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DuckDuckGo Hits 14M Searches in a Single Day

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Re: DuckDuckGo Hits 14M Searches in a Single Day

#111
post #12

For the team here at DuckDuckGo, we were excited not only to hit 14M searches in a single day but to also cross the threshold of 10B total private searches served. Of which 4B were from last year alone. We wrote a post covering it in our newly launched blog: https://spreadprivacy.com/10-billion-fc7808c91343 It is always an amazing and humbling moment when we hit a new milestone in our metrics. Our team is so incredib…

I use DDG Lite with Dillo, a fast non-Javascript GUI browser, but lately (I'd say since the first week of January, according to this message [1] in Dillo's mailing list), I'm unable to visit the search results using Dillo's native search box. Instead of sending me to example.com, DDG redirects to a weird constructed address [2]). If I go to duckduckgo.com/lite and search there, it works fine. Any ideas? What would be…

This is to stop your HTTP referrer leaking your search terms: "DuckDuckGo prevents search leakage by default. Instead, when you click on a link on our site, we route (redirect) that request in such a way so that it does not send your search terms to other sites. The other sites will still know that you visited them, but they will not know what search you entered beforehand." https://duckduckgo.com/privacy

Re: DuckDuckGo Hits 14M Searches in a Single Day

#112
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DDG is a great success story, I wish the whole team the best. I wonder how an exit will play out though. A big factor with DDG is user trust - that seems to limit the list potential buyers to the few that could credibly maintain that trust. Then there is the IPO route, but that has it's own challenges. You could argue that up until now DDG has had no competition because Google doesn't think it's worth raising its han…

Why would DuckDuckGo need to exit? Are they losing money?

Because they've taken VC money. Usually, even if a business becomes profitable investors do not want to wait out a long term approach or be involved in a "lifestyle" business.

Re: DuckDuckGo Hits 14M Searches in a Single Day

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DDG is a great success story, I wish the whole team the best. I wonder how an exit will play out though. A big factor with DDG is user trust - that seems to limit the list potential buyers to the few that could credibly maintain that trust. Then there is the IPO route, but that has it's own challenges. You could argue that up until now DDG has had no competition because Google doesn't think it's worth raising its han…

What promises has Microsoft kept that would make me consider trusting privacy to them? A sale to Microsoft would mean the decision to use duckduckgo would rely solely on search performance, and as much as I love bangs it's not a better search engine.

No big company is perfect, so trust is a relative judgement. It's also somewhat based on values, so we may think have different opinions. For example, I would trust MS more than Oracle, or one of the big cable companies.

Re: DuckDuckGo Hits 14M Searches in a Single Day

#115
post #28

Congratulations on the big growth. I'm annoyed that I can't set DDG has the default search engine in Chrome (Android). I hold a bookmark though so 'duc' autocompletes to duckduckgo. Not too inconvenient.

1) Install Chrome Canary. 2) Type duckduckgo.com in the address bar. 3) Do a search from the search box. 4) Repeat step 2 and 3 for a decent number of times (say 5 to 8 times). 5) Go to settings->Search engine. Here you should see duckduckgo.com in the recently visited section along with the usual options.

Re: DuckDuckGo Hits 14M Searches in a Single Day

#116

I switched to DDG as my default search everywhere a few months ago, and I recommend everyone does. The results are passable and when they aren't there is always !g

I am curious why you recommend everyone else switch since you say "The results are passable." That's not exactly a ringing endorsement.

It's good enough and they are not spying on me. I am going to start installing it on people's computers that I fix. They usually have Ask toolbar or something anyway lol.

Re: DuckDuckGo Hits 14M Searches in a Single Day

#117

I've been using DuckDuckGo since @yegg's first announcement of it (on reddit iirc). The relevance of the results compared to their competitors' has been noticeably improving over the years. When a search doesn't quite give me what I'm looking for, I prepend !sp on my query (to use startpage.com). I use this less and less and for most things DDG gets me where I need to go. I'm a huge fan. I'm thankful services like th…

I still insert `!g` in about 25% percent of my searches. Loved to see a metric on how many people do the same or append it on the search box after seeing the results. I like DDG a lot, but I feel that Google knowing so much about me prevents it from showing ruby gems over ruby lang search results. Must say, this has improved greatly last year, but I don't trust DDG just yet fully.

What would DDG have to do to earn greater trust?

Re: DuckDuckGo Hits 14M Searches in a Single Day

#118

I've been using DuckDuckGo since @yegg's first announcement of it (on reddit iirc). The relevance of the results compared to their competitors' has been noticeably improving over the years. When a search doesn't quite give me what I'm looking for, I prepend !sp on my query (to use startpage.com). I use this less and less and for most things DDG gets me where I need to go. I'm a huge fan. I'm thankful services like th…

I still insert `!g` in about 25% percent of my searches. Loved to see a metric on how many people do the same or append it on the search box after seeing the results. I like DDG a lot, but I feel that Google knowing so much about me prevents it from showing ruby gems over ruby lang search results. Must say, this has improved greatly last year, but I don't trust DDG just yet fully.

I use !g if a DDG search doesn't give me anything useful, but this is far less than 25% of my searches, and in nearly every case, Google didn't have anything useful either.

Really the only times !g actually turns out to be useful is when I'm searching for something that's well within my filter bubble on Google, but generic enough that I get the wrong results when outside of my filter bubble (e.g. DDG). But that's not really all that often.

Re: DuckDuckGo Hits 14M Searches in a Single Day

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What promises has Microsoft kept that would make me consider trusting privacy to them? A sale to Microsoft would mean the decision to use duckduckgo would rely solely on search performance, and as much as I love bangs it's not a better search engine.

No big company is perfect, so trust is a relative judgement. It's also somewhat based on values, so we may think have different opinions. For example, I would trust MS more than Oracle, or one of the big cable companies.

Why? When has Microsoft ever done anything that gives you the impression they respect your privacy?

Re: DuckDuckGo Hits 14M Searches in a Single Day

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just too much to type.

I think it's been several years since I've actually visited duckduckgo.com. Modern browsers make it really easy to set DDG to your default search engine.

People often want to try it for a while before to set it as default. Same happened to me when I changed my default browser. All being said I think a rebranding would make it more competitive.
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