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DuckDuckGo vs Google

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Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#321

Post by kllrnohj »

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…

According to https://www.noppanit.com/how-to-index-all-wikipedia-english-... a search index for wikipedia's english site comes in at around 40GB.

Laptops generally come in 128GB or 256GB capacities. So we're talking roughly 20-50% of an average laptop's storage just to hold the search index for wikipedia alone.

Meaning it is not feasible to store a useful index of the web today on a laptop unless you want to dedicate that laptop to pretty much exclusively searching wikipedia's english content.

You're not searching that database in milliseconds on average laptop hardware, either, but you probably could get it to be "fast enough" for practical usages if you could somehow solve the harder parts like storage size, freshness, and indexing more than just wikipedia's english content.

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#322

Post by baxtr »

DDG is really great! I use it on all my devices since January. I've tried it before to by changing the default to DDG on my iOS devices. However, I've always switched back to google after a couple of weeks. Not this time.

Every now and then when I'm not happy with the search results, I use the "g!" Shortcut to get the google results, but the occasions I'm doing this is definitely decreasing.

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#323

Post by 1024core »

aembleton wrote: post #256
1024core wrote: post #231

But doesn't DDG just repackage results from Yahoo (now Bing)? At least, it was doing that a few years ago when I last checked.

They also have their own crawler: https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckbot

But that doesn't mean they don't just repackage Bing's results (with some of their own thrown in).

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#324

Post by rallycarre »

I've switched to duckduckgo for security reasons and noticed not much difference. Even when I switched back to google for something I couldn't find with duckduckgo the search results are very close.

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#325

Post by kronos29296 »

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.

It is quite for common things but searching uncommon ones always throws it off. Searching for research publications in a specific domain or just haskell or some thing like just returns 1good result with 10 bad ones. So I use !g for those.

Also the autocorrect really throws my search terms off while Google does is right most of the time.

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#326

Post by pkhagah »

a_dev_1234 wrote: post #268
benbenhu wrote: post #54

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 !'

I'm tired of people mentioning !g. If you want to use google, just use google. Stop using duck duck go just to search google, and then say "but duck duck go is better" lo. no it isn't. clearly.

It's not about using duckduckgo to search with google. I use it when duckduckgo results aren't good enough, instead of typing everything in google again. I have been using it less frequently recently.

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#327

Post by mattnewport »

solidr53 wrote: post #178

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.

That's a strange assumption. I use my VPN provider's DNS servers and I imagine many of the relatively tech savvy users who hang out on HN and care about privacy enough to use alternative search engines know how DNS works.

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#329

Post by conjectures »

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.

+1 It's the reason I turn up.

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#330

Post by wruza »

Sargos wrote: post #247
guitarbill wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some might see this as a win for DuckDuckGo

People who like inaccurate search results?

That seems to be pretty one-sided view on decisions one makes out of trade-offs. Having iPhone 4 few weeks ago with js obviously off and now having SE with js:on, I'm not sure whether my web experience got any better or not at all (overall phone experience got better, no doubt).
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