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DuckDuckGo vs Google

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Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#301
post #266
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahh. the uncomfortable truth that DDG is just a meta search engine with a few shortcuts.

"just"? It's an alternative to datenkrake Google that does not track you and adds some neat features (bangs, keyboard navigation, etc.)

But it is not an actual search engine. We do not know the details of their agreements with the actual search engines they depend on.

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#302
I've been using DuckDuckGo for about a year now. I would say it has complete parity with every search engine other than Google, and only seems to miss things when I do very specific searches. A common example is looking up an error in dmesg: I can usually get a specific bug thread on Google, but only more general results on DDG.

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#303

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.

I've had DDG as my primary search engine for I'd guess at least 5 years if not more. It's extremely rare that I ever need to use anything else. I do wish there was a way to tell Yummly to go to hell whenever I search for recipes, though.

I use this script to hide domains I hate from search results: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/1682-google-hit-hider-by-d...

(Title is google, but works for ddg amongst other things also)

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#304
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 !'

It's worth noting that the !g bang redirects you to encrypted .google.com, it's more secure but results are often different from a regular www.google.com search. It bugged me for a while not knowing why some queries returned unusual results. ( more here https://duck.co/forum/thread/2880/remove-the-encrypted-subdo... )

A lot of JavaScript things have been buggy for me with encrypted.google.com as well. For example the Google timer cards and such often just won't start at all, while they'll work fine on the regular google.com.

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#305

Does anyone remember how back in the day, we had Lycos, Hotbot, Yahoo, Dogpile .. a whole host of search engines. You'd go to two or three to get an idea of what was out there. People had different indexes and there were a lot of players. Today, it's just Google. I've been using DDG for a few years, but about 1/3 of the time I add an !g because I don't find the results I need on DDG. The cost of entry to the search m…

I really like the localized index idea someone posted earlier. If I could get 60% of my searches answered locally for the cost of 100 gigs of space I would use it. Even more so if I could host it on a local server somehow.

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#306
I use DDG everywhere except at work, where (for some reason) it's blocked.

The one silly thing I miss about not having DDG at work: in DDG, I can type "new guid" and it gives me a new random guid. If there's a way to do that in Google, I haven't figured it out. (And yes I know there are a million other ways to get random guids. It's just convenient for me to get them this way.)

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#307

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 !'

More bangs at https://duckduckgo.com/bang

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#308

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 !'

The 'I'm feeling lucky' one is great.

' !' or ' youtube !' takes you right to it.

I'd love a feature that opens the first result on a search engine like wikipedia does by default. Biggest use case for me would be imdb but there would be others.

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#309
Off-topic:

Can we please stop with this trend of random websites asking to spam me with notifications? Is there some framework everyone's using that's trying to grab notification permissions at every possible opportunity? At the very least, sites should at least tell me what they're going to have pop up as a notification and give me the option to subscribe to those notifications through some link in the actual site (like what Gmail does when desktop notifications aren't enabled yet).

I understand notifications are useful for "webapps", but for a blog post they seem entirely useless, so every time I see the prompt to allow notifications I reject it immediately on the basis of it almost certainly being spam.

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#310

Love how everybody concerned about their privacy are most likely querying DNS via 8.8.8.8. But I understand, I try to think of the internet as a non-privacy place.

What a strange straw man. People who are very concerned about their online privacy are likely not using that as their DNS.
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