In addition, DDG serves ads from the Microsoft ad network, so they will also make money there.
Also, worth noting that Google provides the same type of service through API. I built a search engine [0] where Google web results are one of many sources used.
If all the users go to DDG.com, it won't matter if Bing has a great backend or not.
I've recently lived this experience in another context. We built a great backend for a partner that was good at publicity. When they redirected users to their internal backend, we were dead in the water. It didn't matter that the partner struggled with their backend and ours was better. We hadn't invested resources in independent publicity, so users couldn't find us. It was a hard lesson to learn.
You think they don't have some tight contractual relationship with built in renewals and extensions? This is really similar to how corporations lock up retail real estate locations. They don't sign a 1 or 2 or even 5 year lease and then hope the landlord doeesn't rake them over the coals when there is no where else to go to. (Which could often be the case..) You build in renewal options as part of the deal. Those can last a long long time. May even have (probably does) a 'right of first refusal' and so on.
So if DDG degraded in quality I'd be fine, because I don't expect perfection. Though I suppose it depends on how much, of course.
DDG used the Yahoo Boss API [0] originally. It was pretty good, but Yahoo shut it down and Bing now also powers their search engine.
2) MSFT has clauses in its contract to address this. If a commenter on HN thinks of this one minute after reading the article, you can be sure that their legal team has thought about it too.
It seems runnaroo would therefore be limited to 10k searches/day?
> You can’t beat Google when it comes to online search. So we’re paying them to use their brilliant search results in order to remove all trackers and logs. - https://startpage.com
Does anyone know how one can get whatever deal Startpage has?
Does this API still return paid results near the top?
I’m talking about the majority of these people who outside of basic ad/tracker blocking and using DDG, don’t stick to caring about privacy above most other things.
A lot of what I’m saying doesn’t count for HN’s crowd as much as other bigger sites.
I don’t have any backing for this statement. Just what i believe from common sense looking around.
Would ad revenue for 10,000 interactions actually offset this cost for DDG?
