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You Can’t Quit, I Dare You

brooksreview.net

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Re: You Can’t Quit, I Dare You

#11

Post by EvanKelly »

simonsarris wrote: post #5

> It’s not an easy thing to do, mostly because old habits die hard, but it is actually very possible. That's a different premise than most people are using. I wouldn't quit Google services because its possible. I would quit Google services if it was personally worth it. And it simply isn't. Not for me and not for the overwhelming majority of internet users. Oddly, he confuses why it might be worth it too. He says at…

Not to nitpick, but I was surprised to see you got "nothing useful" for "NBA Standings".

What do you consider useful? Is it not worth your time if the search engine doesn't provide the current standings on the page? My first result for "nba standings" was nba.com/standings which is probably the canonical source for such a thing.

Re: You Can’t Quit, I Dare You

#12

Post by kennu »

brianwillis wrote: post #4

I like to run my email on my server, but it’s a significant undertaking and I don’t recommend you do that. I agree with Ben on this point, but don't really understand why things are this way. In looking for a replacement for Google Reader I found a bunch of high quality self hosted options. Similarly, hosting a website on your own server (or one you rent from someone else) is a pretty trivial exercise for anyone that…

Would you mind listing the high quality self hosted alternatives to Google Reader? I host my own email (Postfix+Dovecot on Ubuntu is pretty simple), and I might like to do it for RSS feeds, too.

Re: You Can’t Quit, I Dare You

#14

Post by nilkn »

simonsarris wrote: post #5

> It’s not an easy thing to do, mostly because old habits die hard, but it is actually very possible. That's a different premise than most people are using. I wouldn't quit Google services because its possible. I would quit Google services if it was personally worth it. And it simply isn't. Not for me and not for the overwhelming majority of internet users. Oddly, he confuses why it might be worth it too. He says at…

To be fair to DuckDuckGo, I tried your searches and did get useful results. "movies near me" took me to Yahoo! Movies, which showed me theaters near me. I could also search for something like "movies [zip code]". I tried it for a few different zip codes and it always got me the results I wanted, but not always through the same site. For one zip code, it brought up the Fandango page for that area, which had exactly what I wanted. For another, it took me right to the showtime page of the only theater in the town.

As for "NBA standings," I'm not a huge NBA guy, so maybe I don't know what you wanted, but it takes me right to nba.com/standings, which is the same as the top result on Google. The only difference that I can tell is that Google puts some of the standings in a table on the search results page, which doesn't seem like a huge deal to me.

It sounds like you're judging a search engine based solely on the information it takes out of links and puts in its own format on the results page, not by the links it provides. While I agree that bells and whistles like extracting certain results into a table on the results page are cool, that hardly seems to me like the ultimate test of a search engine. Actually I'd say that's one of the least important factors in a search engine, to me anyway.

Anyway, with all that said, I don't have anything against Google. I just don't agree with your assessment of DuckDuckGo.

Edit: That's not to say DuckDuckGo is perfect. I queried my own name and found that DuckDuckGo didn't pick up on all the stuff that Google does about me. For instance, I can't seem to find my linkedin page through DuckDuckGo at all.

Still, honestly, I think it seems pretty decent for a search engine. Not better than Google, but certainly useful.

Edit2: DuckDuckGo actually has some cool features that Google does not.

Search "password generator" on DDG and it actually generates a password for you above the search results. Search "hackage reactive-banana" and it gives you a summary of the Haskell package above the search results.

Re: You Can’t Quit, I Dare You

#15

Post by vacri »

LukeShu wrote: post #6
vacri wrote: post #2

Why is Bing seen as the only other game in town? If you're really about not letting 'the man' in on your stuff, why would you go to the other 'the man' of Microsoft? I don't use them, but my privacy-conscious friends use duckduckgo for this exact reason, and it has a wealth of rich search available. Also, something in me philosophically opposes a mail company that charges 50% more for IMAP access. IMAP should be enco…

I was thinking that about Bing too, when I first read it. Then the Bing thing turns into "and that's a worst-case, we also have DDG, which kicks butt!"

Not sure how I missed that on a reread, but it's still puzzling why he firstly recommends replacing 'the man' with the other 'the man'.

Re: You Can’t Quit, I Dare You

#16

Post by mynameishere »

I stopped using Google's search a long time ago because of the monstrous "instant" feature. Sure, you can turn it off, but you have to be signed in to do that. And if you're signed in, you're being very closely monitored. It wasn't that hard.

Re: You Can’t Quit, I Dare You

#17

Post by brianwillis »

kennu wrote: post #12
brianwillis wrote: post #4

I like to run my email on my server, but it’s a significant undertaking and I don’t recommend you do that. I agree with Ben on this point, but don't really understand why things are this way. In looking for a replacement for Google Reader I found a bunch of high quality self hosted options. Similarly, hosting a website on your own server (or one you rent from someone else) is a pretty trivial exercise for anyone that…

Would you mind listing the high quality self hosted alternatives to Google Reader? I host my own email (Postfix+Dovecot on Ubuntu is pretty simple), and I might like to do it for RSS feeds, too.

It looks like I'll be sticking with Fever[1]. The assigning-temperatures-to-posts thing seemed like a gimmick at first, but it actually works somewhat well, and you can ignore it if you want to. It also syncs with Reeder[2] on the iPhone/iPad which I've been using with Google Reader and am reluctant to part with.

[1]: http://www.feedafever.com

[2]: http://reederapp.com/

Re: You Can’t Quit, I Dare You

#18

Post by simonsarris »

nilkn wrote: post #14
simonsarris wrote: post #5

> It’s not an easy thing to do, mostly because old habits die hard, but it is actually very possible. That's a different premise than most people are using. I wouldn't quit Google services because its possible. I would quit Google services if it was personally worth it. And it simply isn't. Not for me and not for the overwhelming majority of internet users. Oddly, he confuses why it might be worth it too. He says at…

To be fair to DuckDuckGo, I tried your searches and did get useful results. "movies near me" took me to Yahoo! Movies, which showed me theaters near me. I could also search for something like "movies [zip code]". I tried it for a few different zip codes and it always got me the results I wanted, but not always through the same site. For one zip code, it brought up the Fandango page for that area, which had exactly wh…

The author touted DuckDuckGo returning different results as an advantage, so I've been looking for differences between DuckDuckGo and Google, not similarities, and semantic data pulled is the easiest way to show that Google results are more informative faster.

After all, if we ignore all the sugar from Google results, and they merely return the same top result, why then would I use DuckDuckGo?

I've been fooling with it for 15 minutes now. Are there any good examples of DuckDuckGo results being more relevant than Google results?

Re: You Can’t Quit, I Dare You

#19

Post by jpxxx »

I've been using DuckDuckGo exclusively for months now, and it is a dog's breakfast compared to Google. Some types of searches are almost as good, but nothing about it is better than Google's experience yet.

Re: You Can’t Quit, I Dare You

#20

Post by stevewilhelm »

Just tried searching "march madness" and "yuba city hotels" in Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Google. I don't think I will be switching.

I use Google Apps for Business: 25GB email inbox plus 5GB doc storage, custom domain, Google Docs, admin controls, two-step verification, best spam filtering on the planet, integrated calendars, video chat, mobile support, UI support for multiple accounts (business and personal), 99.9% uptime, and no ads for $5 per month / per user.

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