Giving up on Google
robsheldon.com
Giving up on Google
1–10 of 192 posts
Re: Giving up on Google
#2Just wanted to vouch as well for yegg's amazing response. He fixed some l-key issues I complained about on duckduckgo within just a couple weeks, and responded to me within a day.
Maybe yegg could drop a comment on how he manages his time to do all this?
Re: Giving up on Google
#3I also switched to DDG at the prompting of an HN commenter, and agree entirely with the points made in the OP.
The only downside really is just in the formatting of the results - I can get 11-12 results in a google search in a full-height window and about 8 in DDG. Sure, some of that is due to the very nice "disambiguator" box (or whetever they call it), and the results are indeed generally higher quality, but it is also due to large title fonts and designey white space, so I personally would like a bit of that back.
(No I haven't sent this to DDG feedback because for all I know it is a personal peeve and everybody else likes it this way)
Re: Giving up on Google
#4I also switched to DDG at the prompting of an HN commenter, and agree entirely with the points made in the OP. The only downside really is just in the formatting of the results - I can get 11-12 results in a google search in a full-height window and about 8 in DDG. Sure, some of that is due to the very nice "disambiguator" box (or whetever they call it), and the results are indeed generally higher quality, but it is…
"(No I haven't sent this to DDG feedback because for all I know it is a personal peeve and everybody else likes it this way)"
The way I see it, Gabriel's job is to decide whether it's a personal peeve or not. Your job is to ask for new features and "complain" about the old features, so that he can hear what real users think.
Re: Giving up on Google
#5I've been on duckduckgo for a few weeks. It's different in a very good way. The only time I reverted to google was to try instant, which I find a great improvement.
It's brilliant that there is still quality innovation going on in the search space. It's an old industry now, after all.
Re: Giving up on Google
#6I also switched to DDG at the prompting of an HN commenter, and agree entirely with the points made in the OP. The only downside really is just in the formatting of the results - I can get 11-12 results in a google search in a full-height window and about 8 in DDG. Sure, some of that is due to the very nice "disambiguator" box (or whetever they call it), and the results are indeed generally higher quality, but it is…
You can change the font size in the settings, if you have not already done so.
Re: Giving up on Google
#7I also switched to DDG at the prompting of an HN commenter, and agree entirely with the points made in the OP. The only downside really is just in the formatting of the results - I can get 11-12 results in a google search in a full-height window and about 8 in DDG. Sure, some of that is due to the very nice "disambiguator" box (or whetever they call it), and the results are indeed generally higher quality, but it is…
"(No I haven't sent this to DDG feedback because for all I know it is a personal peeve and everybody else likes it this way)" The way I see it, Gabriel's job is to decide whether it's a personal peeve or not. Your job is to ask for new features and "complain" about the old features, so that he can hear what real users think.
Yes, please complain (although be nice about it) :)
The design is continually in flux based on user feedback, but recently I've been stepping back to take a more holistic approach and really push it forward.
I will be working with a professional designer on this and the duck.co community (if anyone wants to participate). I hope this will become evident (and useful) within a few months from now. So by all means, give design feedback!
Re: Giving up on Google
#8Just wanted to vouch as well for yegg's amazing response. He fixed some l-key issues I complained about on duckduckgo within just a couple weeks, and responded to me within a day. Maybe yegg could drop a comment on how he manages his time to do all this?
There is so much that can still be done as computational linguistics makes its way into how search queries are understood and how content is indexed and retrieved. Faster machines will make some things possible that were not (like instant search) soon!
Re: Giving up on Google
#9Just wanted to vouch as well for yegg's amazing response. He fixed some l-key issues I complained about on duckduckgo within just a couple weeks, and responded to me within a day. Maybe yegg could drop a comment on how he manages his time to do all this?
No magic bullet. Here's the process:
--All feedback gets pushed to my personal email inbox--gmail :)
--I try to do 0-inbox, i.e. keep my inbox at zero messages. This is usually not attainable, but means it functions essentially as a to-do list.
--I respond to all feedback ASAP (unless anonymous).
--If it is something simple that I know how to fix I try to do it that day.
--If it is something a bit more complicated, I respond, and put it on the bug queue. I'm currently using http://speckleapp.com for that, made by an HNer (http://elliottkember.com/).
--Every few days I set aside a large block of time to go through that bug queue. If easily fixable, I fix it and respond back: "Fixed!" If not, I put it in another category, and explain why it is a complex issue and how and when it might get fixed (or not).
Re: Giving up on Google
#10>> legitimate search results have become cluttered by old, stale web forums and mailing list postings.
QFT. I spent the beginning of the year teaching myself Rails, and I can't count the number of times I cursed Google's search results. Multiple different copies of the same mailing list post, just from different mirrors. And almost everything pointed to some old version of Ruby or Rails that wasn't relevant anymore.
And searching on Google Groups is worse.