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After seeing similar threads on HN, I’ve also started a similar journey. I managed to migrate to Firefox with DuckDuckGo as the default search engine. But I’ve also added a shortcut for Google search: if I feel like I am missing something I open a new tab and type “go [keywords]”.
After seeing similar threads on HN, I’ve also started a similar journey. I managed to migrate to Firefox with DuckDuckGo as the default search engine. But I’ve also added a shortcut for Google search: if I feel like I am missing something I open a new tab and type “go [keywords]”.
You know you can prefix your ddg search with !g to use Google? Useful for technical searches, where ddg is sadly, not good enough.
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DDG results are okay until you need to look up something non computer science related, like results for your local country.
Actually that’s better too, I like how it’s possible to switch countries easily to get local results or choose global results. Some non technical searches are more difficult though.
DDG completely ignores my country or when it doesn't, the results are misclassified. And you can forget about local searches, DDG being worse than useless for those.
What strikes me as odd is that DDG is worse for computer science results too.
DDG often ignores search terms that Google doesn't. And which terms it ignores is a complete guess, so you do this back and forth putting relevant query words in quotes to try and force it.
I use DDG as my default search engine, but there's no point in denying the obvious. UI might be nice, but UI is unimportant.
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Actually that’s better too, I like how it’s possible to switch countries easily to get local results or choose global results. Some non technical searches are more difficult though.
DDG’s definition of “global” is essentially “American” though. Presenting results exclusively for Worcester, MA, when I search for “Worcester” from a UK IP address (near Worcester, Worcestershire) isn’t being global, it’s being dumb. It comes up every time DDG is discussed on HN and I don’t understand why they don’t fix it. It’s the main thing that keeps me using Bing on my phone.
After seeing similar threads on HN, I’ve also started a similar journey. I managed to migrate to Firefox with DuckDuckGo as the default search engine. But I’ve also added a shortcut for Google search: if I feel like I am missing something I open a new tab and type “go [keywords]”.
DDG already supports Google (and some others) by typing !g [keywords]
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Google has no problem browsing through your data to serve you "better" advertisement, while Apple claims to respect your privacy (I would be tempted to believe them).
Note that Apple respecting your privacy only applies in countries where they can continue to do business after refusing government requests.
I really tried giving DDG a chance but I always found myself having to go back to Google to find the right information. This would especially pertain to technical matters. The 'average-joe-browsing' (e.g. amazon, movies, songs etc.) worked fine, but when it came down to research papers or solving software problems, I was too often left disappointed. A couple of weeks back I switched to Qwant[1]. Privacy focused, tech…
For photos storage and sharing you may want to check pCloud. They offer lifetime plan at $350 for 2TB. I'm in no way related; just a happy customer. https://www.pcloud.com/cloud-storage-pricing-plans.html
> I’ve already pulled down my 2-300GB Google Photos archive How? I've tried several times and can never complete the download. Wired ethernet, not wifi.
Though it only became usable in the final month or two before the actual sunset.
If you're having issues, do follow up with Google tech support, it's among the few components that actually gets bugfixes.
I really tried giving DDG a chance but I always found myself having to go back to Google to find the right information. This would especially pertain to technical matters. The 'average-joe-browsing' (e.g. amazon, movies, songs etc.) worked fine, but when it came down to research papers or solving software problems, I was too often left disappointed. A couple of weeks back I switched to Qwant[1]. Privacy focused, tech…