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Yahoo and Microsoft Court Apple as Google's Safari Search Engine Deal Expires in 2015
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<3 DuckDuckGo
I'd love to see Apple swap over to DDG when the contract with Google ends in 2015, and actually, I can easily see them doing that.
1 - DDG is one of the four options you're allowed to pick from in iOS 8 and Yosemite, so Apple is obviously aware of its existance.
2 - DDG is the only search engine that doesn't track you. What with Tim Cook's "They can cart us out in a box" or whatever, I think Apple could swap over to DDG, just to show how committed they are to user privacy.
And if users are free to swap over to using the other search engines, why not?
Plus, besides DDG's main claim to fame of not tracking you, I actually think it's the best search engine on account of !bangs and having the cleanest UI. The only time it ever falls short is when I'm doing image searches... I feel like Google Images normally returns exactly what I'm looking for whereas DDG's images are hit-or-miss.
I'd love to see Apple swap over to DDG when the contract with Google ends in 2015, and actually, I can easily see them doing that.
1 - DDG is one of the four options you're allowed to pick from in iOS 8 and Yosemite, so Apple is obviously aware of its existance.
2 - DDG is the only search engine that doesn't track you. What with Tim Cook's "They can cart us out in a box" or whatever, I think Apple could swap over to DDG, just to show how committed they are to user privacy.
And if users are free to swap over to using the other search engines, why not?
Plus, besides DDG's main claim to fame of not tracking you, I actually think it's the best search engine on account of !bangs and having the cleanest UI. The only time it ever falls short is when I'm doing image searches... I feel like Google Images normally returns exactly what I'm looking for whereas DDG's images are hit-or-miss.
That's what I keep hearing, and I want to think I read that somewhere a while ago, but if you do the same searches I don't think you get identical results so the algorithms may be slightly different.
Take Bing. No way to Yahoo. Bing is good. I like it better than Google. Duck Duck Go of course should stay an option.
There is a definite brand bias with Google Search. A study was done where they took Bing search results and labeled them Google, and vice versa. People chose the Bing results as the results they preferred when they were labeled as Google, even though they were in reality Bing results. Then when they showed them the same results labeled accurately as Bing, suddenly they didn't prefer them anymore.
Screw Google already.
EDIT: Here is the article about the study Google Brand Bias
There is a definite brand bias with Google Search. A study was done where they took Bing search results and labeled them Google, and vice versa. People chose the Bing results as the results they preferred when they were labeled as Google, even though they were in reality Bing results. Then when they showed them the same results labeled accurately as Bing, suddenly they didn't prefer them anymore.
Screw Google already.
EDIT: Here is the article about the study Google Brand Bias
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Apple's contract with Google is up and they want Google to sweat a bit so they leak that they're talking with Microsoft and Yahoo.
Not really. See what I wrote above about the study showing brand bias towards Google, even when the results were actually from Bing.
If I can change it back to google then OK, but if it's set permanently to anything but google then I will be using chrome. Bing and yahoo suck compared to google.
I do not understand why Apple is cozying up with Microsoft these days given how terse relations were in the 1990s.... when Windows PCs with a clearly knockoff interface were eating Apple's market share alive and throwing Apple out of business at the time. Microsoft was making more money just licensing Windows than Apple was with their whole operation.
I am guessing this Bing deal is still a part of the deal that Apple made with Microsoft when they bailed them out in 1997 and Microsoft invested a sizable amount in Apple to have Apple bundle Internet Explorer with every shipping Mac. Looks like this "deal" is still going...
Personally, I grew up in the 1990s during all this, and have been very anti-Microsoft my whole life. I was even very anti-Intel as well, but use the current day Macs anyways once I found they were faster than the PPCs at running OS X.
I would rather see Apple engineer its own search service which blows everything away or which leverages multiple engines. Apple has the money, the resources, the infrastructure and everything else to develop such a system to dominate the future search market.
I am guessing this Bing deal is still a part of the deal that Apple made with Microsoft when they bailed them out in 1997 and Microsoft invested a sizable amount in Apple to have Apple bundle Internet Explorer with every shipping Mac. Looks like this "deal" is still going...
Personally, I grew up in the 1990s during all this, and have been very anti-Microsoft my whole life. I was even very anti-Intel as well, but use the current day Macs anyways once I found they were faster than the PPCs at running OS X.
I would rather see Apple engineer its own search service which blows everything away or which leverages multiple engines. Apple has the money, the resources, the infrastructure and everything else to develop such a system to dominate the future search market.
One word: No
Yahoo, Bing, and Google can pretty much find all find local listings of places I've searched. Duck Duck Go cannot even find all the restaurants that the other engines find when you search "restaurant type + city"
I'll be using google in google chrome for sure, but I doubt if either yahoo or microsoft offer a few hundred millions more, it'll do any harm. 
in fairness Apple and MS have always worked together - office for Mac and iOS, MS fonts on Mac OS, iTunes and iCloud for Windows, and Siri using Bing.
however, I don't find bing any better than google whereas Duck Duck Go really gives google a run for their money.
however, I don't find bing any better than google whereas Duck Duck Go really gives google a run for their money.
That deal with Microsoft is LONG over. Plus, these days, Apple is far more pissed off at Google than at Microsoft.
try using apple maps / yelp for that instead. But you're right DuckDuckGo seems to go via IP address for location which is terrible for finding the nearest restaurant in the UK because there is so much overlap now. Maybe there is some way to tell DuckDuckGo to use location services ? a pop-up should appear requesting it but it doesn't.
I use duckduckgo at the moment and find it as useful as google was. I actually tried yahoo for a few months and eventually changed back to google as it wasnt that great, before switching to duckduckgo which is fine.
The pissed off-ed-ness of Apple towards Google is not because of their super search engine or their YouTube service. This is all because of Android and competition in the mobile arena.
I use DuckDuckGo because I like their privacy philosophy and dislike those of Microsoft and Google. For that reason I would rather see DuckDuckGo remain in private hands. Using a search engine that is not owned by the owner of the operating system or Internet browser seems like the smart way to go.