For everyone finding DDG to slow, my last recommendation on this one.. startpage.com :)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3662475
(just to make people aware of alternatives, before returning to google/bing/etc)
DuckDuckGo is blowing up
31–40 of 219 posts
Re: DuckDuckGo is blowing up
#32!g is the google killer. I switched to DDG, but kept drifting back to see if Google was doing better. I find myself using !g less and less, as I get used to the result format. At the moment, DDG reminds me of Firefox (or was it WaterSquirrel then?) back-in-the-day. Its something that "feels" better than what is the standard - and it's something that I go on and on about to other nerds, when I'm drunk ;)
You've convinced me. I'm trying DDG right now!
Re: DuckDuckGo is blowing up
#33as a happy DDG user I have to say congrats and I absolutely love the zero click box, a feature that often provides superior search quality than Google.
Re: DuckDuckGo is blowing up
#34I've been using blekko.com and found that I prefer it to ddg. Like others have, I too go back to Google for programming related searches at times.
Re: DuckDuckGo is blowing up
#35!g is the google killer. I switched to DDG, but kept drifting back to see if Google was doing better. I find myself using !g less and less, as I get used to the result format. At the moment, DDG reminds me of Firefox (or was it WaterSquirrel then?) back-in-the-day. Its something that "feels" better than what is the standard - and it's something that I go on and on about to other nerds, when I'm drunk ;)
> (or was it WaterSquirrel then?)
Phoenix -> FireBird -> FireFox :)
Re: DuckDuckGo is blowing up
#36That's consistent with our Google Analytics. Visits from DDG are up to 58 last week, up from 15 the first week in January with a steady climb. There was a dip last week over week for some reason.
Compared to Google's 38K visits for last week, they have a long way to go to make a dent. We perform better in DDG results, as well.
Re: DuckDuckGo is blowing up
#37Do they publish revenue? I wonder what the infrastructure costs are and how they scale in comparison to the number of request.
Re: DuckDuckGo is blowing up
#38DuckDuckGo is definitely pulling users from Google. By mimicking Facebook, Google has lost its mojo. Stepped right into the "social" honeypot. No news. The more interesting thing is the fantastic feeling more and more people have: that Facebook and Google will take eachother down the spiral. As for the Google part, right now it's probably just an alarmist prediction, but it's going to be fun to watch un/fold. Especia…
[1998]
Google is definitely pulling users from Yahoo. By mimicking Alta Vista, Yahoo has lost its mojo. Stepped right into the "portal" honeypot. No news. The more interesting thing is the fantastic feeling more and more people have: that Alta Vista and Yahoo will take eachother down the spiral.
As for the Yahoo part, right now it's probably just an alarmist prediction, but it's going to be fun to watch un/fold. Especially if Google and other engines continue to get better while practicing their principles instead of a crude mixture of addictive search quality, addictedness to bucks and PR along the lines of "Yahhooooo!".
Re: DuckDuckGo is blowing up
#39pg's analysis was spot on, then [1]. I recently realized DuckDuckGo would be a hit when a hacker friend who does not read HN started using DDG as his primary search engine. To me, this means it is out there. I switched too, at least for a while, and now I use both google and DDG, constantly having the impression that DDG's results are getting better and better. [1] http://paulgraham.com/ambitious.html
I remember specifically thinking of DDG when PG mentioned search engines in that keynote. I've used DDG since 2010 and I would never switch back.
Although I don't use DDG, I too thought of them specifically when PG mentioned it.
Let's see if PG turns out to be right on this one.
Re: DuckDuckGo is blowing up
#40Wow, thats a great curve. Just wanted to throw in my personal experience with DuckDuckGo, and it doesn't necessarily reflect on DuckDuckGo specifically, however: After seeing them pop up here once or twice quite recently I thought I'd give it a go, I opened up preferences in Chrome and switched my default search over to DDG. It felt good, made a nice change but was certainly a bit "odd". I found what I wanted, most o…
Interesting.
I've also been demo'ing DDG the last week. As an ahem experienced developer, I've found that most of the time, the results I get from DDG are pretty close to what I'd get with Google, minus Google's interface.
I've built up enough confidence to feel that DDG is going to give me what I need.
I do wish it were a little faster though. Speed is a feature, and I'm sure it's hard to compete with google.