Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often • Hacker News Board

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#101

Post by yubiox » Sat, May 18, 2019, 3:10 PM UTC

lucb1e wrote: post #35

fareesh wrote: post #26

For the uninitiated, !bang is a pretty great feature: https://duckduckgo.com/bang

Am I the only one who really doesn't like having to prefix that symbol and never types bangs? I type faster than most other tech people but putting my whole left hand on the left side of the keyboard to press Shift with my pinky and 1 with my ring finger is more trouble than adding a keyword for the search in Firefox ( http://kb.mozillazine.org/Using_keyword_searches ). Especially because I type the G, Y, and W (goog…

I hate having to use a prefix at all. I set up my own custom search in chrome that points to my app that does specialized searches based on the first letter and then defaults to a regular DDG query. For example, e foo searches ebay for foo, a foo searches amazon, m 123 main searches maps.

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#102

Post by Timucin » Sat, May 18, 2019, 3:11 PM UTC

mosselman wrote: post #95

Timucin wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe having privacy puts the user at disadvantage since DDG doesn't keep your history or track who you are. i.e. Google knows definitely knows I am a developer and shows the tech related things first even when I search for super generic words. That's why people think DDG doesn't do a good job but I think it does if you can be more specific. Yet I agree it's not better than or equal to Google when it comes to ima…

I believe privacy, to me as a user, is a huge advantage. I have been using DuckDuckGo for years now and I when I run into something I can’t find on it, which happens sporadically, I use !s to jump to anonymous google results on start page and it turns out I can’t find it with google either. So either DuckDuckGo has gotten better or I have gotten better at telling it what I want, or both. Either way, I don’t feel that…

Oh, no. Don't get me wrong. I wasn't trying to say privacy is bad, I was trying to say Google has a clear advantage since it knows more about the user. Don't think it's worth to compromise your privacy though.

Another advantage of Google is having the vast resources they have but again, it works because they know who you are.

I also agree with what you said. People just need to be more specific with their search and yes, DDG is going better by the day.

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#103

Post by rmtech » Sat, May 18, 2019, 3:12 PM UTC

Anecdotally I tried DuckDuckGo and found it really irritating. It is just a bad search engine and seems to not be very good at finding what you need unless what you need is something very common.

Surprisingly, Google seems to listen to what you actually type.

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#104

Post by ddffre » Sat, May 18, 2019, 3:12 PM UTC

I started using it recently, but it doesn't feel as comfortable as google for me.

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#105

Post by reitanqild » Sat, May 18, 2019, 3:13 PM UTC

utopcell wrote: post #98

phatfish wrote: post #27

I have used it as a default for at least 2 years. I'd estimate drop back to Google for 20-25% of specific "subject matter" searches, mostly around technology. Probably a bit less than that for general searches. Most of the time I run the same search on Google the results are very similar for the top hits. But Google does seem to produce helpful results that are not exactly what I searched for more often. DDG also ske…

The problem with falling back only 20% to 25% of the time is that you don't know what you've missed. By going to Google you already realize it is a better engine. What is the tangible gain of this self-sabotaging ?

> What is the tangible gain of this self-sabotaging ?

Is it self sabotaging to not drive a Mercedes (or Audi or Tesla or what you think is best).

Or is it a choice you made to go down a notch in quality to gain something else?

Edit: besides I originally moved because I was really annoyed that Google couldn't respect my searches, so I didn't feel I lost much.

Sadly lately DDG has been copying Googles bad habit of fuzzing my searches to death.

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#106

Post by beefield » Sat, May 18, 2019, 3:14 PM UTC

skellera wrote: post #70

octosphere wrote: post #3

I like DuckDuckGo if it wasn't for their data centers being in the U.S. My problem lies in the fact that they could have an intelligence agency like the NSA in their data centers and they could attribute specific queries to specific users by looking at the originating IP. I'm not even sure they have a canary[0] [1] implemented. This is why combining DDG with an anonymous mixer network like Tor is useful (or even a VP…

What search engine do you use then?

I like qwant.com. No affiliation.

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#107

Post by matz1 » Sat, May 18, 2019, 3:14 PM UTC

robertAngst wrote: post #55

benbristow wrote: post #13

The thing with Google is that, like it or not, their analytics and their knowledge of you as an individual helps produce better search results for you. Google will always be the better search engine. That being said DuckDuckGo is definitely getting much better nowadays. Still end up going back to Google after a few days though.

I'm a nerd with pretty mild porn usage and no terrorist habits. I have 0 reason to not use google. I really don't care if they find out my obsession with electronics and that I have the hots for tall girls. Out of every company, I'd give Google the nod as most helpful company of my lifetime. Can someone tell me why I'm wrong?

Nothing wrong with that, if google works for you then just use it.

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#108

Post by everdev » Sat, May 18, 2019, 3:14 PM UTC

jplayer01 wrote: post #84

DDG's search results seem consistently terrible whenever I try to use it for an extended period of time. It's fine for really basic searches, but anything more specialized or niche is terrible (considering my interests, that's all of my searches). I mostly use Startpage nowadays instead, which seems to give me good enough results most of the time.

DDG uses a combination of Bing, Yahoo and Yandex results. From what I can tell they don't index SPA sites very well:

https://www.reddit.com/r/duckduckgo/comments/90ypqz/ddg_craw...

A comment from July 2018:

> We get our results from various sources, mostly Bing, Yahoo and Yandex (more info: https://duck.co/help/results/sources ) so if/when they introduce support for SPAs, we should get that too. I don't know what their plans are for this, however.

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#109

Post by lucb1e » Sat, May 18, 2019, 3:15 PM UTC

epicide wrote: post #88

lucb1e wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only one who really doesn't like having to prefix that symbol and never types bangs? I type faster than most other tech people but putting my whole left hand on the left side of the keyboard to press Shift with my pinky and 1 with my ring finger is more trouble than adding a keyword for the search in Firefox ( http://kb.mozillazine.org/Using_keyword_searches ). Especially because I type the G, Y, and W (goog…

> putting my whole left hand on the left side of the keyboard to press Shift with my pinky and 1 with my ring finger Try using your right pinky to press shift when typing a bang. If you want to just use one hand, try holding shift with pinky and hitting 1 with your middle finger. Slightly less stretching.

I might try the right shift, that's not a bad idea. Still the delay of a redirect, but might be useful when on mobile or when not using my own computer. Thanks for the suggestion!

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#110

Post by lucb1e » Sat, May 18, 2019, 3:20 PM UTC

StevePerkins wrote: post #96

lucb1e wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So do I, but my livelihood does not depend on it, so I can safely do this and encourage people to use another search engine. Any other search engine. Even if you fall back to Google if you can't find something, at least use another search engine by default. I don't think that's too harsh to ask of a tech audience (which is the audience of my websites). Of course, if your websites generate income based on people that…

But... how does this encourage anyone to do anything? No one knows who you are or what your site is, and I'm sure Google couldn't care less. This sounds like the technical equivalent of someone refusing to drive on public roads because taxation is theft or something.

The "google couldn't care less" part I address in the post as well: I'm well aware that my site by itself will never have any significant impact.

As for how it encourages anyone to do anything: one site is not enough, but if a few people do this, the word starts to spread that you might need to try another search engine to find the more obscure things on the internet. People here seem to like the idea (judging by its positioning in the thread), and a lot of the tech community reads this. A few minutes ago, someone reached out via chat because they recognized my username. Those are the people that also make decisions at google or friends of people that make those decisions.

I understand where you're coming from, but I think it's more like voting than like your taxation comparison: your vote never matters, why bother? You don't have a voice in the government. None. But still, people vote. Collectively, we can make a difference.