Debian Replaces Google with DuckDuckGo as Chromium's Default Search Engine (itsfoss.com) 43
An anonymous reader quotes a story from the Linux/Open Source news site It's FOSS:
While Firefox is still the default web browser in Debian, you can find the Chromium browser in the repositories. Chromium is the open source project upon which Google has built its Chrome web browser. It is also preferred by many Linux users as it provides almost the same features as Google Chrome.
Earlier, Chromium used Google as the default search engine in Debian. However, Debian is going to use DuckDuckGo as the default search engine for Chromium.
It all started when bug report #956012 was filed in April 2020, stating to use DuckDuckGo as the default search engine for the Chromium package. You can see the decision was not taken in any hurry, as the maintainers took more than two years to close the bug report.
The reason for the change goes as stated in the official package update announcement.
Change default search engine to DuckDuckGo for privacy reasons. Set a different search engine under Settings -> Search Engine (closes: #956012).
Earlier, Chromium used Google as the default search engine in Debian. However, Debian is going to use DuckDuckGo as the default search engine for Chromium.
It all started when bug report #956012 was filed in April 2020, stating to use DuckDuckGo as the default search engine for the Chromium package. You can see the decision was not taken in any hurry, as the maintainers took more than two years to close the bug report.
The reason for the change goes as stated in the official package update announcement.
Change default search engine to DuckDuckGo for privacy reasons. Set a different search engine under Settings -> Search Engine (closes: #956012).
Ups and downs (Score:1)
Debian Replaces Google with DuckDuckGo
Yeah yeah yeah?
as Chromium's Default Search Engine
Oh. That's cool, too.
DcukDuckGo might be good for privacy... (Score:3)
..., at least better than Google, even though there were some privacy concerns raised lately about DDG, too, but it is definitely bad as a search engine. So I really dont know what it says about Debians decision making process if thats what came out of two years of discussion.
From all Ive seen, the only privacy-focused search engine that actually works as a search engine, too, seems to be Startpage. Then again Startpage relies on Googles search results.
Re:DcukDuckGo might be good for privacy... (Score:5, Informative)
There are a few more privacy options these days (but alas neither open source..) including:
* https://you.com/ [you.com]
* https://search.brave.com/ [brave.com]
Re:DcukDuckGo might be good for privacy... (Score:5, Informative)
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Three best option seems to be to use a privacy enforcing browser, and the search engine that works best for you. Anything else is a false sense of security.
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And if you search critical stuff (like medical conditions), use the Tor browser and read their tips before you do that.
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..., at least better than Google, even though there were some privacy concerns raised lately about DDG, too, but it is definitely bad as a search engine.
Google makes a gazillion dollars a year from advertising and uses some of that money to build and maintain huge data centers all over the world. DDG doesn't make a gazillion dollars a year and as a result, offers significantly inferior search results.
Like many people, I would like to avoid Google, but there currently is no meaningful alternative. What good is "privacy" if the search results suck?
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You can configure DDG to use Google as the back end. Like using Google anonymously. The drawback for some people is that you don't have a search history for it to try to narrow down searches, but to many that's also an advantage.
But DDG on it's own works fine for me.
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Weird, millions of people (include me) use it primarily or as a backup to Brave Search.
I think I try Google four times a year and maybe half of that I find something unique.
Maybe it's a query strategy problem?
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I don't know what kind of stuff you search, but I moved from Google to DDG about a year ago and now have probably 2-3 times a month where I try Google again because DDG has not found anything useful. Google does not find anything useful too in most of these cases.
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All the search engines want to return "popular" search results. It's a hassle to try to narrow things down and be specific, especially when the reason for searching is because you don't remember enough details to be that specific. Ie, I want Swift the language, but the search results are for the singer, unless it's kept a history of your searches, but if it has a history of your searches then when you search for Jonathan Swift it'll tell you about Apple...
Really, searching feels like it worked better in t
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Really, searching feels like it worked better in the late 90s than it does today, even when I head to Google. I think because it's so much more mass market now.
It does. I really want the old AltaVista back, it worked massively better than anything we have today. And it was just a tech-demo to show what their big irons could do.
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You can use DuckDuckGo to do Google searches. It uses the Google search engine by hides user identifiable information.
I've used DDG for quite some time. The drawback is that it doesn't build up a memory of what you like to search for, but the advantage is that it doesn't build up a memory of what you like to search for.
A step in the good direction (Score:2)
But Chromium still tracks you and sends the data to Google, so... ðYââ(TM)
Re:A step in the good direction (Score:5, Informative)
But Chromium still tracks you and sends the data to Google
Install ungoogled-chromium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] which is Chromium patched to remove all google trackers. It's in the Debian repositories, also available for other linux, Android, Windows.
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It's too bad I have to build it, that's irritating. They don't provide current Ubuntu packages, they only have support for focal... despite claiming they support current Ubuntu
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But I want the application to use my shared libraries and whatnot. I need to save my RAM for big jobs like building chromium :)
It's building now... why turn on warnings if you're just going to ignore them? It's like a blizzard of bullshit with this build. Doesn't seem like it builds parallel either. I've got 8c/8t and it's still going...
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As for why warnings are turned on if you're just going to ignore them, it's because you're not ignoring them. Think of them as a
OSS isn't kept under wraps while it's developed until it's all clean. It's all rolling release. Shit that doesn't matter adds up. But you -Wall so that it sits there and pokes you in the shame receptors
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* s/that it you may possibly share/that it may possibly use in shared libraries/;
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You know what else is a cockup? ungoogled chromium.
I just went to github and tried to download ublock origin so I could install it manually and it won't download the file.
The build succeeded, and delivered... a nonworking browser.
Guess I'm sticking with firefucks
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Sounds to me like you have just stumbled upon the reason everyone doesn't run Gentoo
Building stuff is a pain in the ass.
chromium has a lot of build flags. Fuck that nonsense.
Generally what I'll do is grab a distribution source package, tear out the spec or debuild script, run it against the new tarball and fix what doesn't work. That way you're sure to get a build configuration that actually works with the software loading out on your distribution.
Building from generi
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Yeah, the last time I ran gentoo was when I had a K6/2 laptop, then it actually made sense.
Maybe I'll give the appimage version a shot, sigh. At least it's not a snap.
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Citations? Or something your friend's cousin said was on a random chat board?
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“rolling out search updates that down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation"
So they won't be returning FB & Twitter results?
And the site reporting this is run by Joseph Mercola!?!?!?
Good enough for me (Score:5, Interesting)
I just changed my search default from google to DuckDuckGo. Tried it a couple times before, it was pretty good but I always switched back because habits die hard. This time I believe the change is going to stick. So long googs, wasn't all that great to know ya.
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It's my go-to search engine for porn being Bing based. For anything technical I find DuckDuckGo to be utterly worthless ... being Bing based. And sure they claim to use x hundred difference sources and have their own crawler, but ultimately they return 95% the same results as Bing.
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The privacy invasion that is google overbalances the occasional technical search difficulty. It's no big deal to select google for a single search if necessary. But to be honest, 90% of my searches are direct to Wikipedia these days anyway and most of the time the Wikipedia search (crappy but improving) works just fine. And is it just my imagination or did google search qualify fall into the crappy recently? I sure hate all the paid results and attempts at helpful advice that often overwhelm the actual sear
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DDG has difficulty with technical stuff because you sort of need some search history to narrow things down. But if you have search history then you get tracked. I see what when I go through google without history and still get no good responses. Over time I learn to stick in more technical words to help out the search ("Microsoft Azure" instead of just "Azure"), but even then 99.95 of the results tend to be oriented to novices. And the ad supported sights pop straight to the stop (ie, searching for a d
Google will be terrified (Score:5, Funny)
Google's market share might drop from 91.46% to 91.45%
Re:Google will be terrified (Score:5, Funny)
Don't be so negative. Use some proper shock statistics: "Google is losing market share of 90% of desktop Linux users. "
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DuckDuckGo = Bing (Score:2, Interesting)
The results are horrible, and Microsoft is still harvesting data.
What exactly is the upside?
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Yeah, that's exactly what I was wondering. They have openly confessed that they are sending your queries to Bing without obfuscation. That makes them completely worthless — they do not at all do what they claim they do!
Re:Is Bing better than Google on privacy? (Score:4, Informative)
No, Microsoft and Google are both part of the panopticon, so there's no security benefit by choosing to use Bing via DDG (which admitted that they don't properly sanitize your search queries when they contact Bing.) Neither one sells your information directly to third parties, but both give it freely to the feds, and neither cares much about anonymizing your data.