DuckDuckGo pushes back on suggestions that it removed pirate websites
Privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo rejects claims it removed piracy websites, such as YouTube-dl
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Anyone searching for piracy websites onDuckDuckGorecently might have struggled to find them – but it wasn’t because of an active choice by the company.
Recent reports suggested thatDuckDuckGo, a privacy-focused search engine andbrowserthat frequently criticises Google, hadremoved results related to piracy sitessuch as YouTube-dl and The Pirate Bay.
However company CEO Gabriel Weinberg has hit back, blaming the problem on an issue with its site:operator search commands (such as site:thepiratebay), which he says few customers actually use.
Similarly, we are not “purging” YouTube-dl or The Pirate Bay and they both have actually been continuously available in our results if you search for them by name (which most people do). Our site: operator (which hardly anyone uses) is having issues which we are looking into.April 17, 2022
InTechRadar Pro’stesting today – using a clean Opera window with a VPN – finding pirate websites was pretty straightforward, suggesting there was no issue.
In a statement toThe Verge, DuckDuckGo said: “After looking into this, our records indicate thatYouTube-dl and The Pirate Bay were never removed from our search results when you searched for them directly by name or URL, which the vast majority of people do (it’s rare for people to use site operators or query operators in general).”
“We are having issues with oursite: operator, and not just for these sites,” said DuckDuckGo’s Allison Goodman. “Some of the other sites routinely change domain names and have spotty availability, and so naturally come in and out of the index but should be available as of now.”
A better way to search?
DuckDuckGo was also recently embroiled in a controversy over itsdecision to down-rank certain pro-Russia resultsafter Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, something that sits awkwardly with its “unbiased” marketing.
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Search engine listings littered with dangerous malware>Here’s another excellent reason not to pirate your software>DuckDuckGo founder says privacy needs to be as simple as a single button press
The company has also repeatedly gone afterGooglefor its search practices, arguing that the dominant search giant spies on users and delivers poor quality results.
First launched in 2008, DuckDuckGo says it aims to better cater to the needs of privacy-conscious internet users that don’t want their search data ending up in the hands of Google or other large tech giants. The company has since expanded its operations and it nowoffers its own browserin addition to a search engine.
Given that Googlemaintainsa 91% share of the search engine market – compared to 3.1% forBing, 1.5% for Baidu, and 0.69% for DuckDuckGo – search consumers seemingly seem not to mind about Google’s foibles.
Max Slater-Robins has been writing about technology for nearly a decade at various outlets, covering the rise of the technology giants, trends in enterprise and SaaS companies, and much more besides. Originally from Suffolk, he currently lives in London and likes a good night out and walks in the countryside.
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