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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

#111

Post by hereonbusiness »

ky738 wrote: post #10
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…

And DuckDuckGo is not really comparable when you don't live in the US. Google is far more superior, even without your info.

This, searching tech related topics, world news etc. works well enough but when I try to search for (not english) local content the top 10 results often aren't even specific to my country.

It seems to be just lumping results together by language without putting enough weight on location.

Funny thing is, I have just the opposite issue with google. While traveling, it constantly tries to force me to use the local version even if I don't want to (redirecting from google.com etc.) which puts more weight on local results.

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#113

Post by sureshn »

I use DDG full time and it has been awesome , I am a devops guy use DDG to trouble shoot my way out of problems I get stuck in and I have personally found this to be way better than google. The Bang search is very cool too , for example I use it to search github for docker orchestration related content directly ! , I also use DDG command line quite a bit and its really awesome , these are things which I feel are much superior compared to google and I hope DDG will become the geeks most preferred search tool in 2017

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#114

Post by Twisell »

hedora wrote: post #32
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 helpe…

And it not as if searching google from DuckDuckGo was hard.

DuckDukGo bangs syntax is simply fantastic even if i mostly always use theses 4 : !w , !m, !g, !gi

Privacy by default, google when you need, it's my default since 2 years.

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#115

Post by untog »

hedora wrote: post #107
nickpsecurity wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? The topic is whether or not to use a search engine. This one delivers bad results compared to major ones. Frustratingly bad if you use it enough. I expected such a reply.

The comment does not present any supporting evidence (even one query where ddg falls over would help, a deep technical analysis of why google is better, with large scale comparisons of result quality would be persuasive). It is the equivalent to me replying to you with: "You don't know why the comment sucks because you also suck." Instead of pointing you to this wonderful Paul Graham article: https://news.ycombinator…

> The comment does not present any supporting evidence (even one query where ddg falls over would help, a deep technical analysis of why google is better, with large scale comparisons of result quality would be persuasive).

While these are all true, we're on a message board, not debating in Ancient Greece. I am very sympathetic to calls to improve comment quality, but on the other hand it's unrealistic to expect someone to perform a deep technical analysis of why Google is better... in a message board comment.

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#116

Post by 9erdelta »

I try to use DDG and set it as my default search. But more often than not I end up doing !g. And if I don't, I feel like I'm missing the answer that will really help me work through my coding issues. After awhile, it just gets to be more annoying than anything, and I go back to Google.

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#117

Post by lostlogin »

hedora wrote: post #37
ascagnel_ wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. :-)

I cringe remembering when I Googled "developer dick image" instead of "disk image" with colleagues watching.

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#118

Post by awalton »

Well, as Google continues dumbing down their search engine, there's certainly room in the market for a search engine with the same kind of power that Google used to have...

...but that being said, DuckDuckGo ain't it. It's in fact, quite far from it. It's roughly as good as old Yahoo Search (pre-Bing), which also nobody used because Google's is vastly superior.

Give me a search engine like Google circa 2010-11 (back before the menagerie of Bird algorithms began trading "fuzzier" results for raw search power) and I'm good.

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#119

Post by Ladnaks »

sureshn wrote: post #110
zouhair wrote: post #45

Every time I try to use DDG I ended using !g which kills its purpose, I just use Startpage[0] [0]: https://www.startpage.com/

This site appears to be a front of google and in the end its relying on google to search and get the result, some how I don't see this to be too different from directly using google in a incognito window

A incognito window doesn't hide your identity from Google. They still get your IP address and your browsers's fingerprint, which is more than enough to identify you.

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#120

Post by lostlogin »

hedora wrote: post #88
sp332 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like this https://support.google.com/ads/answer/2842480?hl=en&ref_topi...

That is a nice UI, but it seems to be for ad targeting (based on the URL). The more fundamental difference is that google knows nearly everything about you already, so this is helping them complete a dossier on you. I think the parent poster was asking for a feature more like "I use LaTeX to document Django. This is all you should know about me. Go." Put another way, can I fill that form out, create a google search b…

Giving your browser a resume is both hilarious and creepy - I like this idea a lot more than what Google do though.
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