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Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

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101–110 of 198 posts

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#101
Questions for you to ponder:

1) Why do you think their results would get better if more people use their engine?

2) If their results really are better than Google, as you claim, why is their user base so small after all these years?

3) Why should we trust them any more than Google? How do you know they're not actually collecting your data or passing it on to the third party engines they use?

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#102
Sure, just make me a chrome add-on that splits the tab in two vertical ones with DDG in the left and Google on the right whenever I search from the location bar which is nearly always so I don't have to search twice when DDG misunderstands what I want.

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#103
post #34

DDG is great; what it currently lacks (for me) is not search quality but reach; it has trouble indexing less visited corners of the internet. Google did not become huge because of the search engine alone . AFAICT two things, based on related technologies, made Google oodles of money: AdWords and SERP ads. (AdWords used to be so unobtrusive I never tried to block them.) I don't know how DDG currently pays its bills. T…

How poorly targeted can an ad be when you've told them exactly what you're looking for ? It doesn't get much more targeted than "car dealerships Florida".

Well, if you're looking to buy a Honda, and the ad that gets shown is for the Mercedes Benz dealership, that's pretty crappy targeting.

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#104
post #2

I use DuckDuck go as my default search on my machines, but I think the fact that Google is not anonymous does give them a big advantage. An obvious example of this is when I search for "Django" (I am primarily a Django developer). DuckDuckGo will return results about the film as the top hits, whereas Google already knows that I mean Django Web Framework and will return those as the top hits. I appreciate the fact tha…

It just requires a habit shift. You have to learn to be slightly more specific. "Django framework".

Lets hope that's not the name of the sequel.

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#105
I tried to use DuckDuckGo and it was terrible. Couldn't even last a week. The results were dramatically worse.

And putting aside the quality of results, the actual design of the site is not very good. This is probably a preference, but I find it much easier to quickly scan a Google results page (or even Bing), but DuckDuckGo, with the font face and spacing they use, is not as clear.

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a question about fastmail: I tried migrating from gmail but the original date of the emails didn't transfer. Anyone knows how to solve it? I had to go back to gmail since it's a deal breaker and I couldn't find a solution, but I really want to leave gmail (so I can have a direct relationship with the service provider without advertisers involve)

How were you trying to migrate? I've been doing a Gmail->FastMail migration and I definitely had no issues with original email dates.

It was a few months ago, so I don't remember exactly, but I believe I followed the instructions that fastmail provided. If you say you didn't have this problem then I will try again.

Thanks for the answer

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I understand your point, please. > Anyway, we don't use DDG because its results are shitty. These kind of comments are a bit unnecessary, especially on Hacker News, I believe.

Why? The topic is whether or not to use a search engine. This one delivers bad results compared to major ones. Frustratingly bad if you use it enough. I expected such a reply.

The comment does not present any supporting evidence (even one query where ddg falls over would help, a deep technical analysis of why google is better, with large scale comparisons of result quality would be persuasive).

It is the equivalent to me replying to you with:

"You don't know why the comment sucks because you also suck."

Instead of pointing you to this wonderful Paul Graham article:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=149052

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#108

I find duckduckgos results quite bad though, i've given it many shots over the past year but often have to keep switching back to Google.

I find that the results feel quite bad, but, whenever I actually compared results to Google's, the latter wasn't better at all.

I meant I used to find bad results and used google and found the results were more relevant, I tried to feel duckduckgo's results were better.

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#110
post #45

Every time I try to use DDG I ended using !g which kills its purpose, I just use Startpage[0] [0]: https://www.startpage.com/

This site appears to be a front of google and in the end its relying on google to search and get the result, some how I don't see this to be too different from directly using google in a incognito window
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