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DuckDuckGo Cooks Google's Goose

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Re: DuckDuckGo Cooks Google's Goose

#81

Post by dalore »

huhtenberg wrote: post #74
nostromo wrote: post #45

The comments on HN in the past few weeks have been so mean spirited. What happened? I chalked Facebook up to schadenfreude -- but DDG?

Just look at the contents of the front page. It's no longer Hacker News, it's mainstream Tech News with a bit of nerdy sprinkle. The older audience is heavily diluted with those who push pseudo-tech cruft (like a woman suing a VC) to the front page, the same people who also comment more and don't really get the spirit of the board. HN is at its tipping point. I am eagerly waiting for HN2... that's assuming one hasn't…

So what happened to slashdot, then reddit, and now hackernews?

Re: DuckDuckGo Cooks Google's Goose

#82

Post by pg »

huhtenberg wrote: post #74
nostromo wrote: post #45

The comments on HN in the past few weeks have been so mean spirited. What happened? I chalked Facebook up to schadenfreude -- but DDG?

Just look at the contents of the front page. It's no longer Hacker News, it's mainstream Tech News with a bit of nerdy sprinkle. The older audience is heavily diluted with those who push pseudo-tech cruft (like a woman suing a VC) to the front page, the same people who also comment more and don't really get the spirit of the board. HN is at its tipping point. I am eagerly waiting for HN2... that's assuming one hasn't…

http://news.ycombinator.com/classic shows what the frontpage would look like if we only counted the votes of people who joined HN in the first year. It looks pretty much the same.

The comments are declining though, I admit that.

Re: DuckDuckGo Cooks Google's Goose

#83

Post by staunch »

pg wrote: post #82
huhtenberg wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just look at the contents of the front page. It's no longer Hacker News, it's mainstream Tech News with a bit of nerdy sprinkle. The older audience is heavily diluted with those who push pseudo-tech cruft (like a woman suing a VC) to the front page, the same people who also comment more and don't really get the spirit of the board. HN is at its tipping point. I am eagerly waiting for HN2... that's assuming one hasn't…

http://news.ycombinator.com/classic shows what the frontpage would look like if we only counted the votes of people who joined HN in the first year. It looks pretty much the same. The comments are declining though, I admit that.

I'd guess it needs to show only stuff that was submitted by those people to be really useful.

Re: DuckDuckGo Cooks Google's Goose

#84

Post by cdmoyer »

andywhite37 wrote: post #2

Am I the only one that struggles with the name "DuckDuckGo?" The unprofessional name makes it really hard for me to want to use the service, even if it has nice targeted results that may be more relevant or higher quality than Google's. Maybe "unprofessional" is not the right adjective, but I can't find the right one. I have the same problem with "Bing" - the logo is just such an eyesore, and the marketing is so obno…

I think the name is the only reason I remembered it long enough after hearing about it to try it and eventually switch. I have had no issues recommending it.

Re: DuckDuckGo Cooks Google's Goose

#85

Post by tprice7 »

huhtenberg wrote: post #74
nostromo wrote: post #45

The comments on HN in the past few weeks have been so mean spirited. What happened? I chalked Facebook up to schadenfreude -- but DDG?

Just look at the contents of the front page. It's no longer Hacker News, it's mainstream Tech News with a bit of nerdy sprinkle. The older audience is heavily diluted with those who push pseudo-tech cruft (like a woman suing a VC) to the front page, the same people who also comment more and don't really get the spirit of the board. HN is at its tipping point. I am eagerly waiting for HN2... that's assuming one hasn't…

You may be interested in this:

http://www.thoughtocean.com/what/dilution

Re: DuckDuckGo Cooks Google's Goose

#86

Post by andywhite37 »

cdmoyer wrote: post #84
andywhite37 wrote: post #2

Am I the only one that struggles with the name "DuckDuckGo?" The unprofessional name makes it really hard for me to want to use the service, even if it has nice targeted results that may be more relevant or higher quality than Google's. Maybe "unprofessional" is not the right adjective, but I can't find the right one. I have the same problem with "Bing" - the logo is just such an eyesore, and the marketing is so obno…

I think the name is the only reason I remembered it long enough after hearing about it to try it and eventually switch. I have had no issues recommending it.

That's a good point, the name is definitely memorable.

Re: DuckDuckGo Cooks Google's Goose

#87

Post by calinet6 »

huhtenberg wrote: post #74
nostromo wrote: post #45

The comments on HN in the past few weeks have been so mean spirited. What happened? I chalked Facebook up to schadenfreude -- but DDG?

Just look at the contents of the front page. It's no longer Hacker News, it's mainstream Tech News with a bit of nerdy sprinkle. The older audience is heavily diluted with those who push pseudo-tech cruft (like a woman suing a VC) to the front page, the same people who also comment more and don't really get the spirit of the board. HN is at its tipping point. I am eagerly waiting for HN2... that's assuming one hasn't…

I just want to say, I don't respect this sort of lazy elitism.

We all talk about scaling our companies, or scaling our technical systems, but when it comes to scaling a social system, are we really just going to throw in the towel and point fingers like we're in junior high?

We can do better than that. It's a hard problem, but isn't that what we're here for? Come up with a solution and quit whining.

Re: DuckDuckGo Cooks Google's Goose

#88

Post by elehack »

lubujackson wrote: post #78
codeka wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing I don't understand is, for all that DDG does, there's really nothing that Google and/or Bing couldn't just copy wholesale if it were really that great. The ONLY thing DuckDuckGo can do that Google won't is "privacy" (maybe "less ads" is another thing). While that might be reason enough for some people to switch, it's barely going to make a dent in Google's dominance.

Reading all these comments made me wonder... If DDG uses the Bing API and is passing the search term to whatever search-related text ads they show, that's a pretty big blind spot for the privacy advocates. Because Bing still gets your search term and so does the ad network. What they don't get is your IP address, but as the AOL search dump proved, sometimes search terms alone are enough to identify someone. It's stil…

Bing gets everyone's search terms merged together, with no way to distinguish individual users. To Bing, it looks like one user doing a bajillion searches on all manner of topics.

In the AOL case, while IP addresses were stripped, users were identified with unique keys so you could see individual users' search sequences. That is not the case here.

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