[tor-bugs] #4902 [Tor Browser]: Change the default search engine in TBB

Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki torproject-admin at torproject.org
Sat Jan 14 21:10:05 UTC 2012


#4902: Change the default search engine in TBB
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 Reporter:  phobos       |          Owner:  mikeperry
     Type:  enhancement  |         Status:  new      
 Priority:  normal       |      Milestone:           
Component:  Tor Browser  |        Version:           
 Keywords:               |         Parent:           
   Points:               |   Actualpoints:           
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Comment(by atagar):

 > I like DuckDuckGo or scroogle. They are both equally anonymous.

 While I like scroogle and use it for my own searching, it would not be a
 good default for TBB. Scroogle relies on scraping google's content which
 has a couple disadvantages...

 1. Scroogle breaks whenever google changes their page. Scraping becomes
 more difficult as google integrates more ajax into their pages and, iirc,
 scroogle is now relying on the mobile version of the google site.

 There have been a few times that it looked like scroogle would be broken
 indefinitely. It would be a bad idea to potentially leave TBB users with a
 broken default search.

 2. Google would still be getting TBB search queries, just through a one
 hop proxy. I'm not sure if this really addresses the concerns people have
 been raising...

 My preference would be for us to go with DDG too. Besides being a nice
 search, they've been supportive of tor and also changed their homepage in
 response to complaints that it required javascript to operate. Both great
 signs that they're highly supportive of user privacy.

 Cheers! -Damian

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/4902#comment:2>
Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki <https://trac.torproject.org/>
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