DuckDuckGo vs Google • Hacker News Board

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#541

Post by dredmorbius » Thu, Sep 21, 2017, 11:20 AM UTC

thinkloop wrote: post #478

sitharus wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DuckDuckGo doesn't just run a web crawler, it aggregates from many sources including Bing and area specific APIs. Not all of these sources supply date information so you'd end up with some results having it and others not. Information is here: https://duck.co/help/results/sources

Any idea why search engines would allow API access for a competing search engine? Usually APIs come with a caveat that you can't use them to rebuild the same service. Also for ddg's level of traffic, it seems like special deals would need to made, not just a general access key.

Weakening Google's monopoly.

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#542

Post by AdamSC1 » Thu, Sep 21, 2017, 12:30 PM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #471

AdamSC1 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DuckDuckGo uses multiple sources for our results, as well as our instant answers and bangs. But the most important feature is that DuckDuckGo is the search engine that doesn't track you. We don't store your personal information and we don't sell you out to advertisers. Our goal is to raise the standard of trust online, and so at DuckDuckGo you are not the product, search is. We think that's an important difference. D…

"We don't store your personal information and we don't sell you out to advertisers." But is that information collected by you or anyone affiliated with you or given to anyone? How about information that doesn't directly identify you, but could be used to identify you? (things like browser fingerprints, IPs, cookies, etc)

If you want to look at the nitty gritty we have a very simple and straight forward privacy policy:

https://duckduckgo.com/privacy

We do not collect or share any information that can be used to personally identify you.

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#543

Post by l1feh4ck » Thu, Sep 21, 2017, 12:32 PM UTC

chuckledog wrote: post #515

qweqweqweqw wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, too, switched to DDG, but sadly my most used bang is !g because in 1/3 cases DDG doesn't find what I am looking for.

Does DDG learn from what people !g for?

I would place my bet on that. That would be a query they need to work on.

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#544

Post by l1feh4ck » Thu, Sep 21, 2017, 12:38 PM UTC

Fiaxhs wrote: post #70

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 !'

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... )

It's a sad fact that regular google results are sometimes better than encrypted.google.com. It is like regular google knows what "I" want.

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#545

Post by snaky » Thu, Sep 21, 2017, 12:42 PM UTC

shpx wrote: post #190

anc84 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You vastly underestimate the amount of knowledge in random blogs and small websites. If you are only after the "mainstream" sites, sure, but that's quite the bubble. I want and need access to all the blogs, forums, wikis.

Sometimes, it feels Google is increasingly useless at finding those niche websites because all the noise has time to do search engine """optimization""". I use https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-blocklist... but it should come with pre-compiled lists, like uBlock Origin.

Great extension, thanks!

Oh, I wish there were a way to rate the results in a opposite way. Maybe it's just me, but sometimes I want even mark some site as 'a hidden gem'. Usually it's something rather niche though, like a bunch of great little articles about anti-aliasing filters design and sampling, full of engineering wisdom from the decades of experience. So I think it would be perfect to have a way to tag it by some topic.

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#546

Post by real-hacker » Thu, Sep 21, 2017, 1:10 PM UTC

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…

Yes, we can build a local encyclopedia. But from a 'Green' viewpoint, which is more environmental-friendly: more Terabyte hard-drives sold? or a few MB of data transferring over the internet?

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#547

Post by scaryclam » Thu, Sep 21, 2017, 2:19 PM UTC

tinus_hn wrote: post #394

i_cant_speel wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it be different for two different people if there isn't any tracking going on?

Not saying it is here but it could be dependent on your country.

CoM is #3 for me with region set to UK.

I get Baby Mama as #1 as well, but at least, from the movie synopsis, it doesn't appeat to be an irrelevant result.

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#548

Post by appleiigs » Thu, Sep 21, 2017, 4:48 PM UTC

dx034 wrote: post #533

roryisok wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much is $10MM? Like, a million million? Or is a millimeter thickness of dollars?

No, it's a thousand thousand (roman numeral). In finance, using MM and MMM is quite common (although bn is often preferred over MMM).

yeah, I am in finance. At the bank I used to work at we'd use $1M for $1,000 and not allowed to use $1K.

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#549

Post by thomastjeffery » Thu, Sep 21, 2017, 6:49 PM UTC

Fiaxhs wrote: post #70

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 !'

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... )

The difference isn't the encryption, but the fact that Google tracks your searches to give you "better" results.

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#550

Post by shpx » Thu, Sep 21, 2017, 7:05 PM UTC

shpx wrote: post #315

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 added bangs to google by defining custom search engines with a one or two letter prefix in chrome://settings/searchEngines Now if I type "h my-search" into the omnibar, it goes to google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+my-search which gives me only Google search results from HN. This is using google's algorithm (not the search bar built into whichever website like DDG) which is still the best, especially i…