuckGo in Safari’s private mode | But Apple exec argued DuckDuckGo wasn't as private as believed.
arstechnica.com
Apple considered ditching Google for DuckDuckGo in Safari’s private mode | But Apple exec argued DuckDuckGo wasn't as private as believed.::But Apple exec argued DuckDuckGo wasn't as private as believed.
The classic "let's use the worst option because the alternative isn't perfect" fallacy.
Ironically suitable for Apple products.
Still more private than google.
Apparently Google is paying Apple upwards of $20B per year now for search default, so it’s not hard to see why they’re sticking with Google. It does highlight one of many potential anti-trust violations.
Just goes to show that for all of Apple's bullshit marketing, they care more about money than anyone's privacy. I'm tired of people characterizing Apple like they're a privacy company.
The amount of shits given about privacy is directly linked to the amount of money made from doing so.
I think Apple still cares more for user privacy than just about any other consumer electronic company out there today. Google’s Play Services mines way more user data than iOS does. However, Apple’s foray into Services will no doubt start them well down the slippery slope of monitoring and monetization, so I think erosion is inevitable to fuel Services revenue.
Considered is doing lots of work in this title
Samsung considered too...for a whole lot of 2 days before saying "nah".
I'm not as great as an Apple Exec, but I think he's wrong.
But he’s actually right. It does serve ads and it uses bing trackers despite them claiming they don’t track you.
They block Bing trackers.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/microsoft-trackers-run-afoul-of-duckduckgo-get-added-to-blocklist/
Relative vs absolute concern here. Google is absolutely terrible, just in the past 24 hours we've learned more of their insidious methods. DDG is relatively saintly, compared to most other public search engines
Don’t get me wrong. I am not advocating for google here. They are basically evil. The truth is that DDG does collect data and serve ads. By doing so that means they are not private like they advertise. Just do a search. Your first results will be marked as ad spots. The only way to get around this is to use a search engine aggregator such as searx or something self hosted then have lots of people use that to obscure the collection and profile generation. Point is DDG is not a golden child here. It’s a company just like any other in data mining markets.
Also DDG is US based and has to submit to all the privacy invading American agencies. And they could be under a gag order nobody would ever know.
If privacy was a genuine concern for DDG they would have never based their business in the US.
Where should it be based then? I feel like you can't trust any state to not do this sort of thing to fight "terrorism" and "crime"
I would say Switzerland.
They have great privacy laws and a culture of secrecy from their banking history.
They definitely would have an NSA equivalent but with far less reach I would think. They are a "neutral country" as I see it so they don't need such a strong foreign spy agency...
At the very least, the US would be one of worse choice possible for privacy that's for sure.
Keep in mind that the spying done by the NSA was fully legal there. They had this whole framework of laws to justify and authorize it.
I mean the NSA intercepting CISCO routers to bug them ?
That's a bold move that most countries couldn't do...
https://www.infoworld.com/article/2608141/snowden--the-nsa-planted-backdoors-in-cisco-products.html
This sounds a little tinfoil-hat-y but I don't really know what I'm talking about.
It was done in the past for larger US based businesses. I don't see why it couldn't be done with DDG.
Also, if your businesses is under a gag order the most logical thing to do is to act like nothing is happening. Because for DDG privacy IS the product. They don't have better results than Google they are trying to differentiate through privacy (or the appearance of privacy).
Interesting, thanks for the insight.
Can you recommend a search engine that doesn't do that?
Well there is always the possibility to host it yourself (like on a raspberry pi), like SearxNG.
Yeeeah, no one except the most paranoid people will do that.
Well yeah, paranoid but also people who are sick of providing valuable data(capital) to a business model that thrives on the worst traits of the internet.
Google results have been garbage for a while. I wanted a recipe for chicken. Not someone's life story with a recipe bookend.
That's a SEO thing that I can't really blame them for. A longer result is probably a better one most of the time.
People are getting much better about "jump to recipe" buttons though.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In iOS 17, Apple recently made it easier to use alternatives to Google search in the Safari web browser's private browsing mode—but the company considered going even further by making DuckDuckGo, which is marketed as a more private alternative, the default choice in that context.
As reported by Bloomberg's Leah Nylen, the information came to light when Amit Mehta, the US District Judge who is handling the US antitrust trial over Google search, unsealed transcripts of testimonies by DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg and Apple SVP of machine learning and AI strategy John Giannandrea.
Giannandrea worked as Google's head of search before his current role at Apple.
These conversations happened in the wider context of the antitrust trial over Google search, which, by some estimates, accounts for 90 percent of the market.
Judge Mehta is looking closely at Google's deal with Apple as the trial weighs whether the search giant's dominance is anti-competitive in the US.
For DuckDuckGo's part, a company spokesperson was quoted in Bloomberg saying that the search engine takes measures to prevent "hosting and content providers from creating a history of your searches," in contrast to Giannandrea's statement that DuckDuckGo wasn't as comprehensively private as it claimed.
The original article contains 373 words, the summary contains 199 words. Saved 47%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Man, that would be huge for DuckDuckGo if this were to happen.
DucDuckGo is just a frontend for Bing, why doesn't Apple create their own search engine?