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DuckDuckGo vs Google

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Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#131

Post by ptero »

BerislavLopac wrote: post #49
laser wrote: post #28

"Google would be an elephant while DuckDuckGo is a mosquito (this is not to emphasize; I’m actually making things better for DuckDuckGo)." Why would this guy go out of his way to say this metaphor is actually literally informative and generous towards DuckDuckGo while apparently having exerted no mental effort and being incorrect by orders of magnitude on his own data? If you're most generous to the writer, you get 1…

So a... duck? ;-)

Yes!! Maybe a "development stages" chart would go well with this meme: an egg (2015?) to a duck (2017) to a something_big (2019?).

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#132

Post by CamelCaseName »

anc84 wrote: post #110
romo5 wrote: post #89

People are conditioned to think Search has to work online. This was true when Google was created. No one had the processing or memory available on their desktop to search an entire index of the "useful" web. Not anymore. How large is a "useful" index of the web today? And can it fit on your laptop? The answer is yes. Can the entire thing be queried fast? The answer is yes. As an example take the entire stackexchange…

You vastly underestimate the amount of knowledge in random blogs and small websites. If you are only after the "mainstream" sites, sure, but that's quite the bubble. I want and need access to all the blogs, forums, wikis.

Why not download an index of the 100,000 or 1,000,000 sites which appear most often weighted by position? If they don't reach a certain threshold of quality (maybe the query is too obscure) then resend the query online?

I don't have a CS background so I'm not sure, is this a reasonable solution?

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#133

Post by pcunite »

anc84 wrote: post #110
romo5 wrote: post #89

People are conditioned to think Search has to work online. This was true when Google was created. No one had the processing or memory available on their desktop to search an entire index of the "useful" web. Not anymore. How large is a "useful" index of the web today? And can it fit on your laptop? The answer is yes. Can the entire thing be queried fast? The answer is yes. As an example take the entire stackexchange…

You vastly underestimate the amount of knowledge in random blogs and small websites. If you are only after the "mainstream" sites, sure, but that's quite the bubble. I want and need access to all the blogs, forums, wikis.

Google is deciding what is best for you to see.

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#134

Post by bamboozled »

josinalvo wrote: post #94
Catalyst4NaN wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DDG is using over 400 sources apparently, of which one is Yahoo https://duck.co/help/results/sources

> https://duck.co/help/results/sources "We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we source from Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex." I thought they where re-implementing search.. Are they "just" aggregating?

I recently spoke with Gabriel and his view was that they're going to continue to outsource / proxy / aggregate unless they need to implement their own search. Right now it's not worth the investment apparently.

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#135

Post by badosu »

alexasmyths wrote: post #80
laser wrote: post #28

"Google would be an elephant while DuckDuckGo is a mosquito (this is not to emphasize; I’m actually making things better for DuckDuckGo)." Why would this guy go out of his way to say this metaphor is actually literally informative and generous towards DuckDuckGo while apparently having exerted no mental effort and being incorrect by orders of magnitude on his own data? If you're most generous to the writer, you get 1…

That was one of the most HN comments I've ever read. Hey, it's just a metaphor. Scales and ratios not needed. edit: Wasn't meant to be negative ... as I could see myself writing something like that and my GF giggling at me for a week ...

I agree with parent, it's not just a metaphor but a wildly inaccurate guess that makes the reader think duckduckgo is more irrelevant than it really is.

> That was one of the most HN comments I've ever read.

What does this mean?

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#136

Post by return0 »

laser wrote: post #28

"Google would be an elephant while DuckDuckGo is a mosquito (this is not to emphasize; I’m actually making things better for DuckDuckGo)." Why would this guy go out of his way to say this metaphor is actually literally informative and generous towards DuckDuckGo while apparently having exerted no mental effort and being incorrect by orders of magnitude on his own data? If you're most generous to the writer, you get 1…

thanks for doing the calculations. it was obviously an off comment

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#137

Post by smt88 »

Insofar as DDG is a mashup of many search engines, doesn't it technically have a massive team? If you add up the teams building the products that feed DDG, then you probably end up with a much larger team than the one building Google Search.

I might describe that as gaining on Google, but still losing quite badly.

I'm still impressed by DDG of course and welcome some alternative to Google, which is a dangerous monopoly with a search that I've come to despise in recent years due to its ignoring what I've actually typed.

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#138

Post by jstanley »

morganvachon wrote: post #82
jstanley wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same story here. And since I regularly browse via a Digital Ocean VM, the lack of CAPTCHAs on DuckDuckGo is refreshing as well.

"And since I regularly browse via a Digital Ocean VM" Do you mean using a DO VM as a VPN, or via X11 forwarding to your desktop over SSH, or actually browsing on the DO VM's desktop using VNC? I've done all three in the past as experiments in private browsing, and the latter is too laggy to be comfortable.

The first one.

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#139

Post by return0 »

daurnimator wrote: post #57
amelius wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But animals are three-dimensional, so it's better to include three dimensions in the comparison. We also compare CPUs by die-area, not by their length or height.

It's pretty common to compare animals by height. e.g. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/Largestd...

it's also wrong.a whale is not "2 people"

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#140

Post by james_pm »

otakucode wrote: post #108
Lifesnoozer wrote: post #3

Recently switched over to DuckDuckGo on all my devices. Tried to do the same thing several years ago and found it didn't really work out, but this time around it is so much better, both when it comes to speed and results. If anyone has doubts because they tried it years ago, I'd say go for it again.

I've had DDG as my primary search engine for I'd guess at least 5 years if not more. It's extremely rare that I ever need to use anything else. I do wish there was a way to tell Yummly to go to hell whenever I search for recipes, though.

I saw this feature request submitted the other day via the subreddit. Here's hoping! https://www.reddit.com/r/duckduckgo/comments/70rent/enhancem...
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