+1. Just look at
http://50.81.205.197/photo_album/chron/desktop/opinion/2013_06_21-avoid_duck_duck_go/
: while DuckDuckGo must indeed respect the law (it is not its fault!), the
rest of the text is either irrelevant or pure conspiracy theory.
For instance the "Accusations of Technical Incompetence" are only based on:
one comment that a random user posted below a news article and that says "In
the past I *believe* I've seen search ad links on DDG that included my IP
address in the URL";
a thread on a forum that starts with "Startpage seems using user's IP address
to serve Ads"... what has nothing to do with *storing* such addresses (what
DDG promises not do do).
The fantasy that "Ut oh, It's Microsoft" requires much imagination. Read
this message that DDG sent to a journalist (integral text):
Since you are covering PRISM, you'll be interested to hear about DuckDuckGo:
We're a search engine (like Google) that doesn't track its users. Our privacy
policy simply states that we do not collect or share personal information,
which makes us of no interest to government agencies, since we don't have any
data to overturn. This approach has lead to coverage on CNBC, TIME, and the
Washington Post. We'd like to tell you more about our privacy-by-design
approach and how it keeps users safe from violations like PRISM. Do you have
time to connect this week?
According to Will Hill, that text "promote[s] [DDG] at Google's expense but
not Microsoft's". You did not read that? Well, you lack imagination. Will
Hill goes further. Only using the text above he writes:
This is basically DDG participating in a Microsoft smear campaign. Microsoft,
Yahoo, AOL and many other companies were implicated in the leaked PRISM
documents, why does DDG only mention Google?
Don't you see it now. It is indeed extremely suspect that DDG's PR person
did not writte "We're a search engine (like Google, Bing, Yahoo, AOL, [what
else?])". Obviously "a smear campaign" that "treats Microsoft as an equal
when it comes to a service or product and only mentions competitors when it's
time to talk about problems" (Will Hill's words: not mentioning a company
apparently is "treating it as an equal").
All that bullshit and much more to conclude:
If you are going to use a US based search engine, it might as well be Google.
(...) Please Boycott Microsoft and other PRISM companies.
Logical? Will Hill applies his own advice. The first part I mean. He even
uses Google+ to post more bullshit that it then references on his site, e.g.,
https://plus.google.com/113579520393333767984/posts/bgmZjEwRhAe (where DDG's
founder criticizing Google is supposed to prove that "Duck Duck Go is too
close to Microsoft to be trusted").
