I’ve used DuckDuckGo as my search engine for a year
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Re: I’ve used DuckDuckGo as my search engine for a year
#2This article doesn't really cover anything that the hacker news audience won't already be familiar with. What is notable, however, is that Duckduckgo has seen a pretty strong surge in usage recently [0], moreso than similar surges in the past.
Re: I’ve used DuckDuckGo as my search engine for a year
#3I’ve always wondered how the economics of DDG work out, considering they’re basically a proxy for Bing with a bunch of other scraped/API-based data sources they layer on top. Are they paying Bing per query? How can that net out positively?
I suppose at their volume they’ve negotiated great API rates, but their own ads can’t possibly bring in enough revenue to cover the expenses of the API calls…
Re: I’ve used DuckDuckGo as my search engine for a year
#4I avoid google (even as a backup) because they've replaced displayed URLs with bizarre breadcrumb things. I can't fathom why even a single person at google thought that was a good idea, but no doubt I'm wrong.
I'm sure it was a fun project team to be on though. The "Replace Slashes with Angle Brackets Initiative"
Re: I’ve used DuckDuckGo as my search engine for a year
#5I’ve always wondered how the economics of DDG work out, considering they’re basically a proxy for Bing with a bunch of other scraped/API-based data sources they layer on top. Are they paying Bing per query? How can that net out positively? I suppose at their volume they’ve negotiated great API rates, but their own ads can’t possibly bring in enough revenue to cover the expenses of the API calls…
Gabe Weinberg has previously stated on hacker news that DDG was profitable at about 4M queries a day (it is now over 100M).
The economics are that you charge more for ads than you pay for API calls. That's all there is to it, really.
Re: I’ve used DuckDuckGo as my search engine for a year
#6Duck Duck Go uses "more results", instead of proper pagination.
I won't use any website that has such poor judgement in website design.
Re: I’ve used DuckDuckGo as my search engine for a year
#7Duck Duck Go uses "more results", instead of proper pagination. I won't use any website that has such poor judgement in website design.
It does seem like an anti-pattern especially for a search engine.
Re: I’ve used DuckDuckGo as my search engine for a year
#8I’ve used ddg for about 5 years. I find it works about as well as Google. I think Google works worse than it did about 10-15 years ago and that this is just a reflection of the internet itself becoming crappier.
Re: I’ve used DuckDuckGo as my search engine for a year
#9Duck Duck Go uses "more results", instead of proper pagination. I won't use any website that has such poor judgement in website design.
It's not optimal from a sharing perspective, but from merely a searching perspective I really haven't had a problem with it. When I used Google, I would rarely ever go beyond page 2, and I'm sure many people do the same.
Re: I’ve used DuckDuckGo as my search engine for a year
#10My quick review after more than a year of DDG as my default:
- Technical searches are usually on par with Google, or even better. What made me switch originally was that I got fed up with Google just straight up ignoring half my query, and I've had none of that frustration with DDG.
- I like the dark theme (although I think Google's experimenting with that now)
- DDG is absolutely worthless when it comes to local searches like shops or even just nearby places (I live in Belgium). I always use '!g' for those. I also still use Google Maps.