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DuckDuckGo Raises $10M

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Re: DuckDuckGo Raises $10M

#101

Post by bklyn11201 »

i1856511 wrote: post #92

DDG has the same business plan as major providers(selling keywords), but they do it in a way that is more respectful of your autonomy. Reasons I use DDG exclusively: - I prefer their business plan. Keyword ads still appear on search results page, but I am not psychographically modeled and retargeted after I close the browser session. - It performs fast and I like the visual appearance. - No AMP results. (Google does…

So how does DDG avoid wholesale transfer pricing to their search providers: Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex?

Re: DuckDuckGo Raises $10M

#102

Post by BraveNewCurency »

gregable wrote: post #55
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…

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…

> The results may be good enough for plenty of folks, but I highly doubt they will ever be better than the big budget search engines.

On the other hand, that is not the criteria for them to be successful, because they are already better on a different metric: Privacy.

I find that 90% of my queries are just "who is that person?" or "what is that thing?". Those queries can be answered by DDG just as well as Google. So I'm not giving up anything, but gaining privacy. More importantly, I'm (subtly) sending a signal to the market that I find privacy is important.

Even on the 10% of queries that are complex, DDG does "good enough". I sometimes wonder if Google has the results sorted better, but I'll gladly waste a few minutes here and there in exchange for privacy.

Re: DuckDuckGo Raises $10M

#103

Post by whoisjuan »

keithnz wrote: post #88
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?

I don't think a "wrapper" is the right term. They aggregate results from multiple sources including their index which is built by their own spider.

Also I don't see how that negates the fact that they are doing a fantastic job against a company that's is much bigger, more powerful, more experienced and with an incredibly larger budget.

Re: DuckDuckGo Raises $10M

#104

Post by dhbradshaw »

jiveturkey wrote: post #89
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.

I hate infinite scroll.

Re: DuckDuckGo Raises $10M

#105

Post by partisan »

I use DDG on a daily basis. Out of ignorance, I haven’t used the bang switches, but I think I have been satisfied with the quality of the search results to the point where I very rarely go to google anymore.

I am happy to have an alternative to google search even if the effect is too small to be measured.

Re: DuckDuckGo Raises $10M

#106

Post by addicted »

gregable wrote: post #55
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…

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…

The vast majority of my searches are resolved by: 1) Wikipedia 2) Maps 3) Stack Overflow.

I don’t see why I should sacrifice my privacy for google to provide me with a single interface for these few sites, especially when DDG does it without mining all my info.

Re: DuckDuckGo Raises $10M

#110

Post by abentspoon »

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've been using DDG for around six months now, largely because I love their keyboard shortcuts. Weirdly there doesn't seem to be a shortcut to help insert bang commands.

I've been using this greasemonkey script[1] as a workaround, but I'd love to have an official solution.

[1] https://gist.github.com/m5/247631d8258ff6f52383b417acd8516f

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