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Nothing Can Stop Google. DuckDuckGo Is Trying Anyway

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Re: Nothing Can Stop Google. DuckDuckGo Is Trying Anyway

#111

Post by fixermark »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #84

You know what can stop google? a search engine that assumes I want every word in my query, or even better a search engine that honors a string in quotes to mean these words in this order. When did google stop doing this? edit: This wouldn't stop google, it would just make that part of my life as easy as it was 10 years ago.

Documentation suggests Google never stopped doing this.

https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?hl=en suggests "phrase inside quotes" is still exact match. And if you put a single word in "quotes", that indicates to Google the word must be included in the results (I determined this by searching for something where some words were omitted, then clicking the small "Must include:" link under a result and noting how the search changed).

Documentation around this isn't as good as it could be, and it's rough that the search codeset changed when G+ came around so that +word no longer meant "Must include."

Re: Nothing Can Stop Google. DuckDuckGo Is Trying Anyway

#112

Post by megous »

the_duke wrote: post #95
mangoman wrote: post #79

Back in the day, before I just defaulted to using Google, I remember checking multiple search engines to find the thing I was looking for. You'd check Yahoo/Google/Lycos, try a couple of different phrasings, and then if that didn't work try searching on a few other search engines. Somewhere along the way, Google had won me over, because I almost always found my answer. I had stopped even considering other search engi…

I think it's very much search topic related: * DDG is atrocious for anything other than English * Programing/IT searches often yield garbage on DDG while on Google a good result is within the first 3. I have it as my default now too, but "!g" is a constant companion. === Regarding Google and Amazon being unstoppable... it seemed the same once for Microsoft. Once they get too big/powerful (which they arguably already…

I wish I could tell ddg that I only care about postgresql.

It seems heavily skewed to oracle/ms server when searching anything sql related. Perhaps because it's powered by Bing?

Re: Nothing Can Stop Google. DuckDuckGo Is Trying Anyway

#113

Post by cpeterso »

Given the size and increasingly walled gardens of the web, is it even possible for a new search engine to launch in 2019 and compete with Google? Consider how much time and money Microsoft sunk into Bing. If Microsoft turned off its Bing API, could DDG spin up its own crawlers?

Re: Nothing Can Stop Google. DuckDuckGo Is Trying Anyway

#114

Post by gnarbarian »

mangoman wrote: post #79

Back in the day, before I just defaulted to using Google, I remember checking multiple search engines to find the thing I was looking for. You'd check Yahoo/Google/Lycos, try a couple of different phrasings, and then if that didn't work try searching on a few other search engines. Somewhere along the way, Google had won me over, because I almost always found my answer. I had stopped even considering other search engi…

This is my experience as well, I'd actually really love a search multiplexer that would run a query string on a bunch of search engines (which I could specify) and get the results back separated by the engine used.

Re: Nothing Can Stop Google. DuckDuckGo Is Trying Anyway

#115

Post by ignoramous »

It's not just duckduckgo that's privacy focused.

https://startpage.com is rad [0]. I've moved to using it from duckduckgo and haven't felt I've missed Google, at all. They pay Google to proxy their non-personalized search results, and let you view webpages "anonymously" [1], as well.

[0] https://www.startpage.com/en/search/download-startpage-plugi...

[1] https://www.startpage.com/en/search/proxy-help.html

Re: Nothing Can Stop Google. DuckDuckGo Is Trying Anyway

#116

Post by npongratz »

the_duke wrote: post #95
mangoman wrote: post #79

Back in the day, before I just defaulted to using Google, I remember checking multiple search engines to find the thing I was looking for. You'd check Yahoo/Google/Lycos, try a couple of different phrasings, and then if that didn't work try searching on a few other search engines. Somewhere along the way, Google had won me over, because I almost always found my answer. I had stopped even considering other search engi…

I think it's very much search topic related: * DDG is atrocious for anything other than English * Programing/IT searches often yield garbage on DDG while on Google a good result is within the first 3. I have it as my default now too, but "!g" is a constant companion. === Regarding Google and Amazon being unstoppable... it seemed the same once for Microsoft. Once they get too big/powerful (which they arguably already…

> "!g" is a constant companion.

May I recommend an alternative bang? "!s" (for startpage.com) is my companion.

It doesn't always work perfectly, but in theory [0] Startpage offers the same (edit: non-bubbled[1]) results as big G, while retaining your privacy.

!s usually works for me. I always use !s before begrudgingly doing a !g. I have no other affiliation to Startpage or DDG. And to be fair, I think we have to simply accept Startpage's assertion that they preserve your privacy.

[0] https://support.startpage.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Artic... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble

Re: Nothing Can Stop Google. DuckDuckGo Is Trying Anyway

#117

Post by vaer-k »

mangoman wrote: post #79

Back in the day, before I just defaulted to using Google, I remember checking multiple search engines to find the thing I was looking for. You'd check Yahoo/Google/Lycos, try a couple of different phrasings, and then if that didn't work try searching on a few other search engines. Somewhere along the way, Google had won me over, because I almost always found my answer. I had stopped even considering other search engi…

The main reason that forces me to extend my search from ddg to google is when I need to filter by past year. Why doesn't ddg have this ability yet?

Re: Nothing Can Stop Google. DuckDuckGo Is Trying Anyway

#118

Post by est31 »

twodave wrote: post #43
bunderbunder wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because, in the current economic environment, there really isn't much room in the markets for choices. It's increasingly been one quasi-monopoly that everyone knows about, and then a bunch of niche options for people who dislike the monopoly player for whatever reason.

Oh? Let's pick an easy market to judge this against, then. I know! Let's talk about smartphones. Surely the largest company on the planet is a quasi-monopoly in this space... oh, but they're not. In fact, Apple's not even a majority leader in just the USA, and the numbers favor them even less globally. There is clearly a choice in the cell phone market between privacy, quality and cost, and people are making those ch…

It depends on the market really. In some markets, there are strong effects where anybody but the market leader is at a super strongly disadvantageous position.

In the smartphone market this is not the case. You can buy from various SOC vendors, you can put Android onto your phone, you can do all of this while competing with other companies. There isn't much of an intrinsic benefit that e.g. Samsung has.

For search, it's different. Yes, you can crawl the entire web using crawlers, but what you don't get is data about which links people are clicking. It allows you to order the results in the right way. Google is paying hundreds of millions to Mozilla annually for the hundreds of millions of users that Firefox has. The reason for this is the clicking data. Not that Google needs the Firefox users any more, but any competitor would massively benefit from the amount of searches that they'd get from Firefox users alone.

Or take your classical communications network. Whatsapp, Facebook, etc. Here, network effects are the reason why there is such a strong monopoly. Nobody wants to join a network where they can't talk to anybody. So people join the popular ones like Whatsapp or Facebook.

There is a ton of money to make if you are in a monopoly position where you can't be kicked out and that's what most of the SV stories are about. They get VC to be able to get big enough to disrupt some market and become monopolist, hoping to stay monopolist due to network effects or similar mechanisms.

Re: Nothing Can Stop Google. DuckDuckGo Is Trying Anyway

#119

Post by ams6110 »

megous wrote: post #112
the_duke wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's very much search topic related: * DDG is atrocious for anything other than English * Programing/IT searches often yield garbage on DDG while on Google a good result is within the first 3. I have it as my default now too, but "!g" is a constant companion. === Regarding Google and Amazon being unstoppable... it seemed the same once for Microsoft. Once they get too big/powerful (which they arguably already…

I wish I could tell ddg that I only care about postgresql. It seems heavily skewed to oracle/ms server when searching anything sql related. Perhaps because it's powered by Bing?

Or because the number of Oracle/MS SQL Server installations dwarf Postgres in the real world?

Re: Nothing Can Stop Google. DuckDuckGo Is Trying Anyway

#120

Post by misiti3780 »

I switch my default search from Google to DDG a few months ago (In the chrome address bar). I like DDG but two things i have noticed

1. DDG image search is far far inferior to Google's

2. DDG response time is slower than Google's

Other than that, I love it and all of the little tools they add for developers (color wheel etc)

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