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DuckDuckGo vs Google

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Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#201

Post by crummy »

romo5 wrote: post #89

People are conditioned to think Search has to work online. This was true when Google was created. No one had the processing or memory available on their desktop to search an entire index of the "useful" web. Not anymore. How large is a "useful" index of the web today? And can it fit on your laptop? The answer is yes. Can the entire thing be queried fast? The answer is yes. As an example take the entire stackexchange…

I don't think search is as simple as grepping a ton of files. Search Google for "movie where people can't have babies" and the #1 result is Children of Men. I think that's one area where Google pulls ahead of its competition is accurate results to vague queries like that and I think you need a lot of collected data from searches to provide that.

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#202

Post by code_duck »

alexasmyths wrote: post #80
laser wrote: post #28

"Google would be an elephant while DuckDuckGo is a mosquito (this is not to emphasize; I’m actually making things better for DuckDuckGo)." Why would this guy go out of his way to say this metaphor is actually literally informative and generous towards DuckDuckGo while apparently having exerted no mental effort and being incorrect by orders of magnitude on his own data? If you're most generous to the writer, you get 1…

That was one of the most HN comments I've ever read. Hey, it's just a metaphor. Scales and ratios not needed. edit: Wasn't meant to be negative ... as I could see myself writing something like that and my GF giggling at me for a week ...

The idea of a metaphor is to give you a more clear and ideally accurate understanding of something.

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#203

Post by kdamken »

notzorbo3 wrote: post #141
kdamken wrote: post #122

I really, really want to like DuckDuckGo. But every single time I’ve switched from Google, I’ve found them to be much worse at returning the best results for what I’m looking for. For example, let’s say I want to look up “ear infection”. Google will spit out a bunch of info right on their results page, often saving me the trouble of even going to another site. DDG however will just give me 10 webmd links. If they wan…

Try startpage.com. I moved away from google a year ago and never looked back. I've never once needed to fall back to google. That's probably because startpage.com is basically anonymized google. I know we're supposed to root for the entrepreneurs here on HN, but DDG honestly seems like more hype / marketing than a decent product. You never hear anything about startpage.com (maybe because it has a boring name?) but it…

Thanks for the suggestion. I just gave them a try with my "ear infection" search, and found that while they provide similar links, they don't give the additional info (like the summary of what it is and the "People also ask" dropdown box) right on the results page that google search does. This is especially important to me on mobile, especially when I have a weak cell signal.

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#204

Post by jameskegel »

alexasmyths wrote: post #80
laser wrote: post #28

"Google would be an elephant while DuckDuckGo is a mosquito (this is not to emphasize; I’m actually making things better for DuckDuckGo)." Why would this guy go out of his way to say this metaphor is actually literally informative and generous towards DuckDuckGo while apparently having exerted no mental effort and being incorrect by orders of magnitude on his own data? If you're most generous to the writer, you get 1…

That was one of the most HN comments I've ever read. Hey, it's just a metaphor. Scales and ratios not needed. edit: Wasn't meant to be negative ... as I could see myself writing something like that and my GF giggling at me for a week ...

But if there ever a place to be correct in what you say both factually and mathematically and then not be ridiculed for it, it's here. I support the parent argument.

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#205

Post by isolli »

jankotek wrote: post #12

Bing, Seznam, Yandex, Baidu.. there are many other search engines with surprisingly good results. Give it try. I started using alternatives, for privacy, but also because they are often better. Google Maps can not even find near pharmacy in EU country.

Apart from Bing, are they good with English results as well?

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#206

Post by toxican »

dithering wrote: post #199
BartSaM wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You actually make it sound bad. I would more likely to say they are precise and usually won't allow for inaccurate information to fly through the front page without pointing out the issues.

See guys, this is why we don't get invited to parties...

We'll just have to hold our own shindig, with educational flash cards and nature documentaries.

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#207

Post by macintux »

newbear wrote: post #85
StavrosK wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made the jump to Fastmail.com and couldn't be happier. The UI is very snappy (much faster than Gmail's), the actual notifications and delivery is faster, and it's a better experience overall, for me. Plus, Google doesn't get to see my mail any more. Ditto for Firefox vs Chrome.

Did you consider protonmail? If so, why fastmail?

I can only speak for my own decision-making process, but I like to pay for my email so that I have greater confidence that the provider will still be in business 10 years from now, and more confidence that my data is my own.

Really like Fastmail.

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#208

Post by toxican »

benbenhu wrote: post #54
Lifesnoozer wrote: post #3

Recently switched over to DuckDuckGo on all my devices. Tried to do the same thing several years ago and found it didn't really work out, but this time around it is so much better, both when it comes to speed and results. If anyone has doubts because they tried it years ago, I'd say go for it again.

And don't forget to use the bangs that can allow you to check other engines results fast if you need. For people afraid of getting off google, you can always search something like '!g my-search', it works the same for youtube(!yt), google image(!gi), or even hackernews(!hn) And of course the best bang is the 'I am feeling lucky' one (!), i.e.: 'hackernews !'

I tried switching to DDG a few years ago, but I found myself using !ge more often than not, so I wasn't really sure what the point of using DDG was. For my needs, DDG's results are pretty mediocre. Which is a shame, becuase I'd rather support them over Google.

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#209

Post by GunlogAlm »

BartSaM wrote: post #195
Uehreka wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN has a reputation among some[who?][weasel words] as a place where many commenters are some combination of pedantic, overly literal and out of touch with mainstream culture. Taking this metaphor to pieces would seem to check the first 2 boxes pretty neatly.

You actually make it sound bad. I would more likely to say they are precise and usually won't allow for inaccurate information to fly through the front page without pointing out the issues.

So you'd have us call out every metaphor, turn of phrase, expression, hyperbole, etc., because it's imprecise or ambiguous?

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#210

Post by AdamSC1 »

laser wrote: post #28

"Google would be an elephant while DuckDuckGo is a mosquito (this is not to emphasize; I’m actually making things better for DuckDuckGo)." Why would this guy go out of his way to say this metaphor is actually literally informative and generous towards DuckDuckGo while apparently having exerted no mental effort and being incorrect by orders of magnitude on his own data? If you're most generous to the writer, you get 1…

If you'd like to go by searches rather than visits:

At DuckDuckGo we are averaging roughly 17 million searches a day right now (duckduckgo.com/traffic.html)

Google says they did 2 trillion searches last year[1], and while usually their search metrics include Youtube, Google Maps and Gmail queries let's assume it was all searches. That'd be roughly 5.5 billion searches a day.

So now we're talking ~1/322 or just shy of 40lbs. That's roughly the size of a Hamadryas baboon or about 22 Mallard ducks - not a bad little flock! :)

Disclaimer: DDG staff. Opinions are my own. No animals were harmed in the poor construction of this analogy.

[1]http://searchengineland.com/google-now-handles-2-999-trillio...

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