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Inside DuckDuckGo, Google's Tiniest, Fiercest Competitor

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Re: Inside DuckDuckGo, Google's Tiniest, Fiercest Competitor

#141

Post by jarofgreen »

sdegutis wrote: post #94
laureny wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Duck duck is barely usable ... but they don't spy on you. 1. You don't know that. 2. No search engine ever spied on you when they started.

I wonder if it's possible to make a search engine that people can verify is not spying on them. One where the source is truly open source. Not just on github, but where anyone who wants to can ssh into the server and have full read-only access to the whole system to verify that the code they see is really what's running. Sure, there'd be some security things to work out to make it balance how easy it'd be to hack it,…

If I can SSH in and have full read only access on the server what's to stop me seeing what other users are doing, thus ending user privacy?

Re: Inside DuckDuckGo, Google's Tiniest, Fiercest Competitor

#142

Post by jarofgreen »

hissworks wrote: post #44

This article ended abruptly.

Serious point, it actually took me a couple of seconds to make sure I hadn't missed a "Next Page" link. I'm still not sure I haven't.

(edit to add) I read somewhere that the first Google home page just had the search box on, and people used to wait because they thought it hadn't finished loading. So they added the copyright notice as a footer just so people would realise it had.

Re: Inside DuckDuckGo, Google's Tiniest, Fiercest Competitor

#143

Post by barik »

res0nat0r wrote: post #138
josteink wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Duck duck is barely usable On the contrary, I find Google barely usable these days, with everything covered in layers and layers of horrible bloat, random UX mess of the week and constant pestering about G+. DDG is nice and clean, has features Google is (still) lacking and just gets me the results. I may resort to other search-engines (like Google) once a week or so, but at this point, there's no way I'm going back t…

Im not sure where all of these cluttered Google search UI comments are coming from, this is what I see. Maybe a reality distortion field due to pent up HN Google hate? Just a few icons in the top right off screen with my profile pic and configuration wheel icon you can't see. Things look fine. http://i.imgur.com/J9AqaQK.png

Using a term like 'hn' isn't really a representative example, since it's unlikely that any advertising would be purchased for such a term or have any custom "knowledge panels". So, first, turn off AdBlock (if you hadn't already done so), then try a more representative query like "flowers":

http://i.imgur.com/jsx1feJ.png

It's a big difference, and these different experiences with Google could just be a matter of which keywords people tend to use (e.g., very general vs. very targeted searches) and what extensions they chose to install in their browser.

Re: Inside DuckDuckGo, Google's Tiniest, Fiercest Competitor

#144

Post by cleaver »

cpncrunch wrote: post #132
untog wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't consider w3schools a good search result, ever: http://www.w3fools.com/

Why do you say that? (and please don't say you read it on w3fools) In my own experience, w3schools is the quickest way of getting the information I want, which I guess is why it is at the top of google. I know it isn't cool to like w3schools, but then I'm not a cool programmer.

Sometimes I just need to confirm a particular attribute. I don't think W3S is very good, but I have been on the site enough times that I know I'll be in and out with what I need in about 10 seconds.

Re: Inside DuckDuckGo, Google's Tiniest, Fiercest Competitor

#145

Post by yekim »

donut2d wrote: post #64
jmsduran wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I applaud what DDG is doing. I've been using it as my default search engine for roughly 2 years. Yes, there are some areas for improvement, especially when it comes to complex technical queries. But for the majority of everyday things, DDG is excellent, and returns less advertisement bloat within its results than Google/Bing. Plus ducks are my favorite animal, so launching DDG as I begin the work day is a joy!

This was my experience with DDG as well. For everyday searches, it does a fine search. But it fails pretty miserably with complex technical queries which is probably 95% of what I use web search for. For that reason, after trying DDG for about a year (for the second time) I switched to startpage.com.

Thx for the info on startpage.com. Never heard of it till this thread on HN. Just made it my homepage and added it to my tool bar.

I switched to DDG a couple years ago after becoming concerned about privacy. Unfortunately, DDG has never quite cut it for me in terms of search results. I do a TON of technology related searches, particularly wrt very obscure programming related technologies, especially related to embedded target dev. DDG always comes up short, and I typically end up doing "!g" searches. So startpage.com appears to the best blend of privacy + good search results. For me anyway...

Re: Inside DuckDuckGo, Google's Tiniest, Fiercest Competitor

#146

Post by DanBC »

cpncrunch wrote: post #132
untog wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't consider w3schools a good search result, ever: http://www.w3fools.com/

Why do you say that? (and please don't say you read it on w3fools) In my own experience, w3schools is the quickest way of getting the information I want, which I guess is why it is at the top of google. I know it isn't cool to like w3schools, but then I'm not a cool programmer.

Lots of people complain about W3Schools. Some of those people say the Mozilla pages are a bit clunky.

Seems like a nice passive income project - man pages for HTML / CSS aimed at beginners but with advanced information too.

I'm surprised it hasn't already been done. Perhaps it has and I just don't know the URL.

Re: Inside DuckDuckGo, Google's Tiniest, Fiercest Competitor

#147

Post by vacri »

howeyc wrote: post #114
simias wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I try to switch to ddg roughly every 6 months. I usually switch back within the hour. One example I can remember: I was working on some linux V4L2 code and wanted to get more informations on the "buf_queue". By mistake I searched for "vbuf_queue". Google's results: https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=vbuf_queue It only shows 3 results where I am (and 0 a few months ago when the problem occured) which makes it prett…

"Mr. Babage if I were to feed wrong inputs to that calculation machine will it still produce correct outputs?"

And yet the commentor is claiming that the other tool is able to produce useful output from those inputs.

Re: Inside DuckDuckGo, Google's Tiniest, Fiercest Competitor

#148

Post by mverwijs »

hueving wrote: post #136
ck2 wrote: post #87

I applaud the DDG spirit but without their own crawling data their future is doomed. If their data sources ever cut them off, it's over. They need to build their own crawlers like gigablast.

>They need to build their own crawlers like gigablast. Unfortunately the opportunity for that is pretty meek. Many webmasters block crawlers that aren't the top search engines. :-(

Can't duckduckbot just present itself to the webserver as GoogleBot?

Re: Inside DuckDuckGo, Google's Tiniest, Fiercest Competitor

#149

Post by vacri »

crassus wrote: post #75
zacinbusiness wrote: post #7

I've been a happy DDG user for about 3 years now. I initially started not because of privacy, but because I think the home page and search results are much cleaner and more minimalist. And I've told myself that if Google ever produces a search result that I couldn't find just as easily with DuckDuckGo then I will switch back. So far that hasn't happened. Now I use DuckDuckGo as my home page and it's my only search en…

Google doodles are distracting. I don't need to see a clever flash game commemorating something-or-other every time I open a new tab when I'm working, thanks.

The games aren't flash, and they don't show up on either the search bar in your browser or the search results page.

Re: Inside DuckDuckGo, Google's Tiniest, Fiercest Competitor

#150

Post by nostrademons »

DanBC wrote: post #146
cpncrunch wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you say that? (and please don't say you read it on w3fools) In my own experience, w3schools is the quickest way of getting the information I want, which I guess is why it is at the top of google. I know it isn't cool to like w3schools, but then I'm not a cool programmer.

Lots of people complain about W3Schools. Some of those people say the Mozilla pages are a bit clunky. Seems like a nice passive income project - man pages for HTML / CSS aimed at beginners but with advanced information too. I'm surprised it hasn't already been done. Perhaps it has and I just don't know the URL.

http://html5index.org/
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