from Hacker News

Now DuckDuckGo is building its own desktop browser

by waldekm on 12/22/21, 11:56 AM with 167 comments

  • by cebert on 12/22/21, 12:01 PM

    Instead of building another Chromium-based browser, I’d love to see if it were possible for Mozilla and DuckDuckGo to form a partnership that potently helps both firms. I’m concerned we will end up with a monolithic browser stack controlled by Google unless Firefox gains more adoption and support. I believe multiple parties and players help us build a more open and standards based web.

    I use Firefox as my daily driver primarily for privacy concerns and control, and secondarily to avoid monolithic browser stacks controlled by Google. Firefox isn’t perfect, but I enjoy the experience and have no issue browsing the web with it.

  • by waweic on 12/22/21, 1:58 PM

    It's very important to understand that, other than Blink, Gecko is incredibly hard to integrate into other software. That's why, for example, there is no Firefox-based Electron or Qutebrowser equivalent.

    This is only due to the failure (and unwillingness) of Mozilla to build a truly modular, expandable browser.

    Mozilla isn't even trying to compete with Google anymore at this point. They are only implementing new features into Firefox that Google has first built into Chrome (and firing developers working on features that could actually set Firefox apart from Chrome). Also, they are quick to implement most "features" Google implements, no matter how user-unfriendly it may be.

    An example for this is Mozilla implementing Manifest V3:

    https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/11/manifest-v3-open-web-p...

  • by MrAlex94 on 12/22/21, 12:41 PM

    This raises a few questions:

    * Will this be open source?

    * Will this support WebExtensions? Assuming they'll have to develop their own implementation since they are using the operating system's own rendering engines, so they will most likely have to have their own implementation.

    * Will this allow ad-blocking and tracking protection? Once again, seems they will have to develop this feature themselves. Will the ad-blocking whitelist their own properties or does the user have granular control?

    * Will this allow usage of other search engines within the browser, or are you locked in to DDG only? (Of course, ignoring actually navigating directly to the relevant search engines own website).

    Interestingly enough, from their blog post[1]:

    > Instead of forking Chromium or anything else, we’re building our desktop app around the OS-provided rendering engines (like on mobile), allowing us to strip away a lot of the unnecessary cruft and clutter that’s accumulated over the years in major browsers.

    On macOS, Safari is probably the most anaemic "major" web browser out there. Interested to see how it compares to that. I'm not convinced a more minimalist browser compared to Safari is actually useful?

    [1] https://spreadprivacy.com/duckduckgo-2021-review/

  • by mariusor on 12/22/21, 3:08 PM

    The more I see how Mozilla does nothing to allow Firefox/Gecko/Servo to be a base for other browsers, the more I start to believe that it's not just a problem of not having it prioritized on their road map, but it's actually undue influence from outside the company.

    It's impossible that in the 10 or so years since people manifested desires to have a way to embed a browser engine which is not Google controlled in applications, nobody at Mozilla actually realized how good of an idea that is for their popularity, influence, and why not, monetization capabilities.

  • by dartharva on 12/22/21, 12:49 PM

    From the official blog:

    >Instead of forking Chromium or anything else, we’re building our desktop app around the OS-provided rendering engines (like on mobile), allowing us to strip away a lot of the unnecessary cruft and clutter that’s accumulated over the years in major browsers. With our clean and simple interface combined with the beloved Fire Button from our mobile app, DuckDuckGo for desktop will be ready to become your new everyday browsing app.

    It seems they are making the desktop equivalent of Firefox Focus.

  • by IceWreck on 12/22/21, 12:14 PM

    They're using OS provided rendering engines.

    So Chromium based Edge Webview on windows, Webkit on Safari and what exactly on Linux ?

    QTWebengine ? Gecko ? No linux support ? Who knows.

  • by jdpedrie on 12/22/21, 1:18 PM

    There seems to be a growing consensus around the idea that alternative search engines aren't viable without their own browser. Cliqz (acquired by Brave), DDG (obviously successful by some metrics, but not a real threat to Google), Kagi (pops up from time to time here)[0]. Given that Google considers it worth tens of billions of dollars a year to remain the default on Apple devices and Firefox, the default search advantage is clearly quite important.

    I'm not sold on the idea that convincing people to install a different browser will be easier than teaching them to install an extension or choose a different default search provider, but clearly the latter isn't paying off.

    [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28799049

  • by drcongo on 12/22/21, 12:08 PM

    I wish they'd focus on fixing the various things that have broken in their search over the last couple of years, like literal string searching and negation.

  • by hestefisk on 12/22/21, 3:56 PM

    The web really needs a truly cleansheet, non-invasive, open source browser written in a modern language. It’s disheartening to see the consolidation in the web space on Chrome. We need an alternative. There has to be someone who can counter Chrome’s dominance with a modern, fast browser engine.

    (PS - I am and have been a Firefox user for many many years)

  • by anoplus on 12/22/21, 12:22 PM

    If improving DDG - or any privacy respecting search engine - would require extra funding, I just want to say I would be happy to pay subscription fees for a good service.

  • by arendtio on 12/22/21, 3:16 PM

    Most people here probably know it, but for those who don't:

    The key point 'Chromium fork vs. OS provided Webview' is somewhat non-relevant, because they aren't very different. Chromiums rendering engine 'Blink' is a fork of WebKit and most OS provided Webviews are either Blink or WebKit based.

    The last major rendering engine that is different is Gecko/Quantum which is being developed by Mozilla for Firefox. Everything else is based on WebKit nowadays.

    The only fun thing about the situation is that WebKit is a fork of KHTML which was developed by the KDE developers for their browser Konqueror for Linux.

  • by yawaworht1978 on 12/22/21, 12:56 PM

    A mix of Firefox , opera(I kinda like some features), safari without the proprietary issues and the chromium parts minus the tracking would be amazing.

    Rooting for the team, everyone used to say it's too hard to create a new browser from scratch, the monopoly is too overwhelming etc.

    But we got brave, at least it's something fresh. And it appears duck has generated money or investments for following googles path. Next they could go for an email client, a good copy of the Ms suite and a video platform and google might become dethroned some day.

  • by mwcampbell on 12/22/21, 1:59 PM

    > we’re building our desktop app around the OS-provided rendering engines

    I'm skeptical that this will give them enough control to fully customize all browser behavior. The platform-provided browser engine APIs (WebKit, the new WebView2 on Windows) are designed for simple HTML embedding scenarios, not a full web browser. I struggled with this when developing a browser based on the IE engine several years ago. I think Electron would be a better bet. Does anyone disagree

  • by yosito on 12/22/21, 3:21 PM

    Alternative title: "DuckDuckGo is joining the band wagon and releasing another white labeled variant of Chrome"

  • by ac130kz on 12/22/21, 4:39 PM

    They seem to oversold "engine" things to the journalists, the article itself even states that it's simply a thin wrapper to WebViews aka Chromium/Webkit. Yes, it's not a fork, yet it uses only already available engines.

  • by hestefisk on 12/22/21, 3:57 PM

    Btw it’s total non-news that they are building a browser. It’s just a repackaging of the existing OS browser control in a new GUI. So still Chromium / Edge behind the scenes on Windows.

  • by pndy on 12/22/21, 12:02 PM

    The only thing that bugs me with ddg is that every search inquiry is being processed by improving.duckduckgo.com and it's not possible disable it in search options. You can do block it manually in few ways if you wish but I think that should be an option user can control, in an easy way.

    I'm bit concerned how things may look like after Manifest v3 will arrive, when it comes to privacy, ads and tracking. Another Chromium-based browser? Why not, I won't mind it but everything comes to what Google does thru Chromium project people hands. And I don't think it can be anything else but Chromium - despite what he says. If not immediately then they later switch to it - just like Microsoft abandon EdgeHTML in favor of Chromium and Blink.

  • by cloudengineer94 on 12/22/21, 12:23 PM

    Can't wait to see what they offer I have been using Safari and Brave for quite some time now.

    For work I use strictly Edge as it keeps everything from o365 together.

  • by 9387367 on 12/22/21, 1:43 PM

  • by Yizahi on 12/22/21, 1:27 PM

    Yet another Google Chrome clone with privacy mods. How many of those we have already? Four? Five? Good job cementing Googleopoly of internet.

  • by ravenstine on 12/22/21, 3:18 PM

    As much as I prefer DDG over Google in terms of search, and perhaps other services of DDG provided them, I'd beware of allowing them to take on the all-encompassing nature that Google imposes.

    I can see it now... it's the year 2525 and there's DDG search, DDG browser, DDG email, DDG video chat, DDG social network... and they announce the addition of personalization features based on user behavior, restriction of ad-blocking for "helpful ads", and then they just get bought by Google anyway.

  • by sam0x17 on 12/23/21, 2:49 AM

    Would be cool if they, ya know, built a search engine first. They just serve bing results with a few sponsored things thrown in.

  • by quiet_cool on 12/22/21, 2:32 PM

    Couldn't find it in the article but I'm assuming it will only run on current officially supported Win and Mac OS

  • by jokethrowaway on 12/22/21, 12:43 PM

    I really hope they end up using servo.

    If you're ignoring established engines, it's a pretty good first step

    I don't think the web is fixable as it is though. Performances are going to be terrible no matter what unless we pick a subset of functionality and provide native code to handle that.

    EDIT: ooh, they're going to use the native engine on each platform! Wow! This is a non news.

  • by pleb_nz on 12/22/21, 1:19 PM

    As I read I was thinking Please don't use chromium Please don't use chromium Please don't use chromium Please don't use chromium Then I found it... Yes Then I saw 'building or own'... I thought. Why oh why.... sigh... At least consider Firefox

  • by shmerl on 12/22/21, 4:52 PM

    May be they can turn Servo into a complete engine.

  • by azangru on 12/22/21, 1:57 PM

    How many web developers get peeved when they see news of another prospective web browser, I wonder?

  • by foxfluff on 12/22/21, 2:47 PM

    Now DuckDuckGo is building a new skin for someone else's old browser engine.