Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often • Hacker News Board

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#181

Post by frik » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 8:05 AM UTC

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.

Isn't DDG a meta-search engine based mainly on search results from Yahoo/Bing and Yandex (from Russia). It is. And that's why it has this rather annoying latency or load time until the search results show up. And the results are only good for English and Russian. To cover up the deficits the return to quick guesses as first results like cached results or snips from Wikipedia, Yelp, etc and some other community curated so called "cook receipts". It's great that DDG exists, and it works great within its constraints, so don't get me wrong.

Ideally, the world needs more internet search engines - as of now only Google, Bing, Yandex, Baidu come to my mind. And various initiatives like Cuil, Wikia Search, etc failed or good ones like Exalead (EU sponsored Google competitor, bought by Dasault), Blecko (bought by IBM for Watson) got bought and vanished for general public but are still active for internal company purposes.

And why do we need more web search engines? Because of the filter bubble, censorship and privacy concerns, etc. - it's never good to have to deal with a mono- or duo-poly (which is already reality, as in most countries on 1-2 of them return really good search results, and the others are barely useable for local native language search phrases).

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#182

Post by frik » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 8:20 AM UTC

DrScump wrote: post #174

One of many things that disgust me about the latest big revision to Opera (version 41) is that Opera Mobile doesn't include DDG as one of the (7) default search options (though it does include Amazon, eBay, and IMDB). Ugh.

Opera got bought by an Asian ads company.

Vivaldi browser seems to be the spiritual successor of Opera by its previous developers.

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#183

Post by jplayer01 » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 9:47 AM UTC

I've always had problems with their search results and I end up switching back to Google every time.

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#184

Post by hereonbusiness » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 9:54 AM UTC

hedora wrote: post #160

hereonbusiness wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 versi…

Out of curiosity, do you tell ddg which country to search in? (there is an option somewhere inside the hamburger menu) I don't think they use IPs to geolocate, so I find myself using yelp (or sometimes tripadvisor/citysearch) for local results. Maybe a geolocating custom search / instant answer box (that can be opt-in/out) would help. It is one step down the slippery slope of search bubbling/tracking, but maybe that…

Yes, I had my location set all this time but now that you asked I took a second look and realised that is not enough.

While my countries flag was displayed next to the search bar it was set to "All results" in the menu, so I have to explicitly enable the region filter by flipping the switch next to it.

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#185

Post by gaspoweredcat » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 10:23 AM UTC

i think they do need to ditch that name though, whilst as you say google wasnt really any less odd in the early days however it did sort of roll off the tongue, where as duckduckgo is somewhat clumsy and unpleasant no matter how many times you say it. i know it shouldnt be important and its not really, its just annoying

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#186

Post by bbcbasic » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 11:06 AM UTC

mibbiting wrote: post #61

Adverts on hackernews now eh?

The jobs link contains ads too

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#187

Post by bbcbasic » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 11:09 AM UTC

coldshower wrote: post #124

DDG is my default search engine because I'm addicted to the !bangs. For example, I use !pf to quickly convert an article into a PDF. I maintain a blog where I "showcase" the best bangs for the Duck: http://duckgobang.com/

Nice. I like the passion you clearly have for this topic

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#188

Post by bbcbasic » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 11:10 AM UTC

jaclaz wrote: post #155

yarou wrote: post #57

I actually tend to use Bing. hides

>I actually tend to use Bing. hides I would find more appropriate in the context ducks ...

Boom boom

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#189

Post by sp332 » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 3:33 PM UTC

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…

But you can also edit your search history, YouTube watching history, synced Chrome browsing history etc. You can make up new Google profiles with different interests.

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#190

Post by xj9 » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 6:50 PM UTC

Forlien wrote: post #94

Joeboy wrote: post #21

DDG is really great for easily doing specific types of search, eg. adding "!w" to your query will search for something on Wikipedia. For that feature, it's extremely useful and I don't like to be without it. But its own search results (which I think are actually anonymized Bing search results?) are nowhere as near what google manages by personalizing your search. So I'll often add "!g" to my query to get google resul…

You can add these shortcuts into your browser. On firefox, you can right click on a search box and specify some character(s). I'm sure there's a similar process on chrome too.

too much work. changing my default search engine to ddg is faster and easier. i don't even know all of the bang commands! if i followed your advice i would have a significantly inferior experience.