I wish they were explaining why they moved away from Mapbox and OSM in general!
When DuckDuckGo is set to a dark theme, the map is also in dark mode! To me, that is an incredible valuable feature.
Edit: which is a fallback to Mapbox, no Apple Maps feature.
I have to say I'm pretty upset about this.
Not over privacy stuff (I don't trust Apple that much either), but because Apple maps just sucks. Unless things changed within the last 4 months, Apple Maps couldn't accurately navigate me from Custer State Park to Mt. Rushmore (which really isn't far).
If any of you are looking for a company (that is not Apple) that provides map tiles while respecting your customer's privacy, my company (link in profile) does not keep logs beyond debugging necessity and has plans to further improve our privacy profile. We also can make provision for proxy servers in the interest of privacy, if that is helpful for your use case.
(We currently use Analytics on our homepage, but have plans to replace that on our next iteration.)
So DDG will now use Apple’s data to find places? Please don’t. It should be the other way around.
Not even a month ago I made a search for a famous place in Lisbon (you know, big metropolitan area, capital of Portugal, 11th-most populous urban area in the European Union) and Apple Maps didn’t even know it existed. Made the search in DDG and it found it, from where I had to copy the address and manually search for it in Maps.
Or I could’ve used Google Maps in one try, but I genuinely want DDG and Apple Maps to succeed so I keep trying. But please do use the best data of both, don’t replace one with the other.
It's a shame to see that DuckDuckGo and many other such companies (yes, also Apple) jump on every "privacy" marketing opportunity they get but largely ignore related user rights such as freedom of information and free software.
Actions like this, the fact that DDGs core components are still proprietary and the freezing of DuckDuckHack just kinda make me think DDG sometimes cares more about the PR than its users.
Don't get me wrong I do think DDG does a good job at providing a good search engine service that respects its users' privacy. It just bothers me that (almost) no one around here seems to care about freedom.
It's a similar thing with Apple, with the exception that Apple actively goes against even the most basic freedoms by forbidding sideloading (if that's still happening), forbidding the GPL on the App Store and being in control of the whole stack - from hardware to software - on almost every platform they have, amongst others.
I'm not saying you need to love freedom but it's a good thing to have, so why not propagate it alongside with privacy? And if you don't do it for yourself, do it for those who care about their freedom.
I’m a bit concerned about how much data Google has on me and I do think Apple is genuinely more concerned about user privacy. But what’s the difference in practical terms really?
Google uses my data to target ads at me but doesn’t actually give any of my data to its ad-buying customers. Apple doesn’t do this but is obliged to turn over my iCloud data to the government with a subpoena.
Since this is really the scenario we should be most concerned about and since all tech companies are required to comply with the law it seems to me that the only way to have any meaningful online privacy is to not use cloud services from any vendor.
Not in the US - so realize that not everyone experiences this - but I've never had a mapping software be so terrible as Apple maps, led me completely out of the way and over a toll bridge that I didn't need to go over. Trip was over an hour longer than it needed to be. I'll definitely still be using !maps to get google maps on duckduckgo.
I could see a future where DDG gets acquired by Apple.
"pizza in berlin" lacks several options, and I just checked my neighbourhood. This is why I'm still using google maps on my iphone, their search results are far better and more accurate
To zoom in using my mouse wheel, I have to hold down shift, and then it zooms in the opposite direction to how it works in Google Maps (Firefox 64.0 on Ubuntu).
The behaviour works fine for the MapBox maps.
I can't imagine many people use the maps features in DDG. Switching over to Apple maps isn't going to help, considering that everyone I know in New England stops using Apple maps after about the fifth attempt. Absolutely everyone has an iPhone yet I have no idea how Apple Maps looks like at this point.
Scroll wheel isn't zooming the map for me.
I guess DDG are angling for Apple to purchase them. Personally I would have preferred for them to stick with OSM. Also, after a quick test, the Apple maps load slowly and driving directions are offloaded to another provider (Bing, Here, Google. or OSM)
I really wish DDG would build a Google Apps competitor ... as long as gmail dominates email and business email the privacy argument is largely irrelevant because people will spend hours per day logged in and locked in to the Google ecosystem
Personally - I find Apple maps (now, not at all in the early days) much better than Google maps - except for one thing: On several occasions where I enter a street address and if it's in a heavily populated area particularly if it's on an intersection the pointer will be in the wrong place on the street - I've reported these when I've encountered them and Apple has fixed each one within 24-48 hours but it's still a bit annoying when it does happen. My guessing is that because Google farms a tremendous amount of public and private data from Android devices and Google searches / services they are able to use their privately held wealth of peoples information to improve street numbering especially when new roads are added or intersections have been changed - that combined with Google maps being 14 years old and Apple maps only being 7. Still, a sensible move for a privacy focused system I believe.
I'm looking forward to the day that privacy and convenience are mainstream again(if there were ever). This feature is a right step on that direction.
Apple Maps has seen impressive improvements in the past couple years. With Mapbox/OSM in the mix as well, I look forward to seeing where the competition in the maps space leads us.
Mapkit JS took me by surprise when it came out. But so far, it seems to have been a solid decision, especially at a time when many were looking for new solutions after Google Maps changes finally rolled out. And for the most part it looks pretty good.
(Disclosure: I work for Google but not on Maps, opinions mine and not my employer, etc etc. I wish I didn't have to write this so often.)
Eh ... What?! This thing isn't functioning at all! How did they think what they have now with Apply maps could ever replace what they had before in terms of functionality?! What were they thinking? Just to mention a few issues I hit on the first attempt of using it:
- I cannot search?! I can only search on DuckDuckGo, THEN click on the map tab and see a SINGLE location, no similar locations or whatever. And then I cannot in the map tab search? How ridiculous is that? Now I need to do a completely new DuckDuckGo search, hope that it will magically find the street or whatever I search, even if there are multiple ones in the same city. - I cannot look for directions from A to B?! When I click the "Directions" button I get redirected to bing.com, which is currently blocked to a 100%. I don't want to go to bing, I want to get DIRECTIONS, on the DuckDuckGo map tab and not on another website. - I cannot even ZOOM, wtf? I keep using the mouse wheel and nothing happens! This thing is so broken.
And this is only the first visit of the map tab. How they f'ed that up, omg.
The calls to MapKit seem to be going through a proxy on DDG's servers, which are currently (1/15/19 18:00 UTC) 403ing.
One thing I notice is that there is no way to restrict search to the map area, or to refine by "Search this Area."
I've been waiting on a better alternative to google for many years. I've use DDG when I can but the quality indexes are just not there. Google was at the pinnacle of balance just before they got rid of uncle-sam and reg exp search options. Now every search is tailored to your previous metadata.
This map doesn't work for me. Completely blank.
Interestingly, it seems like the Maps data that Apple is providing here is inconsistent. In southern California, through the native apps I'm getting high-quality maps, while DuckDuckGo is still showing me the older low-quality ones.
Somewhat related but DuckDuckGo Image and Map search results have been broken for months for me. I just get blank, broken images. Anyone else have this problem?
Kind of defeats the purpose if I have to use google for half of my searches.
Why are people such fans of Ddg and not searx.me? searx is entirely open source and you can run your own instance.
Ddg reportedly does collect some information (?), and their core is closed source.
I wasn't even aware DDG had maps at all since they never once showed up for me. Probably because I am entering Japanese addresses, and their address parser isn't recognizing them as such. As much as I wish to use it, much of DDG has been and continues to be really abysmal if you're living in non-English-speaking Asia. I really worry if they're aware and/or are bothering to improve this.
Excited to see DDG's local search improving. I once ordered take out from a restaurant in another state based on a careless DDG search...
She's not loading any tiles for me....
Caution: DuckDuckGo's Apple Maps might kill your macOS's default map (show completely blank map) if your app has non-English language setting. If so, open your active monitor and search "geod", kill it and run map app again. It can return your apple map app back to normal state.
Well looks like I wont be using DDG for directions then, their directions are going to be trash.
Cool I don’t have to bang Google for directions anymore!
I started using DDG (slowly trying to remove Google as much out of my daily life as possible) after reading about how Google ATAP tried to patent a MIT researchers life’s work without her knowledge or consent.
This decision to move away from open infrastructure actually clarifies something I’ve been thinking about DDG recently. When you think about it, DDG is actually very similar to Apple in terms of its offer to users. It is a closed service which offers privacy as part of its marketing. That’s not to dismiss it outright or say the offer is not useful or not sincere, both are valuable alternatives to Google, but in the long run their promise has no legal backing. Both could switch to a different model overnight if their incentives shifted.
We could spend a decade evangelising for DDG, it becomes a significant mainstream player, and then gets sold to someone with totally different priorities. I’m happy to be corrected if I’m wrong, is there a legal barrier to this scenario playing out?
A+ DDG! I have been using DDG (duck duck go) since Gabriel created it in 2008. It’s been my default search on all my devices. When I need to route searches through Google, I do, as Google is still king at knowing and giving you the exact results you want, whereas DDG, gives you great results, with a different algorithm on the type results plus the added security of what DDG is about. They don’t track you. They don’t save your searches. I don’t use apple maps as i use android, but I like that DDG continues to go against the grain and choose privacy over comfort.
Lastly, I know the bulk of my searches go through DDG so I don’t have to think about what I searched, on what devices, was it on a public net, was VPN enabled?? etc etc.. What are you thoughts? Do you use DDG?
I wish they would have done a bit more testing: With Firefox I can't change my position by dragging (looks like an image) and with chrome, I can't zoom with the mouse wheel...
Is this the first consumer web interface for Apple Maps? I guess the JS toolkit has been around for about half a year now, but is anyone else significant publishing web maps with it?
duck duck go is pretty horrible compared to google, for search results... i wish it wasn't. Tried it, both myself and my less tech savvy wife, thought wtf is this?
Apple should launch an alternative to Google Maps on Android. I can slowly see the transition coming.
I love Here Maps too, it's good to have alternatives to Google products.
StartPage and Searx are two interesting alternatives to DDG.
Is there any point in talking about DDG "privacy" as long as they use yandex (which is basically an fsb (kgb) outlet) as a search backend?
What's DDG's business model?
The experience is already better. Thank you. Now please delete Yelp (or at least let me turn it off).
http://wikimapia.org can be a win-win to DDG
Their core is proprietary, therefore there is virtually no difference between Google and DDG in terms of privacy
DDG and Apple? seems fishy
Who uses Apple Maps?
Idiots
Why hasn't Apple bought DuckDuckGo?
I also think the name DuckDuckGo is too long and too cumbersome, they should consider rebranding to something simpler. Branding matters.
I like DDG android app. Nice that you can automatically set it to clear the data/history after 5/10/15 min of inactivity instead of having to remember to manually do it.
Whats wrong with using Openstreetmaps Instead of Company XZY cloud solution ?
>another DDG shilling thread on HN
I know this must be a coincidence that so much shilli.. I mean love for DDG is being expressed through those countless posts on major online communities like HN and reddit almost on a daily basis.
Apple is probably going to buy DuckDuckGo this year
Re: DuckDuckGo will use Apple Maps
When you use Apple Maps to go anywhere, you do have to duck :-)
Some paint it as if the main reason to switch was privacy (https://www.imore.com/duckduckgo-switches-apple-maps-because... "DuckDuckGo switches to Apple Maps, because privacy"), but the previous map provider was mapbox (openstreetmap plus commercial sources) and I doubt mapbox collected more data than Apple is now.