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DuckDuckGo Raises $10M

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Re: DuckDuckGo Raises $10M

#81

Post by cknoxrun »

shdh wrote: post #12
newfocogi wrote: post #4

I 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 also use !yt !gi !w and many many more including one I submitted: !hdb

There are great research-related ones as well. !pubmed !dailymed !drugbank etc.

Re: DuckDuckGo Raises $10M

#82

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

philipps wrote: post #78
jjeaff wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contrary to the seemingly popular belief, that their success was due to their algorithm, I used them because of their uncluttered and simple design. That's why I used Altavista before that. Google kept things very simple while other sites loaded on the bloat and garbage. I don't remember ever feeling like what I found with Google couldn't be found with Altavista or lycos. But a lot of the other companies tried to pre…

I remember google having vastly more useful results than its competitors at that time. The uncluttered design was a bonus.

I remember google having equivalent or even inferior results to yahoo search for quite a while, especially in niche topics like sports and music. The differences in algorithms just didn’t matter much for average case queries.

I think the difference in algorithms matters even less now, and that google’s modern advantage is not in ranking algorithms but in automated display of structured data, like sports league results, filmography for an actor, etc., and work around knowledge graph methods to automate that stuff.

Early google was unequivocally only differentiated by branding and sparse design.

Re: DuckDuckGo Raises $10M

#83

Post by mynameishere »

lugg wrote: post #59
gregable wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are primarily going to get responses from people on threads like this who like and use DDG regularly. Selection bias. If you didn't find DDG useful, you wouldn't be using it, and probably don't have much commentary to add. I don't see them truly competing with big budget search engines, but it's probably easy enough to make decent money from keyword ads and if you can sell the brand, you can get enough users to c…

This post reads perfectly if you replace DDG with "Google" and believe it's 1999. Sure Google had a vastly superior algorithm but I don't think too many people really grasped that at the time.

Google was clearly better at the beginning. I remember those days, and how Yahoo! put a bunch of other search engines at the bottom of its own results (Altavista, Excite, Lycos, etc). So it was easy to compare. When Google showed up, it was pretty obvious the game was over.

The main reason? "And" searches. Brilliant.

Re: DuckDuckGo Raises $10M

#85

Post by lettergram »

jjeaff wrote: post #60
lugg wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This post reads perfectly if you replace DDG with "Google" and believe it's 1999. Sure Google had a vastly superior algorithm but I don't think too many people really grasped that at the time.

Contrary to the seemingly popular belief, that their success was due to their algorithm, I used them because of their uncluttered and simple design. That's why I used Altavista before that. Google kept things very simple while other sites loaded on the bloat and garbage. I don't remember ever feeling like what I found with Google couldn't be found with Altavista or lycos. But a lot of the other companies tried to pre…

I actually postulate it was due to their ability to parse queries in an effective way, combined with the speed (and sure, probably design) of results [1]. From what I recall at the time, and even to this day, Google does a better job of determine exact match vs question (and finding subject matter) based results.

[1] https://austingwalters.com/is-search-solved/

Re: DuckDuckGo Raises $10M

#86

Post by shakna »

flas9sd wrote: post #73
mLuby wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the same muscle memory, but I don't think it's a bad thing. Basically I only use !g when normal DDG doesn't give me what I'm looking for, and half the time !g doesn't have it either. The only thing I can't abandon is !gmaps. And I'm just discovering a bunch of other ! commands that make DDG significantly more useful that Google (eg !esen).

If anybody is curious for the distribution of used searches between ddg/!g, I came up with this rough estimate for firefox: sqlite3 ~/.mozilla/firefox/*default*/places.sqlite "select substr(p.url,9,14) as search_backend,count(1) from moz_places p where p.url like 'https://duckduckgo%' or p.url like 'https://%.google.%/search%' group by search_backend;" I fall back to google every 11th query, not counting maps searche…

duckduckgo.com|5521

www.google.com|6

So... I guess that means I don't really need google for search?

Re: DuckDuckGo Raises $10M

#87

Post by 3dGrabber »

swebs wrote: post #71

DuckDuckGo's killer feature to me is that I can always depend on it to be in English. Google annoyingly always changes the language based on the location of the IP address you're connecting from. It's very annoying when traveling.

try &pws=0 on google.

Re: DuckDuckGo Raises $10M

#88

Post by keithnz »

erpellan wrote: post #70

The fact DDG can even get to the ballpark, let alone compete against an opponent whose budget is 3 orders of magnitude larger is astounding, and should be applauded.

you understand that DDG is a wrapper around bing right?

Re: DuckDuckGo Raises $10M

#89

Post by jiveturkey »

jmah wrote: post #80

DuckDuckGo is fantastic on mobile (iPhone). It feels way faster than Google for me — part of that is not getting the "Can I use your location?" pop-ups which then trigger a re-search. Plus there's no AMP junk in the results! And links are real links — when you copy them you get the URL, not some huge tracking string. Occasionally I've felt like I'm not getting good results so have gone to Google to repeat the search.…

switched to google on mobile recently, due to DDG only option of infinite scroll. it makes 'back' useless.

now i am back to google on desktop as well. it is markedly better than DDG for the searches I'm doing anyway.

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