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DuckDuckGo Traffic

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Re: DuckDuckGo Traffic

#121

Post by hdespiritu »

dfee wrote: post #15

Honest question: what distinguishes DDG from Google or Bing? Why shouldn’t they (or won’t they) follow the same trajectory as our once beloved “don’t be evil” Google of the late 2000s? I’ve used DDG off and on, and I think the interface is fine (perhaps better these days as Google seems to have gotten worse), but I see the idea of selling clicks as being too lucrative. Are we just rooting for the downfall of the incu…

There's obviously no guarantee in the long run, but Gabriel Weinberg (DDG founder) is arguably one of the most holistic tech founders when it comes to tackling socially impactful problems in tech probably due to his interdisciplinary background. He's detailed his approach in a variety of podcasts and blog posts over the years

https://medium.com/@yegg/mental-models-i-find-repeatedly-use...

https://fs.blog/gabriel-weinberg/

Re: DuckDuckGo Traffic

#122

Post by EvilGrin »

idclip wrote: post #80
winrid wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I understand the nostalgia, I think this convention has carried into "today" in Games too, like "!kick bots". Maybe they're gamers. ;)

Whoever first implemented those bots ...

Unsure about other games genres but various bots first appeared with Quake due to its easy modding. Reaper was the first if I recall correctly.

https://www.quakewiki.net/quake-1-bots/

Re: DuckDuckGo Traffic

#123

Post by insulanian »

I've noticed the significant drop in quality of Google results as well. Tried DDG couple of years ago, but wasn't happy. This post, however, pushed me to install the DDG extension in Chrome and give it another chance. Let's see how it goes.

Re: DuckDuckGo Traffic

#124

Post by mkl »

Dig1t wrote: post #2

Hell yeah, this is really good thing to see! I've been 100% DDG for ~6 months now and almost never have to use !g anymore. Part of the problem was getting over the anxiety of wanting to double check with Google every time I use the service. 99% of the time I use !g I get the same results as what I got from DDG anyway. Plus having the dark theme saves my eyes and battery.

A dark theme only saves battery on an OLED or CRT screen. LCD screens (i.e. most) use slightly more energy displaying black than white. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-b...

Re: DuckDuckGo Traffic

#125

Post by diffeomorphism »

throwaway8941 wrote: post #20
teeray wrote: post #14

Bang commands[0] really sealed DDG for me. I know Firefox had install-your-own search plugins forever, but the total lack of friction of typing “!yt badgerbadgerbadger” to get specifically YouTube results was fantastic. !g (search on Google) also makes it far easier to switch. Don’t like the results? Prefix !g and try again. My other favorites: !sr [name of subreddit] - much faster than “reddit.com/r/[name]” !r - Red…

JFYI, there's no need to install anything. Focus on a search field on (almost any) website, open the context menu, and "Add a keyword for this search". Put a letter or two into the "keyword" input. Profit.

That still means I have to set this all up for all the sites I want, which is a hassle. The convenient thing about ddg is that it comes with a large number already setup out of the box.

Re: DuckDuckGo Traffic

#126

Post by ramblerman »

sansnomme wrote: post #18
dfee wrote: post #15

Honest question: what distinguishes DDG from Google or Bing? Why shouldn’t they (or won’t they) follow the same trajectory as our once beloved “don’t be evil” Google of the late 2000s? I’ve used DDG off and on, and I think the interface is fine (perhaps better these days as Google seems to have gotten worse), but I see the idea of selling clicks as being too lucrative. Are we just rooting for the downfall of the incu…

Because their business model is built on privacy and not necessarily search tech. See my previous comment on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22078338 In many ways they are more like a VPN company — a proxy for hire. If they want to expand, a good way would be to acquire Keybase or maybe something like https://bloom.sh and continue exploiting the inferior Google alternatives market.

A business model implies making some sort of profit. How are they funding themselves currently?

Re: DuckDuckGo Traffic

#127

Post by soraminazuki »

mda wrote: post #114
kucing wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fact, DuckDuckGo gets its results from over four hundred sources. These include hundreds of vertical sources delivering niche Instant Answers, DuckDuckBot (our crawler) and crowd-sourced sites (like Wikipedia, stored in our answer indexes). We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we also source from a variety of partners, including Verizon Media (formerly Yahoo) and Bing. Hmm I…

The explanation is fluff and has no meaning if they don't give which percentage of queries is answered by which source. e.g. it is probably all bing for any non trivial query. To me, it seems they just want to create an illusion that it is more than a glorified proxy / meta search engine.

I doubt this because DDG usually gives me very different results from ecosia, an actual Bing proxy.

Re: DuckDuckGo Traffic

#128

Post by pelliphant »

sansnomme wrote: post #17
nbrempel wrote: post #3

Over the past 5 years I’ve tried DDG several times. Each time except the last I wanted to stick with it but the results simply didn’t stand up to what I’d see on Google. About 6 months ago (a year? I can’t remember) I switched and haven’t looked back. Now, when I look at google, the results actually look less relevant. As well, the ads on Google have become very obnoxious. I don’t feel like I’m being served the best…

DuckDuckGo uses Bing underneath so the company whom you should really be complaining to is MSFT.

if i search for in ddg and then do "!b " (the !bang for a bing search), I don't get the same results.

Re: DuckDuckGo Traffic

#129

Post by diffeomorphism »

hvasilev wrote: post #96

3.5 billion queries for google daily, 54 mil daily record for DDG. That means that google achieves the daily record for DDG for slightly more than 14 minutes. It is incredibly hard / nearly impossible to compete against a tech monopoly in its core business grounds. I would like to switch to DDG, but for me the google results are definitely more relevant than the DDG results. I wish it was otherwise.

I don't think the comparison against google is all that interesting because it is such an extreme outlier. How about comparing against the second most popular search engine?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_search_engine#Market_share

If I am reading this correctly, ddg has about one fifth as much marketshare as the second place, which is quite impressive.

Re: DuckDuckGo Traffic

#130

Post by mkl »

catalogia wrote: post #88
izacus wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a post with 600+ complaint comments on first page city more than a day now... How can you say "you don't see any comments complaining"?

I don't see any mention of favicons in this thread other than the one I responded to, and I don't know what thread from yesterday you're talking about. But since both DDG and Google have favicons on the results page, I find it hard to believe this is really a matter that has people moving to DDG. This hypothesis basically amounts to "people are blind idiots who notice favicons on one page but not the other" , and I d…

> I don't know what thread from yesterday you're talking about.

It's got >2600 upvotes and has been high on the front page for 18 hours now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22107823

> people are blind idiots

Hm...you may be onto something there :-)

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