epi0Bauqu

Yeah that's my bad. epi0Bauqu is my original account, but since no one knew who I was under that account I, some years later, made the yegg account and I try to post from there. The issue here is I logged in to post the comment, and then switched to my laptop where I was already logged in this other account.

We never used this data, other than showing favicons.

In fact, we didn't (and don't in general) collect any user-level data in the first place, per our strict privacy policy: https://duckduckgo.com/privacy

In this case, the way it works is you hit our favicon service and it returns the favicon, not using any PII in the process, and our web servers are configured not to log any PII. In other words, our system is technically designed and we are legally bound by our privacy policy to not use this data for anything other than showing favicons.

Yes, after consulting with staff, I understand we thought it was more privacy protecting because we know our services are already encrypted and throw away PII, and so to get the favicon you could either (a) make another request to our known anonymous service or (b) make a request (or possibly multiple) to a non-anonymous service. On the other hand it is another request to a distinct domain that traverses another path on the Internet, albeit an encrypted one.

No we're not.

Thanks Andrew -- appreciate it! I shudder to think of all the things I posted 8 years ago :).

It is not only useful on our platform. The entire instant answer engine is open source as well, and could be incorporated in any program. Additionally, much of our Instant Answers are freely accessible via our API: https://duckduckgo.com/api. These could be and are incorporated in other programs. We are looking for ways to expand access and make them more useful, and would appreciate any suggestions.

That said, there are many for-profit companies that create and maintain open source projects that are primarily used for them. While that may mean that many people aren't interested in developing for them, it doesn't mean everyone isn't. There are some people who want to improve their own search results. There are some people who just want to help a private alternative in search.

There are others who would like exposure on our search engine pages (for their APIs or via developer attribution). In fact, as we get a decent amount of traffic now, that exposure has real monetary value. We place Instant Answers above ads and links, and so the sources that are used for Instant Answers are monetarily benefiting through their inclusion in the ecosystem. In any case, there are many valid reasons why someone may want to develop on DuckDuckHack.

We would love your help: http://duckduckhack.com/

DuckDuckHack (that link) is our instant answer platform and it is all open source (both the answers themselves and the underlying answer engine). We believe that each programming area (MySQL, Perl, React, etc.) can be best served by a group of Instant Answers, and only developers with expertise in those areas can craft the best experiences for that set of Instant Answers.

As a small team, we therefore need help in our goal of making DuckDuckGo the best search engine for developers.

DuckDuckGo - Remote

https://duck.co/help/company/hiring

Thanks! I would too love to spread those stories to new audiences. We are really trying to branch out beyond the startup world but are honestly new to it and unsure so far what will work. So any ideas from you or anyone would be appreciated! Open to try almost anything :). Also, unjust sent you a DM on Twitter about a related matter.

It more doesn't work for our privacy policy since we don't track users.

I'm not sure if we improved for Greek in particular yet but this generally (non English) has been a focus recently so it should really be improving. I'd be curious if you notice any improvement and if the region toggle does anything for you.

We'd love to become the default search wherever we can!

Oh man, double face palm :)

I would go around to local meetup groups here in Philly and continually show it to people, as well as friends and family.

These interviews (I referenced above) were really the first things I did: https://www.youtube.com/user/tractionbook

I blogged all of them on Hacker News (you can search the archives to see), and then started blogging ideas that would become the book and got feedback from those on my blog and on HN.

This was all before really writing. Once we actually started writing we recruited "early readers" periodically to read and give feedback up until we had a full draft more ready to go, in which case we hit up our whole list and got another round of fresh-eyes feedback.

We really suggest people who want to help to just help spreading DuckDuckGo, which is honestly our biggest problem (not money): https://duckduckgo.com/spread

Thank you! We're of course very focused on making the best mobile experience we can. We think our instant answers can be a big part of that since answers are even better on mobile where space is limited and browsing sites is slower. How to exactly showcase them is a bit unclear, however. So nothing major to reveal yet, sorry :)

Thanks! We are working on something that could tell the platform (duck.co) how much each instant answer is being used. Now each answer has a page (at http://duck.co/ia). Bangs are a bit different but we're working on open sourcing that too.

Dax, yes! We're going through internal branding strategy right now and your comment is very welcome in that context.

We've had a lot of requests for that, but it is not on our immediate roadmap yet. If there is a good source out there (vertical search engine), it could be incorporated via DuckDuckHack (http://duckduckhack.com) -- that would be the best bet.

Depends what you think of as success :)

Snowden accelerated our growth by years and we are really grateful for that. However, I believe we were already a success and I was happy with where we had gotten before then.

There are still no good limits on online tracking and as a result it continues to get crazier and crazier and more people are reacting. It was already heading in that direction pre-Snowden. For example, in 2012, a year and half before, we saw a huge uptick when Google changed their privacy policy to allow tracking across all their properties. And a year before that, we saw another huge uptick when we did a privacy-focused billboard and microsite (http://donttrack.us/).

Lifestyle -- we moved here 9 years ago not knowing anyone -- after a rather complicated search for a great place to live and raise a family. There's a lot to it, but it is climate, affordability, architecture, culture, etc. Granted, some of that (maybe a lot) is personal preference but I think a lot of people share similar preferences.

Cheaper -- you can bootstrap really easily here compared to other places even nearby (DC, NYC, BOS).

Community -- it is really a nice community where you can really reach anyone really quickly and they're willing to help.

Would you add anything?

We haven't disclosed it, but advertising is the bulk.

The problem with paid is three-fold. We're a for-profit company so don't want to come off as taking donations like a non-profit. Second, we don't want to collect personal information. So we could do something like bitcoin but that isn't exactly low-friction :). Third, it is promoting that it exists. We have a hard problem getting the word out about anything not on the SERP and we wouldn't want to put it there.

Open to other ideas though.

Thank you for the contribution! Would love to get you back :).

We've been actually open sourcing more and more because what I meant is that as DuckDuckHack grows it is becoming more and more of the search engine. Check out https://github.com/duckduckgo -- bunch of new repos since 2013.

Oh that's awesome! You might want to check out our DuckDuckHack meetups (there is of course a local one) http://duckduckgo.meetup.com

We would also like to see similar services across the spectrum and really believe people want private alternatives that they can switch to with little sacrifice. That said, search is difficult enough for us!

Our long-term focus is really on the instant answers, and we hope to really build up the DuckDuckHack platform to a point where the majority of searches have instant answers on par or better than the links.

Of course, basic link quality is still par for the course. We have worked a lot this year on better language support so if you type say in Finnish we recognize that and adjust the results appropriately. For truly localized stuff (like restaurants, transit, for example), we really want to attack that via the instant answers.

We have anonymous cloud save now for DuckDuckGo settings, which is sort of like this already: https://duckduckgo.com/settings -- for example, you can set a language or region setting.

I think more generally you're right privacy is about control and choice, as I tried to explain in https://medium.com/life-learning/privacy-is-at-a-crossroads-...

Yes! People have been asking for this for literally years (and I want it too). For various reasons it has been difficult to do, but now we are very close. So look for it soon.

Major update, though the overall messaging is the same. It is a much more high-quality book. The first one was self-published and this one is published by Penguin Random House. So the first thing is it re-edited all the way through. We ended up cutting out about 50 pages, even though we added a couple of sections.

Second, the sections we added were a preface about my struggles with getting traction and a testing addendum giving 1-3 suggestions of how to test each of the nineteen channels (something people continually requested).

Third and finally, I really focused on rewriting the five introductory chapters to focus on things I saw readers of the first edition struggle with. We simplified the framework from 5 to 3 steps, and tried to shed light on the more non-intuitive aspects (like don't prematurely optimize marketing tests, etc.).

You're very welcome!

It is not significant, though we'd love it to be.