Search engines compared

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DDG is not a search engine.
- Why isn't it?
  
  There is an actual duck doing the searching for you.
  
  IP over Duck Carriers, also known as the IPoDC protocol
  
  It uses Bing and Yahoo. All it does is anonymize the query before it’s sent to them.
  Bing is a search engine. Yahoo is a search engine. Google Search is a search engine. DDG is just a broker in all this.
  
  True, though this is a little out of date, DDG has built much of their own cache now. Bing is still their failover, but they've gotten a lot more independent. That said, I don't generally care for it's derivative-of-bing results, and has had some privacy oopsies lately that steer me away.
  
  The way MS is moving, I really don’t want to keep using DDG if they are integral. I couldn’t really find much on the deal they made but DDG has done things for them that make me uneasy.
  
  There's literally a column on the chart for that.
- And Firefox is not a browser?
  
  Edgy. DDG queries Bing and Yahoo mostly. All they do is anonymize the query before it’s sent to keep your searches private.
  Show me the DDG search engine.
  
  DuckDuckGo's results are a compilation of "over 400" sources according to itself, including Bing, Yahoo! Search BOSS, Wolfram Alpha, Yandex, and its own web crawler (the DuckDuckBot); but none from Google. It also uses data from crowdsourced sites such as Wikipedia, to populate knowledge panel boxes to the right of the search results.
  (Wikipedia)
  
  Hence, not a search engine. Fucking downvoting clowns.
  
  Hang on, I'm really trying to understand.
  According to Wikpedia,
  A Web crawler, sometimes called a spider or spiderbot and often shortened to crawler, is an Internet bot that systematically browses the World Wide Web and that is typically operated by search engines for the purpose of Web indexing.
  DDG operates a crawler just like that which is a characteristic of a search engine.
  A search engine is defined by Webster as
  computer software used to search data (such as text or a database) for specified information also : a site on the World Wide Web that uses such software to locate key words in other sites
  Which is what DDG is and does. How is DDG not a search engine?
  
  DDG talks to all the search engines. It uses tons of them. Everyone except Google it looks like.
  Before sending the query on your behalf, they simply anonymize it. Then return the results. DDG doesn’t actually perform a single search. So how can it be a search engine??
  I know this is splitting hairs but I don’t get what many of you are struggling with. DDG just talks to existing engines on your behalf.
  
  That would mean pretty much none of the search engines on this list are search engines
  
  Email them be ask them if they a search engine.
  
  It does that, too, yes. But as I mentioned above it in fact does have its own web crawler and search algorithm, just like other search engines. It combines the results which makes DDG technically a true search engine, even though it improves its results by utilizing other search enignes, too. Shall we agree to this?
  
  On one hand, you've provided sourced information with supporting details, and I've also successfully used DDG as a search engine.
  On the other hand, ultratiem on Lemmy says it's not a search engine, so I don't know who to believe...

111 comments