Linux Mint signs a partnership with DuckDuckGo

http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1884

by dexen • 15 years ago

137 45 15 years ago

blog.linuxmint.com

Does DuckDuckGo pay for the Bing engine? And what happens if Microsoft tries to stop them from using it, or they put some limitations on it for 3rd parties?

mitko• 15 years ago

What other options for backend besides Bing are there if one would like to do make a new search engine?

unfare• 15 years ago

yandex

gaoprea• 15 years ago

The Common Crawl index, already has 5bn ranked pages, and the data is open to everyone - http://www.commoncrawl.org/

mk• 15 years ago

DDG uses Yahoo! Boss.

http://www.ysearchblog.com/2011/06/27/ydn-qa-with-duckduckgo...

azakai• 15 years ago

The details of DDG's arrangement with Bing are obviously not public. However, it is a very safe bet that DDG either gets the information for free, or essentially for free, simply because to do otherwise would make no sense for Microsoft. Microsoft benefits from anything that even potentially reduces Google's market share, by any amount.

Of course, that puts DDG in a dangerous situation, since it depends on Microsoft. Perhaps it has a long-term binding commitment from Microsoft, though, that wouldn't surprise me either.

mechanical_fish• 15 years ago

My god, it's yet another piece of software called Mint. Stop the branding madness!

Also frustrating is the fact that I couldn't spot the link from the official Linux Mint blog to the "please tell me what Linux Mint is" page. I ultimately resorted to Google. A conversion funnel tragedy.

DanBC• 15 years ago

Linux Mint was first released in 2006, so it's not hopping on some "name our software product Mint" bandwagon.

> Also frustrating is the fact that I couldn't spot the link from the official Linux Mint blog to the [. . .]

Yes, this is a common and frustrating mistake. There's a bunch of stuff that I haven't bothered investigating because I get sent to a blog but can't be bothered to web-search for the product when there's no link.

middus• 15 years ago

AFAIR, the first Linux Mint release is from 2006.

eCa• 15 years ago

> Also frustrating is the fact that I couldn't spot the link from the official Linux Mint blog to the "please tell me what Linux Mint is" page.

Yes, it's incomprehensible why so many companies: a) don't use their normal headers for the blog, or at least b) put a prominent link back to the homepage (like the logo, for instance).

However, when the blog is at http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1884 it is not a gigantic leap of thought to go check what might be at http://www.linuxmint.com/, from where it's one click to the about page.

robotresearcher• 15 years ago

> However, when the blog is at http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1884 it is not a gigantic leap of thought to go check what might be at http://www.linuxmint.com/, from where it's one click to the about page.

I think the poster was commenting on the difficulty of getting to the main web site, not the possibility. Having visitors hand-edit URIs is not considered slick customer conversion.

nakkiel• 15 years ago

Company? You must have overlooked something.

tutysara2• 15 years ago

Is it like a Tor for search engine where all the searches are performed by DuckDuckGo, keeping the users away from tracking? I tried searching some terms and it gives results pretty fast.I found no ads in their search results,wondering how these guys are getting money to share their revenue with Linux Mint and also pay MS for using Bing data. Making me doubt they might push favorable content up.

mkr-hn• 15 years ago

There's an ad on the side.

tutysara2• 15 years ago

yup there is a minimal ad on the side. I didn't appeared for the few queries I had tried (people names). I tried searching for a laptop and there came the ad on the side ;-)

calloc• 15 years ago

The only downside to DuckDuckGo is that the results it gives for some searches of friends names are extremely stale pulling up old mailing list posts from 2006/2007 rather than showing their new content from their personal blog. There seems to be a ridiculous amount of noise mixed in with signal which makes it a no-go for me or for even suggesting it to my family.

orblivion• 15 years ago

Since when do they use Bing? I thought they did their own indexing.

slowpoke• 15 years ago

My last information was that they used a combination of third party search APIs (Yahoo, Bing, Google) and producing their own search content.

By now, in terms of functionality[1], I mostly use DDG for the bangs, having set it as my default search engine in Firefox (keyword.URL in about:settings) so I can search using the URL bar. I caught myself doing ^T and typing "!w keywords" (to search wikipedia) on other people's computers more than once by now.

[1] I originally switched because I'm very privacy conscious, and that's still my most powerful argument for using DDG, but it's by far not the only strong argument for duckgo'ing instead of googling.

w1ntermute4• 15 years ago

> I caught myself doing ^T and typing "!w keywords" (to search wikipedia) on other people's computers more than once by now.

You realize that you don't have to use DDG for this, right? You can set up keyword searches in the search bar in Firefox or Chrome (don't know about other browsers) for any site, not just those that DDG supports. Then just type 'w <search>' into the location bar and hit enter for Wikipedia, for example. You can even do cool things like set up custom searches, like my 'wl' search, which automatically prepends 'list of' to any Wikpedia search.

lordlarm• 15 years ago

DuckDuckGo was also added to the Opera Browser, approx. 1 month ago. [1]

Anyone know how DuckDuckGo do monetization?

[1] http://my.opera.com/ruario/blog/2011/10/19/the-hidden-featur...

maximusprime2• 15 years ago

afaik they rewrite any amazon and ebay results to link with their own affiliate ID :/

blahedo2• 15 years ago

Why the :/ ? DDG isn't taking away anyone _else's_ affiliation, right? This isn't really any different than leaving the referer-id in there, except that it shoehorns "referer" into the "affiliate" api that Amazon et al are geared to pay money for. (Right?)

nextparadigms2• 15 years ago

As an Amazon referrer, doesn't it mean they have to track you, too, until you make the sale? I thought they said there's no tracking whatsoever.

epi0Bauqu• 15 years ago

http://help.duckduckgo.com/customer/portal/articles/216405-a...

white_devil• 15 years ago

Now that you've taken on investment, won't the investors want to force you to maximize profits (possibly at the expense of your users' privacy)?

jorgecastillo• 15 years ago

If anyone is interested in knowing how DuckDuckGo gets its results check:

http://help.duckduckgo.com/customer/portal/articles/216399-s...

Nic0• 15 years ago

I'm not sure about the partnership, does this means it will be the default search engine for Linux Mint?

Linux Mint signs a partnership with DuckDuckGo

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