Add "suggest url" in DDG onion's manifest

As mentioned here: !178 (comment 2743523)

The onion manifest is missing something like the following for auto-complete:

      "suggest_url": "https://ac.duckduckgo.com/ac/",                                                       
      "suggest_url_get_params": "q={searchTerms}&type=list"

But, before we jump to add this, we need to ask if they actually support auto-complete on their onion.

added Icebox label

mentioned in merge request !178 (merged)

Shouldn't this thing be closed now?

added Roadmap::Future label

removed Icebox label

added Android Onion Services labels

removed Android label

added Android label

added Feature label

mentioned in merge request !643 (merged)

added UX label

We set browser.search.suggest.enabled to false by default, to disable search suggestions.

We don't hide this setting from the preferences, so users can re-enable them.

I wonder if adding the suggestion URL for DDG onion would convey the message that we support this.

(Finally, I think Android is wrong for this issue).

/cc @donuts @ma1 @richard

I wonder if adding the suggestion URL for DDG onion would convey the message that we support this.

Do you mean the casual user reading the changelog?

Not sure about this. Maybe just adding an "(as an option, even though search suggestion queries are disabled by default)" to the changelog entry?

I think if the user takes the pain of going to enable them manually in about:config, they deserve at least using them on an onion service

For the record, as we wrote in the MR, we discussed also on IRC and we decided of merging !643 (merged) because suggestions are disabled by default both on PBM (Firefox's default) and in normal mode (we set browser.search.suggest.enabled to false), and at the moment many other search engines still have the suggestion URL.

However, we're still not fan of this search suggestions, and we will keep it off by default.

It sounds like we've resolved the original issue, and enabling search suggestions in private windows is a bigger topic. However fwiw I wouldn't consider search suggestions to necessarily be a dark pattern. In many instances they're a good, time-saving feature.

A lot of it comes down to how much we trust the search engine provider to respect the user's privacy. If we were to be ultra conservative with the search engines we bundle in #41835 (closed), I wouldn't be averse to finding a way to enable search engine suggestions in Tor Browser that doesn't involve turning PBM off.

There's a preference to turn on suggestions for PBM, too.

However, keep in mind that it's something that Moz does by default, at the moment, and I'd like to explicitly add it to our profile, until we decide that maybe we can turn them on.

However, this is the big point:

A lot of it comes down to how much we trust the search engine provider to respect the user's privacy.

+1 for being something that is a bigger topic (indeed, I consider this part of the review to our choices, and the creation of an updated design document).

If we were to be ultra conservative with the search engines we bundle in #41835 (closed)

Also, users might add new search engines by themselves, like adding new extensions.

There's a preference to turn on suggestions for PBM, too.

However, keep in mind that it's something that Moz does by default, at the moment, and I'd like to explicitly add it to our profile, until we decide that maybe we can turn them on.

Okay that's good to know, thanks.

Also, users might add new search engines by themselves, like adding new extensions.

Great point. If we were to enable search suggestions by default, we may want to apply some custom UX to review this preferences as a second step (with appropriate warnings about privacy) when users add new extensions.

closed

marked this issue as related to tor-browser-build#40848 (closed)

removed Android label

marked this issue as related to tor-browser-build#40965 (closed)