In 2015 I tried using DDG for programming questions and the results were inferior to my co-worker who used Google Search. Even without the comparison I could tell DDG was inferior due to how few answers I'd find. I recently switched away from Google services to Firefox, Fastmail, and DDG for privacy reasons. I no longer have issues finding answers within the top 4-5 results and if I do, Google almost never has the answer anyway.
DuckDuckGo Raises $10M
41–50 of 261 posts
Re: DuckDuckGo Raises $10M
#42I have been using DDG for about a year now, although I had tried using it years ago. It works fine for simple queries( e.g. search name of company rather than typing out url). But I basically have !g programmed into my fingers for everything more complicated. Many times when I don't find the results I am looking for, I subconsciously assume that google would be able to find them. This is in comparison to when I canno…
I started out doing that, but I've found myself using !g less and less recently. There are two main things I find myself needing it for: Location based queries, Google will always prioritize UK based results, and often London based results for me. The other is technical searches, I'm not sure how much this is due to Google having better search algorithms for this, or just that it has the data to know that I'm a programmer, but it it's more likely to know that I'm talking about coding with a term like Python or Ruby which could mean something else.
I hope DDG can keep improving, and I do feel like it's a worthy alternative now. I do wonder how they can keep making money with no advertising or paid services, but if they were to be bought out by a big player, I think they would quickly lose much of their user base.
Re: DuckDuckGo Raises $10M
#43Maybe they could buy ddg.com with (part of) this money?
Re: DuckDuckGo Raises $10M
#44I have been using DDG for about a year now, although I had tried using it years ago. It works fine for simple queries( e.g. search name of company rather than typing out url). But I basically have !g programmed into my fingers for everything more complicated. Many times when I don't find the results I am looking for, I subconsciously assume that google would be able to find them. This is in comparison to when I canno…
I've been using DDG for a few years now. I have the same reflex with !g, but when I'm on a browser that's google by default I quickly find that I also need a way to go the other way and do the equivalent of !ddg... In other words the queries that google has good results for isn't a superset of the queries that ddg has good results for. It's just a different set.
I suspect that the eternal problem will be that of context.
Back when Google started out, they bet the farm on the idea that more links pointing to a document meant that said document was informative.
These days though, i wonder if what we are looking for is more hair. That what we are looking for depends on a context that can't be properly included in the search terms used.
On top of this "naive" metrics like link counts are no longer a viable measure for what to elevate to the top of the search results.
Re: DuckDuckGo Raises $10M
#45When I noticed that DDG is using (among other sources) Yandex.ru (Russian search engine) index I've stopped using it. It is not a question of privacy but rather a question of trust and bias. Of course YMMV.
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Re: DuckDuckGo Raises $10M
#46I have been using DDG for about a year now, although I had tried using it years ago. It works fine for simple queries( e.g. search name of company rather than typing out url). But I basically have !g programmed into my fingers for everything more complicated. Many times when I don't find the results I am looking for, I subconsciously assume that google would be able to find them. This is in comparison to when I canno…
I’ve been using ddg for a few years and it really has come a long way. When I first started I would !g all the time. These days I almost exclusively use ddg searches. I find their results to be just as relevant as google.
Re: DuckDuckGo Raises $10M
#47When I noticed that DDG is using (among other sources) Yandex.ru (Russian search engine) index I've stopped using it. It is not a question of privacy but rather a question of trust and bias. Of course YMMV.
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Re: DuckDuckGo Raises $10M
#48When I noticed that DDG is using (among other sources) Yandex.ru (Russian search engine) index I've stopped using it. It is not a question of privacy but rather a question of trust and bias. Of course YMMV.
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Re: DuckDuckGo Raises $10M
#49When I noticed that DDG is using (among other sources) Yandex.ru (Russian search engine) index I've stopped using it. It is not a question of privacy but rather a question of trust and bias. Of course YMMV.
I don't believe there are any options here. All tech companies are politically aligned, that includes all search engines.
Re: DuckDuckGo Raises $10M
#50What happens to the pension fund if DDG fails?
They lose their cash in this one investment, but only up to the 10m invested. Funds diversify their risk by investing in lots of businesses