937809 - Add DuckDuckGo to the default search engines list

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(SeaMonkey :: Search, enhancement)

Description

[Svetlana Tkachenko]

DuckDuckGo (https://duckduckgo.com) is a privacy-oriented search engine, following concepts such as
- http://dontbubble.us/
- http://donttrack.us/
- http://fixtracking.com/
- http://whatisdnt.com/
... all of which are more a problem with Google.

This search engine, similarly to Mozilla, is working toward privacy of users and their awareness.

It would be possible to replace Google with DuckDuckGo in the search engines list without cost overheads, as SeaMonkey currently does not receive funds from Google for having it listed. There is no obligation.

This bug is a formal step toward documenting the potentially possible need to replace.

Comment 1

[David [:Ceremony]]

As I understand it, Google, Bing, Amazon and all those other search engines are included in FF by graciously donating lots of money, though I doubt that they pay not to include DuckDuckGo and other engines such as Startpage or MetaGer, meaning it can also be included into Firefox, though not replace any of the competitors.

Though that might be another bug entry by itself...

Comment 2

[Frank Wein [:mcsmurf]]

Attachment: Patch

This patch adds DDG to the list of search engines shipped with SeaMonkey for the en-US locale.

Comment 3

[rsx11m]

Don't you also need to modify the browser.search.* prefs to actually switch the default?

Comment 4

[Frank Wein [:mcsmurf]]

Well, the result of a discussion about this among SeaMonkey developers was that SeaMonkey wants to keep Google as default search engine.

Comment 5

[rsx11m]

Oh, ok - must have missed that... :-[

Comment 6

[Ian Neal]

(In reply to Frank Wein [:mcsmurf] from comment #2)
> Created attachment 8362305 [details] [diff] [review]
> Patch
> 
> This patch adds DDG to the list of search engines shipped with SeaMonkey for
> the en-US locale.
Doesn't a line need adding for DDG after http://mxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/source/suite/locales/en-US/chrome/common/region.properties#10 ?

Comment 7

[Ian Neal]

(In reply to Frank Wein [:mcsmurf] from comment #4)
> Well, the result of a discussion about this among SeaMonkey developers was
> that SeaMonkey wants to keep Google as default search engine.

I've tweaked the bug summary to reflect this. Potentially should have a meta bug to cover adding it for other locales and post to the l10n list once this has landed.

Comment 8

[rsx11m]

This appears to have stalled - it wasn't my intention with comment #3 to defer introducing DuckDuckGo, on the contrary. Any reason why attachment 8362305 [details] [diff] [review] can't proceed for a review? Whether or not keeping Google as the default engine or making DDG the default SeaMonkey is shipped with could go into a follow-up bug.

Comment 9

[Frédéric Wang (:fredw)]

Attachment: Patch V2

(In reply to Ian Neal from comment #6)
> http://mxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/source/suite/locales/en-US/chrome/common/
> region.properties#10 ?

I verified that Frank Wein's patch works as expected (it adds DuckDuckGo to the list of search engines but keep Google as the default). The remaining search engines (CC, DuckDuckGo, Wikipedia) seems to be listed in the alphabetic order, after Google & Yahoo. Adding browser.search.order.3=DuckDuckGo allows to put DuckDuckGo at the third position instead.

I believe nothing more is needed for the present bug, so I'm asking review now. Related work can be done in follow-up bugs...

Comment 10

[Ian Neal]

Comment on attachment 8482886 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch V2

This will need to be flagged up to localisers and some guidance issued about how to correctly localise it, I believe mcsmurf as going to do this.

Comment 11

[Frédéric Wang (:fredw)]

(In reply to Ian Neal from comment #10)
> This will need to be flagged up to localisers and some guidance issued about
> how to correctly localise it, I believe mcsmurf as going to do this.

So what is needed here? Do you want me to open a follow-up bug and post something on https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/mozilla.dev.l10n? Anything else?

Comment 12

[Ian Neal]

(In reply to Frédéric Wang (:fredw) from comment #11)
> (In reply to Ian Neal from comment #10)
> > This will need to be flagged up to localisers and some guidance issued about
> > how to correctly localise it, I believe mcsmurf as going to do this.
> 
> So what is needed here? Do you want me to open a follow-up bug and post
> something on https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/mozilla.dev.l10n?
> Anything else?

If you are aware of what the guidance needs to be issued for localisers, not sure if that information is publicly available or only mcsmurf knows it

Comment 13

[Ian Neal]

(In reply to Frédéric Wang (:fredw) from comment #11)
> (In reply to Ian Neal from comment #10)
> > This will need to be flagged up to localisers and some guidance issued about
> > how to correctly localise it, I believe mcsmurf as going to do this.
> 
> So what is needed here? Do you want me to open a follow-up bug and post
> something on https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/mozilla.dev.l10n?
> Anything else?

To answer the other question, follow-up bug is fine to track the rest of the work.

Comment 14

[Philip Chee]

Pushed to comm-central:
https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/11f5d66a8e1b

Comment 15

[Frédéric Wang (:fredw)]

(In reply to Ian Neal from comment #12)
> If you are aware of what the guidance needs to be issued for localisers, not
> sure if that information is publicly available or only mcsmurf knows it

Unfortunately, I'm not but I expected that info would be publicly available. Let's wait mcsmurf's reply, then.

Comment 16

[Frank Wein [:mcsmurf]]

So in general Duckduckgo respects the language of the browser (Accept-Language). Maybe it would be a good idea for locales the add the region parameter, too? See https://duckduckgo.com/params, e.g. append &kl=de-de to the search URL to boost results from Germany (from what I see this actually means "German-speaking region", so also includes Austria and Switzerland).