Scroogle: Dear Google, we're not bots, we're HUMAN A not-for-profit search engine that serves up a privacy-friendly version of Google has been out of action for much of today. Scroogle, which has routinely been scraping the Chocolate Factory's search results since 2002 in very workmanlike fashion, sported an error message announcing that it was down for most of the day. " …
Erm, works fine once you turn off safe search? (which they suggest you do when you search for "sex")
Also you can do it via the (great) control panel: http://duckduckgo.com/settings.html
This lets you customise most things, including turning off the few ads they run (and they suggest an alternative way of supporting the site). Google could learn quite a bit about "personalisation" from that alone.
So no, it doesn't suck.. really. What older browsers are you using anyway?
"This page requires JavaScript and cookies to function properly. However, neither are required to change settings. You can use URL parameters instead of this page. Just set your homepage like this to use your current settings:
You can also load settings from a URL parameter string. Or reset all settings. If you want to turn off JavaScript altogether, try out our HTML and lite versions."
Seems they have everything thought out and you have a choice of using a cookie for settings or not.
First of all, searching for "sex" turns up absolutely nothing. Not not sex education sites, not the Wikipedia article, not a dictionary definition, nothing. Which frankly, is just stupid. I could forgive that if it wasn't the default, or even if the censorship was easy to turn off. But no...
Needless to say, the settings page one one of the parts that doesn't work without javascript. And apparently it was too much effort to include this basic functionality in the html/lite versions.
Yes it's possible force it with a URL parameter, but that's already getting kind of ridiculous, and to top it off it won't even remember that setting from one search to the next.
So yeah, it sucks.
to build their own search engine and offer those results without having to rely on Google infrastructure ? Why be afraid, Google started small, in a garage and look where they are now. Scroogle could then design and impose their own privacy policies and other stuff like that.
Alternatively, why not pay Google in exchange for the permission to do just that, repackage their search results.
Any budding search engine will find it immensely hard to compete with Google's vast amount of users across all their products essentially crowd-picking the most relevant links.
So many crowdsourced metrics for the picking: most clicked link in search results, most +1'ed, most starred in Google reader, most shared in Gmail/Gtalk just to name the most obvious....Plus they have direct Internet peering across most parts of the world.
Let's be honest, short of changing search itself no garage company is going to improve on this. If one merely hints they could do so, Google would buy them up anyway - as reported, they are buying a company a week these days.
Facebook could, but I guess they're not going to release some half baked "beta"solution, when they do release it it'll be straight to the jugular. This thought must keep some Googlers awake at night, hence the whole "put them into Google+ whether they like it or not" approach.
@AC - Feb 14, 21:11GMT
--
Why call it pirate? The search result is free of charge and publicly available, it's just a representation difference + anonymity.
The former can be addressed by a client modification and it's quite an easy job, disable ads, skim what part of the interface you deem superfluous etc. I practically do not see any ads, blocking ad sites is simple.
The latter, however, is a hard nut to crack, mostly b/c google can keep you tracking w/ or w/o your consent - cookies, IP, "clicks", view. Cookies can be mended just as well, but the IP requires an external proxy and/or large scale organization to cover multiple persons/users under a single (or multiple) IPs.
Is there some kind of hidden agenda going on here, with regards to DuckDckGo? Every time El Reg prints an article which references search engines, two or three people always pipe up to claim they've switched to DuckDuckGo and it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. I find it strange, because I've only ever heard of DDG or heard people mention DDG on here.
I'm not saying DDG is a bad search engine. It seems to work OK. But there are dozens of other search engines, which aren't Google either and which also work OK. The honest truth is that most search engines seem to throw up pretty much the same results, give or take a bit of ranking shuffling. The cynic in me thinks that they're all scraping the same database for their results. Someone enlighten me as to why DDG seems to have become the poster child for ad-free and tracking-free searching?
I second this post!!! I am so sick of Google I could PUKE!!!! Their loser hackers hack our business from two houses down. Apparently the OBLAHBLAH administration, along with Chase Bank, put them there to run us out.
OBLAH has already put a friend of mine out of business. She owned a small convenience store/gas station in Austin, TX. Put her out of business in a matter of months so they could turn the company over to a USED TIRE GHETTO SHOP!!!! MAkes me SICK!
Get this freak out of office and GET GOOGLE OUT OF MY BUSINESS....
I got my pointer to DDG from Linux Mint. They changed to make it one of their intial list search engines and then promoted it to pole position bacause they liked the philosophy behind it.
It's just possible that it gets mentioned so often because it does the job it needs to without any fanfare or tracking. The other front-runners are either stuffed with ads/Sponsored results (yes I know those are the same thing) or else track everything you do 'to help you search better'. Even I don't know what I am going to be looking for next and if it is similar to something I have already looked for then why would I want the same results pushed back at me 'to be helpful'.
I started using DuckDuckGo and genuinely like it, especially all the integration with things like Wolfram Alpha, Wikipedia, etc.
With Google's recent turn for the worse I was looking at other search engines and to be honest only got along with DDG.
The results seem positively better than Bing (and Google) and the bang syntax let's me quickly try out other sources without leaving the same screen. What's not to like, really.
I guess if you like something it's only natural you recommend it? It's also similar to how Google got started.
It's no more, and went down in the shittiest of ways too: "PC Magazine reported that on the morning of September 17, 2010 "employees were told about Cuil's demise [...] and the servers were taken offline five hours later." Laid-off employees were told they would not be paid. The shutdown reportedly came after an acquisition agreement fell through earlier in the week."
Biggest hype turned shit that ever was. What else would one expect from an alternative search engine built by two ex-Googlers anyway: once a Googler always a Googler - sheltered pompous lot they are.
I find it alarming that Google has made scroogle.org disappear from search results. Try a search for 'scroogle'. Nothing. Google's job is to provide search results, not alter reality to suit its business. What will we see next? Will Adblock Plus one day silently disappear from search results because it makes a dent in Google's ad revenue?
Google is already pissing around with search terms, offering up what it thinks you probably meant, such that you have to click the Verbatim link to search for what you *actually* typed. It's becoming a bit too much like hard work to get what you want from it, and now this.
Next they'll show Adblock Plus to you, because they know if fits your profile and you'd be angry if they didn't.
But they won't show it to the average non-techy Joe, with the excuse that it doesn't fit within his interests.
Welcome to Google Search 2.0, now with added evilness, already here today.
Make sure you at least have opted out of targeted profiling via
http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/view or just use a more consistent search engine.
Making "scroogle" blatently not show up in the search results is "Evil" by any definition I can think of. A lot of what they have been doing has been "well, not actually Evil, but certainly not honorable", but failing to list Scroogle when directly searched for is clearly over the line.
@Chris 68: "Google is already pissing around with search terms, offering up what it thinks you probably meant..."
They've been doing that with my family name for a year or two now.
It's bloody annoying to be told that you don't really mean your own name.
And this morning Gmail started giving me personalised ads:
"This ad is based on emails from your mailbox. Visit Google's Ads Preferences Manager to learn more, block specific advertisers or opt out of personalised ads".
Er, they've based that on a total of 4 outgoing emails, all to the same person :-)
"Its traffic is nearly always boosted when there's a public outcry about Mountain View's handling of data and privacy online..."
I heard something along the same lines a looooong time ago, when Google was that small search engine trying to challenge.... what was it.. Yahoo probably... w
hey, what did people use before google to find stuff?! I honestly don't remember for sure! :(
"Funny", how google can embed itself as THE search engine.
Scroogle, huh?
Really? We used Altavista, Excite, Lycos, HotBot, Yahoo and my favourite Alltheweb.
At first Google's results were as - or more - shitty as the others, but a lot of people started moving because the UI was very clean and the ads were very light..
In the meantime Google forgot to keep it that way.
"...hey, what did people use before google to find stuff?! I honestly don't remember for sure!..."
I used to use Alta Vista, back in the years BG [before Google]. One of the reasons I switched to Google was that [back then] Google offered a simple, no-nonsense search; one search box, with advanced options, if you needed them. A lot of the other search engines were, at that time moving towards the DMOZ [i think it was called] model of "human curated" search directories, which I always found a complete pain in the arse, as you had to hoke through a zillion categories and sub-categories to find anything.
The irony is that nowadays, having seen off the competition, Google's search results are becoming almost as unhelpful. This time requiring me to wade through zillions of ads, sponsored results, "did you means..."?, link farms and other crap.
Hidden agenda, or no, it might be time to give the duck a whirl.
I only discovered Scroogle in the past week or so, from an article discussing Google's new policy and how to hide from their ever-widening reach.
My guess is that others have done the same which has tipped the balance a little too far for Google to ignore. The funny thing is that I cheerfully abandoned AltaVista, Webcrawler, Hotbot, Yahoo and the rest in favour of Google because I liked their honest and fair approach.
What I struggle to understand is why they'd piss away their hard-earned reputation quite so easily. Sure, I can see that Scroogle would be a nuisance but, seriously, does it really hit their profits for a few privacy-conscious folks to hide? When your corporate motto is seen as a joke (at best) and a lie (by others assessing your actions) you're in danger of burning bridges.
Such a shame.
What a load of bollocks. They are a "charity" huh? These people should be forced to do hard labour, stupid lazy freetards. All they contribute is their oh so clever idea of ripping off someone else's search engine. Why don't they build an engine themselves? Probably because they are allergic to hard work. I shit 'em. Next?
I remember another search engine who didn't do aggressive tracking, did not make huge profits or go on the stock exchange, and had a very minimalistic interface. And it's hippy-like philosophy seemed to be more than a mere facade.
It was Google in its early years.
Frankly I don't understand why Google has since been allowed to occupy the near-monopolistic, constantly expanding, abusive and socially irresponsible position that it does now. If I can do something to detract from that, either by using a totally different engine like Ixquick or a scraper like Scroogle, then I definitely will.
Seems as if the guys at Scroogle have taken down their site. Firstly when I tried to contect to the site I got some wierd message sayint that the domain was possibly up for sale in really bad English and there was some really badly formatted Chinese text below it. Really wierd. So I thought hey I'll try that again and it just timed out on Bing.
Google are total scum. Take a look at Sergey Brin's Stanford homepage circa 1997 ish, the plan for world domination was already in motion. http://infolab.stanford.edu/~sergey/ I really like the way his picture morph's wierdly with some kinda 90's animation stylie. Pathetic weasel.
Hoping Scroogle comes back on line. At the end of the day I respect theit non-profit ethic. Whereas Duck is good but all about profit.
Not amused.
Some are suggesting that Daniel Brandt's Scroogle has been hacked via a Ddos attack. Seems he has a lot of haters out there and he himself has an inflated ego. We all know how petty and infantile these hacker groups can be, like children jealous over whose got the best toys.
Even so Scroogle provided a good service which Google has surpressed in their search rankings. But I guess we can all vote with our feet or clicks regardless of Scroogles seeming demise. Bear in mind DuckDuckGo has it's servers linked to Amazon and Stratpage is a profit making business. Maybe there's no such thing as a free lunch people.
If the worst comes to the worst we could all stop using the internet!! ;-)
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
