but they haven't built a better mousetrap, and they're up against the greatest mousetrap ever known to mankind
Even Search has become markedly less useful, a common story around here, to the point where even nonbubbled proxied Startpage.com searches are disappointing.
Maps becomes less reliable all the time from a user perspective (in my immediate region, to cover my ass I guess).
Chromecast and YouTube, in general and in conjunction, have become...bloated, buggy, user-tracking-first embarrassments of their original versions...don't get me started on Gmail.... if you're gonna take all my info, at least be good at your services. Especially the ones I pay for.
Even having 1-5% of the search market is a pretty great business. Not everyone needs to be Google-scale to be a success.
However, it is nowhere as effective as commercial services. So much that the most effective way of finding pirate stuff is often to Google them despite all the copyright takedowns.
Only because they are small? That seems to imply that if they ever get big, they’ll no doubt become evil, privacy-wise. Apple proves that does not have to be the case.
But DDG is primarily funded by search, and the search business is funded by ads, which are more valuable based on targetting quality, which is improved by... data. About the unique user, specifically. For DDG to grow while maintaining search as it’s primary business, it’s difficult to imagine them not eventually (or at least, being heavily incentivized to) approach/mimic google-style of data collection — because data collection is their money maker.
Apple is unique amongst FAANG in being non-data-reliant, from the start; they never had strong incentives to turn to it, and took the opportunity to stand against it, improving their primary business without any immediate loss (they’re hit by opportunity cost for it, but otherwise).
For example they continuously collect GPS position + list of WiFi APs from iPhone users to build their crowd-source'd wifi location database: "To provide location-based services on Apple products, Apple and our partners and licensees may collect, use, and share precise location data, including the real-time geographic location of your Apple computer or device. Where available, location-based services may use GPS, Bluetooth, and your IP Address, along with crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower locations, and other technologies to determine your devices’ approximate location."
They also state: "We also use personal information to help us create, develop, operate, deliver, and improve our products, services, content and advertising, and for loss prevention and anti-fraud purposes."
It's quite eye opening to compare how Apple's marketing describes their privacy policy vs. how Apple's legal describes it.
For client-side Google software like Android/Chromium at least we got to fork and remove the evil bits; we have built thriving communities based on that and everyone's got an alternative to Google. In the case of iOS/Safari do we trust Apple-provided binaries solely based on claimed policy / reputation?
So, does it really matter if Apple doesn't directly operate their advertising business and instead outsources it?
You are seemingly suggesting that they do Google-style data collection where data is attached to a specific user. It’s a disingenuous interpretation of their privacy policy (both the marketing version and the legal version.)
https://www.apple.com/privacy/docs/Differential_Privacy_Over...
What should actually be eye opening is how Apple actually does protect privacy. They should be applauded and not condemned.
Good on Apple and DDG for realising that privacy has value and using that to grow their product.
http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html (scroll down to "Appendix A: Advertising and Mixed Motives")
The closest might be recommendation systems, but afaik even Netflix only collects from its own information pools, and the main chunk of it is probably for their custom shows; Amazon definitely doesn't track that much data about their users, because their recommendation system might actually be useful if it did.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Apple_Inc._services
A real concern for privacy has only ever existed in the open source world, and google and apple have effectively crushed that threat.
As is, many of the Mac diehards I know have migrated their kids off the platform in the past year or two, and some have made the leap themselves. Its a sea of change from just a few years ago.
Apple was part of the PRISM program.
Apple is a hardware company from the start, their strategy has been fixed long before other Internet companies figured the value of customer data.
Their narrative of being privacy enforcer aids their strategy of building closed systems.
I'm not telling Apple is deceiving its customers with the privacy narrative, but it isn't a guardian of privacy either; if it was it wouldn't have entered CHINA like other comments have pointed out.
Any company who's business revolves around online ads will be tempted to invade your privacy.
See: http://peakads.org
By handing over all iCloud data of Chinese users to the Chinese government?
You surely must be jesting!
Regardless what your view is, are you seriously suggesting companies should break the laws of the countries they operate in?
Before you say: “unjust laws, yes!” Consider what laws Chinese consider unjust, should they be allowed to break them within the US?
I would err on the side of: if you don’t agree with the values of a country then don’t offer your services. Capitalism, of course puts no value on values, so profit is the only ethical code a business should follow (logically).
Don’t hate the player, hate the game.
This company is:
1) Apple?
2) Google (project Dragonfly)?
I think a closer analogy is health food companies advertising that misrepresents the benefits of organic foods.
I have seen products over labelled like the low carb steak or the sugarfree water. These products were always low carb or sugarfree.
DDG attacking google tells us they are shooting for number 2. Attacking google provides free advertising. It also tells us if they get bigger they will double down on being different from google so the chance they will suddenly turn against privacy is unlikely. If it does happen funding is running out.
When you’re deeply in the underdog position I think that style is ok, but at a certain point it becomes a bit gross.
Is this opinion or fact?
And thus stand out for targeting purposes regardless.
DDG satisfies most of my searches on the first go, and I’ve never had success with !g after a failed DDG query.
Furthermore, the Google results has a cluttered design with sparse information, so it takes much longer to figure out that I haven’t found what I’m looking for.
I’d say Google is the one failing to compete on search quality. At one point they did, but now Google’s consumer products compete on brand awareness and price, which they can only do because of their conquests in the advertising industry. Most people are not Google’s customer, they are part of Google’s enterprise product: the attention of people whose data profiles meet various requirements.
Well, Microsoft's test completely backfired on me. I ran the test many times. In most cases, one of the columns had clearly better results, and 80+% of the time, that column was Google.
Small sample size to be sure, but it covers 100% of the population I care about in choosing a search engine (me).
Granted, this was Bing, not Google, but I kind of doubt DDG would fare better. (And in non-blind tests, I definitely fell I'm getting the worst results from DDG).
I like ddg, i support them, but for any but the most basic queries google is a solid tier above.
