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Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#31

Post by collyw »

subinsebastien wrote: post #25
collyw wrote: post #2

I use DuckDuck go as my default search on my machines, but I think the fact that Google is not anonymous does give them a big advantage. An obvious example of this is when I search for "Django" (I am primarily a Django developer). DuckDuckGo will return results about the film as the top hits, whereas Google already knows that I mean Django Web Framework and will return those as the top hits. I appreciate the fact tha…

May be use DDG as the primary search enigne, and switch to Google when you don't get what you want in the first go on DDG. Atleast more traffic to DDG, and hence better results in future.

Pretty much what I do, as I say its set as my default search engine on most of my machines. Add "g!" if I am not happy with the results.

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#32

Post by hedora »

collyw wrote: post #2

I use DuckDuck go as my default search on my machines, but I think the fact that Google is not anonymous does give them a big advantage. An obvious example of this is when I search for "Django" (I am primarily a Django developer). DuckDuckGo will return results about the film as the top hits, whereas Google already knows that I mean Django Web Framework and will return those as the top hits. I appreciate the fact tha…

"As good" is subjective. I hate search bubbling. I'd rather click through semi-relevant results a few times then figure out why google hasn't heard of the movie Django, for example.

Also, I switched to ddg years ago, and can't remember one time when I thought that personalizing the results would improve matters.

Every few months, I'll search for something, not find it, and try google. Falling back to google has helped maybe two times out of dozens of searches. In one case google found an old email thread where someone asked my question and got no answer. In the other, I was looking for a specific document with a solution to a Linux issue. I had found it with ddg before. It turns out the solution no longer worked, and was superceded by documents ddg had already returned.

It is unclear that running that test with google as the primary search engine and ddg as the secondary would have different results.

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#33

Post by joeclark77 »

whatshisface wrote: post #29
collyw wrote: post #2

I use DuckDuck go as my default search on my machines, but I think the fact that Google is not anonymous does give them a big advantage. An obvious example of this is when I search for "Django" (I am primarily a Django developer). DuckDuckGo will return results about the film as the top hits, whereas Google already knows that I mean Django Web Framework and will return those as the top hits. I appreciate the fact tha…

>* the fact that Google is not anonymous does give them a big advantage.* What if DDG allowed us to manually tell them information about our demographic in a way that wasn't stored on their servers and could be changed at will? If you want convenience, maybe there could be an optional client-side preference detector script that only offered possible configurations.

Good idea. I definitely don't want them "filtering" my results without my permission, but with permission is fine.

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#34

Post by nine_k »

DDG is great; what it currently lacks (for me) is not search quality but reach; it has trouble indexing less visited corners of the internet.

Google did not become huge because of the search engine alone. AFAICT two things, based on related technologies, made Google oodles of money: AdWords and SERP ads. (AdWords used to be so unobtrusive I never tried to block them.)

I don't know how DDG currently pays its bills. They do feature unobtrusive and clearly marked ads on their SERP, too.

I'm not sure if ads can be reasonable without precise targeting, that is, tracking, tacit privacy invasion of various sorts, etc. Poorly targeted ads are disliked both by users ("dumb!") and advertisers ("poor conversion, money wasted").

The only other option I can see for a private company is to sell a subscription. Pay n USD / mo for no-tracking, no-strings-attached search.

The question is, of course, the value of n. It may turn out to be uncomfortably high for many users, just because advertisers value their eyeball rather highly.

You can already opt out of ads on some Google services, e.g. YouTube: try closing a few ads, or visit google.com/contributor when it (re-)opens. You can opt out of personalized ads, too. While many of us still won't trust all these measures, for many these would feel adequate.

I wish DDG all the luck. But being and staying an alternative, privacy-respecting search engine, even a low-profile one, isn't going to be easy.

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#35

Post by IgorPartola »

whatshisface wrote: post #29
collyw wrote: post #2

I use DuckDuck go as my default search on my machines, but I think the fact that Google is not anonymous does give them a big advantage. An obvious example of this is when I search for "Django" (I am primarily a Django developer). DuckDuckGo will return results about the film as the top hits, whereas Google already knows that I mean Django Web Framework and will return those as the top hits. I appreciate the fact tha…

>* the fact that Google is not anonymous does give them a big advantage.* What if DDG allowed us to manually tell them information about our demographic in a way that wasn't stored on their servers and could be changed at will? If you want convenience, maybe there could be an optional client-side preference detector script that only offered possible configurations.

What a drag. So now I have to set up a profile of my ever changing interests on all of my devices just so I can get an approximation of what Google offers out of the box?

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of not using Google, but this seems like a very user hostile way to do it.

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#36

Post by isaac_is_goat »

I switched to DuckDuckGo as my primary SE and will be using Bing as a fallback. I'm slowly moving as far away from Google as I can.

On that note, any good alternatives to G-Suite that aren't necessarily Microsoft O365 (though I'm not against migrating to that either). A straightforward email migration is a big plus, documents not such a big deal.

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#37

Post by hedora »

ascagnel_ wrote: post #4
collyw wrote: post #2

I use DuckDuck go as my default search on my machines, but I think the fact that Google is not anonymous does give them a big advantage. An obvious example of this is when I search for "Django" (I am primarily a Django developer). DuckDuckGo will return results about the film as the top hits, whereas Google already knows that I mean Django Web Framework and will return those as the top hits. I appreciate the fact tha…

They don't always do a good job of that, though. Yesterday I was searching for documentation for a JS validation library (Joi), and a specific search string ("Joi deny substring") returned some... pornier search results as the top five. It was somewhat redeemed with the sixth result being the one I was looking for. And this was with safe search on.

I misread your comment. Google does indeed return porny stuff for this, and ddg does not. In both engines, your comment is the top of the search results. :-)

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#38

Post by jquast »

isaac_is_goat wrote: post #36

I switched to DuckDuckGo as my primary SE and will be using Bing as a fallback. I'm slowly moving as far away from Google as I can. On that note, any good alternatives to G-Suite that aren't necessarily Microsoft O365 (though I'm not against migrating to that either). A straightforward email migration is a big plus, documents not such a big deal.

suggest fastmail.com

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#40

Post by thesmallestcat »

> I'm getting a feeling that some day in future, DDG is going to become as big as Google, if not supersede it.

Well, no, they don't even have their own search engine.

> a search engine's results are only as accurate as the number of users who search and contribute to it

That makes no sense. Anyway, we don't use DDG because its results are shitty.

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