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Nothing Can Stop Google. DuckDuckGo Is Trying Anyway

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Re: Nothing Can Stop Google. DuckDuckGo Is Trying Anyway

#171

Post by valarauca1 »

I've switched to DDG and I've hardly looked back. Google's search has been seriously declined in quality. Most search operators [1] are no longer supported. Even those directly in the "tools" menu don't work.

For example if you search "Nothing Can Stop Google. DuckDuckGo Is Trying Anyways site:medium.com", and set a custom date range to sometime last year. You'll see results which state this blog post was posted in 2018-October-31 for example, or which every date you prefer because I assume they just fuzzily fit the post date -into- that range. You can make google tell you this blog post is 2+ years old.

The Google.com I found useful in the early 00's even had document qualifiers so I could search for strings, but filter to just PDF's, or HTML, or JPG's. Now I have to pay for these features via a Google App-Engine private search instance. It just feels like having somebody spit in your face. When features were free, but they quietly became pay-to-play without zero warning.

[1] https://bynd.com/news-ideas/google-advanced-search-comprehen...

Re: Nothing Can Stop Google. DuckDuckGo Is Trying Anyway

#172

Post by RileyJames »

I use DDG now, and have been for about a year.

I still !g a lot, but I’m alright with that. I wish it were a shortcut to add !g to a query.

One of the key things I’ve realised in the switching is that I actually LIKE a lot of the changes google has made from initial “just show the 10 results” like DDG does today.

I like the news carousel, when I’m searching for a news related article.

I like all the local info on a cafe / store, when I’m searching for it. The google implementation is WAY better than Yelp listings (constantly nagging me to install an app, Yelp seems to satisfy no one, it’s a middle man resource no one needs)

But overall I’m happy using DDG for a first crack, knowing my privacy is valued, and moving onto google when I need to.

It feels like I’m supporting a more private future, now, without hindering myself severely in the process. I’m happy with that compromise. Hopefully one day google will not be necessary.

Again, my one wish. Give me the !g tag in one click, one swipe, what ever. Don’t make me type it into the query box and search again!

Re: Nothing Can Stop Google. DuckDuckGo Is Trying Anyway

#173

Post by auiya »

tombert wrote: post #8

I started using DDG as my default search engine about 6 months ago, and for 95% of the searches I do it's totally fine. I don't know why people think that DDG needs to "stop" Google; did people think that Lycos and Infoseek and Yahoo couldn't coexist back in the 90's? I think it's good that both companies have some competition from each other.

But... it's... just Bing with federated search redirectors? Is that truly competitive? Any of the search companies could implement the same overnight if users were clamoring for it.

Re: Nothing Can Stop Google. DuckDuckGo Is Trying Anyway

#174

Post by godshatter »

tpaschalis wrote: post #27

Quick question, if you Google 'ddg' in incognito mode, do you get any results regarding DuckDuckGo? In the first 10 pages of Google Search I only get two 'relevant' results; one in the bottom of the first page, and a second one of an article mentioning DuckDuckGo in page 8 or something. (Not trying to start a war here, just asking).

I was curious so I tried "!g ddg" and duckduckgo.com was the second result on page 2, whether I was in private mode (in Pale Moon) or not.

Re: Nothing Can Stop Google. DuckDuckGo Is Trying Anyway

#175

Post by da_chicken »

megous wrote: post #112
the_duke wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's very much search topic related: * DDG is atrocious for anything other than English * Programing/IT searches often yield garbage on DDG while on Google a good result is within the first 3. I have it as my default now too, but "!g" is a constant companion. === Regarding Google and Amazon being unstoppable... it seemed the same once for Microsoft. Once they get too big/powerful (which they arguably already…

I wish I could tell ddg that I only care about postgresql. It seems heavily skewed to oracle/ms server when searching anything sql related. Perhaps because it's powered by Bing?

I wish I could tell DDG that I don't give a shit about Python 2.7. Stop linking me to the Python 2 doc! I haven't used Python 2 in five years!

Re: Nothing Can Stop Google. DuckDuckGo Is Trying Anyway

#178

Post by aasasd »

O1111OOO wrote: post #150
mangoman wrote: post #79

Back in the day, before I just defaulted to using Google, I remember checking multiple search engines to find the thing I was looking for. You'd check Yahoo/Google/Lycos, try a couple of different phrasings, and then if that didn't work try searching on a few other search engines. Somewhere along the way, Google had won me over, because I almost always found my answer. I had stopped even considering other search engi…

One feature that I like about DDG is their multiple site search (search string site:123.com,345.com). Startpage or Google, last time I checked a long while back, don't have this feature. Since I use an index.html (as my local home page), I wanted to get something similar to Google's Custom Search (ability to only search a set of specific domains). At the very top of my index.html, is DDG's search form with radio butt…

You could improve usability by employing ‘submit’ elements instead of all radiobuttons, and offloading the ‘new tab’ functionality to a hotkey: that way, you'd tab-and-enter to fire one of the non-default searches, or Ctrl-enter for a new tab (or Cmd-enter on Mac; though I'm not sure why you'd want to open a new tab from the start page). The hotkey here would have to be implemented with JS.

But, in case you're using Firefox, you have an even better option of putting those search options into search keywords such that “ddgv something” would get you to the video search straight from the address bar.

In Chrome, IIRC you can do a similar thing by assigning a keyword which would work with “keyword”-tab-searchphrase, but a) I don't remember how it's done, and b) Chrome's address bar doesn't seem to rank searches as domain visits, so a partial keyword entry tends to be replaced with another domain, which is annoying.

Re: Nothing Can Stop Google. DuckDuckGo Is Trying Anyway

#179

Post by saalweachter »

anomie31 wrote: post #54
ouid wrote: post #47

As has been mentioned probably millions of times in the last decade, "to google" is synonymous with, "to search the internet for". As long as this remains true, and google search remains free, their monopoly position cannot be challenged. they have the trademark on the shortest sequence of syllables which means "to search the internet for" which means that in the vast majority of cases, when people describe searching…

Isn't "Kodak moment" a counterexample?

I'm not entirely sure "Kodak moment" was ever more than advertising, but do people still use that phrase? I know it, as a thirty-something, but I'm not sure I've ever used it.

Re: Nothing Can Stop Google. DuckDuckGo Is Trying Anyway

#180

Post by otachack »

losvedir wrote: post #156

I use and like DDG but I can't believe this article didn't mention Bing, which powers DDG's organic results. Like, yes DDG is a small company based "just east of nowhere" in PA because Microsoft has spent literally billions of dollars on Bing . To the extent we have a choice in search provider at all, it's entirely due to Microsoft's huge investment, and I feel like it's remiss not to consider those implications. If…

MS also invested a ton into Windows Mobile, I imagine, but market share only went down according to Wikipedia.

If DDG is simply a skin for MS Bing along with anonymous/little tracking, maybe that's what the people want?

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