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May 23, 2024 · 2 min read

DuckDuckGo is down, and Google and Bing searches are useless

Tom KirkmanIndependent Project Manager

DuckDuckGo is down this morning. So is Startpage dot com.

My normal early morning internet news searches are not working.

Google news search is so incredibly woke and biased and utter garbage that it is mostly useless for me, and ditto for Microsoft’s Bing search.

Both Google and Microsoft are essentially useless for searching for anything outside of the enforced mainstream, and both censor into oblivion anything that runs strongly contrary to the controlled narrative.

So … looks like I won’t be writing many new posts here until I can figure out how to access news outside of the firmly controlled mainstream narrative.

/ edit – I found a workaround. Go to
Startpage.com

and do a web search. *Not* a news search.

Then on the web search, filter the search results to the last 24 hours.

Relevant news articles will populate.

And this workaround still beats the heck out of the heavily biased Google or Bing searches.

======================

“THOUSANDS of DuckDuckGo users have been left furious this morning after the search engine went down.

According to DownDetector, over 1,000 users have reported issues with the site.

Taking to X one user said: “Ugh. @Bing search is down. I don’t use #Bing, but I do use @DuckDuckGo, which uses Bing on the back end. That means – horrors – I’ve got to go back to @Google!”

thesun.ie ↗

Read the linked article on thesun.ie ↗

FROM THE THREAD

Tom's notes 4

  1. Tom Kirkmanreplying to Arturo F Munoz

    In the last month or so, I started using Startpage.

    From what I've read, DuckDuckGo has compromised and quietly turned over access to its search results by users to Google*.

    * / edit, it was Microsoft, not Google, that DuckDuckGo made a secret agreement with. /

    While I've used the Brave browser with DuckDuckGo search for years, I'm not happy that DuckDuckGo is no longer independent.

    Startpage.com is working fine so far for me.

    Google and Bing searches are woke and biased, in my opinion, but that's just me.

  2. Tom Kirkman

    Old but relevant news.

    DuckDuckGo may face a user backlash after security researchers discovered a hidden tracking agreement with Microsoft.

    The privacy-focused company offers a search engine that claims not to track people’s searches, or behavior, and also doesn't build user profiles that can be used to display personalized advertising.

    ... Namely, while Google’s and Facebook’s trackers are being blocked, those of Microsoft are allowed to continue running. Zach Edwards, the security researcher who first discovered the issue, later also found that trackers related to the bing.com and linkedin.com domains were also being allowed through the blocks.

    ... DuckDuckGo founder and CEO Gabriel Weinberg, soon chiming in to confirm the authenticity of the findings.

    Apparently, DuckDuckGo has a search syndication agreement with the software giant from Redmond, with Weinberg adding that the restrictions are only found in the browser, and are not related to the search engine.

    What remains unknown is why the company who is known for its transparency decided to keep this agreement a secret for as long as it could.

    https://www.techradar.com/news/duckduckgo-in-hot-water-over-hidden-tracking-agreement-with-microsoft

  3. Tom Kirkmanreplying to 🔍 Colin Hayhurst

    thanks, Mojeek looks promising, at first blush.

  4. Tom Kirkmanreplying to D. James Benton

    accurate

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