Kind of fucked up but tbf Google does similarly shady stuff.
Please just use duckduckgo (or SearX).
SearX is dead; you should use SearXNG now.
I feel like Microsoft is way more shameless about their shady stuff. They’ve been messing around with impersonating google/chrome for awhile now, they recently had that thing where they would copy all your open chrome tabs, and then when you started your computer it would open edge with all your chrome tabs to trick people into using edge instead.
They aren’t afraid of people complaining about them, they are afraid of the government, and they fulfill a hefty amount of contracts for the gov
DDG is just Bing under the hood
And Searx is the same. And startpage is just google.
But the point is they don’t track.
DDG was letting Bing track users. They may have stopped now that they got in trouble for it.
Wait really?
Best I could find was this arstechnica article from 2022:
Microsoft trackers run afoul of DuckDuckGo, get added to blocklist: Search privacy company still needs Bing, but won’t allow Microsoft’s trackers. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/microsoft-trackers-run-afoul-of-duckduckgo-get-added-to-blocklist/
I would use anything else before DDG, the primary function of it which is searching, generally feels sucky
Why? DDG is fine for search, and the bangs make up for any issues.
I host my own SearXNG instance, which miiiight be a bit of a bad idea because the anonymity of the crowd disappears but hosting your own services is way too cool to ignore. It’s at search.gregtech.eu in case anyone wants to use it.
Pretty impressed, very accurate information
Accurate indeed. Pee is stored in the balls, cum is stored in the prostate
You know your content is certainly used to train LLMs ?
Did they stutter? Everything they said is 100% accurate.
This is nothing like GregTech! Where’s the tedious microcrafting to enjoy before every search?
How did you change the logo? I tried to do that on my instance and failed miserably. Running it through docker.
What I don’t like about SearXNG (aside of no favicons/icons I think) is that it doesn’t show the content of what I am looking for in the browser desktop tabs, if I search for “Linux” in the tab it is only shown “SearXNG” instead of what I am searching for… That definitely kills my browsing habits… I hope I am being clear (can’t post a screenshot right now), also unsure if it was the same with mobile browsers.
I can set up a favicon resolver on my instance. I’ll do it today.
Thank you, I didn’t even know it was possible.
I am gonna try it later, happy spying /j
So then you can track my searches?
I guess I could technically do that, but I really don’t give a f what people search for on my searxng instance. Plus, Google and the likes have an incentive to use your searches for advertising and building a profile on you.
If people search for illegal content does that get you in trouble?
I mean, none of that content is on my server, and the search engines searxng indexes probably so their best to remove illegal stuff.
I really hope I don’t get in trouble for anything, but I doubt I will. I have a grand Total of like 5 users.
You are in for a surprise, tomorrow you will have 7 users, you just got Lemmyed!
Eh who cares? You guys act like Google is some helpless infant
Remember how much they just announced they were plowing into AI? The Machine Hungers
lol, I just watched this movie this week
Does it hold up in 2025?
It’s a classic comedy movie from the '80s. To a modern audience some jokes will appear too raunchy or racist, but I think it’s still worth a watch.
Wait, is Microsoft using Google’s copyrighted work on their page without authorization? This is going to get pulled so fast they’re gonna get whiplash.
Why would they? They can imitate Google’s style w/o violating their copyright, it would actually be easier to reinvent the wheel than to try to somehow copy what Google has. It’s nothing special, just a bit of padding and margin settings for result cards and whatnot.
Yeah this “Microsoft” group seems to be pretty established and it looks like they have decent resources.
And probably a lawyer or two to look things over.
Besides Privacy DDG is wayy better then Google And Bing + It has a better search quality.
I don’t think there’s a difference in search quality, but I do really like the bangs and the client-side settings (can completely disable the AI noise, enable dark mode, etc all w/o needing an account).
DDG may be better for privacy, but I’ve found their search results to be garbage.
I prefer DDG to either as well, but in terms of search quality … Don’t they use Bing search results?
Yes they use Bing but i think they did some adjustments to improve the search quality (Correct me if am wrong)
Honestly, that’s actually smart and nobody is hurt here. Google by now is as shit as Bing, so there’s nothing wrong with using B instead of G. Let them downvotes come :)
Misleading users is definitely harmful. Since this is obviously done on purpose, I’d say it’s malicious.
It’s malicious and I like it. What’s more entertaining than watching giants fight?
yeah, you’re right, actually. if I have to fit this somewhere in my framework of things, it’d fall in the “dark pattern” box. so per definition it’s actually malicious.
Microsoft is a pathetic little husk of a company, what a corny and predatory practice that not even google cares to do if you search other search engines.
Bing/Microsoft are so scummy lately
The enemy of my enemy is still my enemy! But an enemy I like to watch.
This is a genius move to keep you from Google search
Seems more like a genius move to get slapped with another antitrust-like lawsuit.
lol the gall
Usual Microsoft, using shady tactics instead of creating a better product or just focusing on their own thing and respecting user choice. They should grow up sometime.
I don’t think they can. They would need to rethink their company culture, but because the current one makes big numbers go up, they don’t really have to change anything.
They seem to pathologically not be able to help themselves, even with products that don’t need to be promoted that way. I used Outlook for Android for years because it was actually quite good. Had a multi account inbox view, true dark mode, Galaxy Watch compatibility when those were all rather unusual features. But then they started trying to put Bing search in my long press menu system wide, using Outlook as the Trojan horse to do so, and I just found that too obnoxious
Don’t care.
They can fuck with google for all I care.Google is shady af
User: “Can we get Google?”
Microsoft: “But we already have Google at home!”
The Google at home: [reskinned Bing page]
The single thing Google did right when they first came out was a clean UI with a search bar on an uncluttered page.
At the time the competitors had search pages cluttered with ads and news. It was so bad you couldn’t think.
If Microsoft makes their search nice to look at them it’s going to get many more users
DuckDuckGo and Kagi managed to figure this out. Bing is the odd one out.
