What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017) • Hacker News Board

Re: What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)

#141

Post by lostlogin » Thu, May 28, 2020, 3:28 PM UTC

seb314 wrote: post #138

baryphonic wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I switched to DDG, I was happier with it than with Google. To me, DDG feels like Google felt ten years ago, before it was infested with "AI." Today, Google search results look more like the invasive shopping mall ads in Minority Report, tailored to what it thinks I'll click on, rather than relevant results based on my query. I only rarely (~once a month) have to use Google search to find something that DDG just…

I'd like to prefer DDG... but recently I noticed what seem to be blind spots on many (maybe less popular?) topics. e.g. I can't find how to setup/configure borgbackup on nixos via ddg for any of ~3-5 query variations I tried. For non-logged-in google with uBlock the relevant documentation is the first hit.

I find this with specific, niche technical questions too.

Re: What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)

#142

Post by Mirioron » Thu, May 28, 2020, 3:29 PM UTC

ashtonkem wrote: post #92

chris_f wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Curiously, I'd say 90% of the time I use Google is for math. If I'm typing a complex math expression (especially with units), Google tends to do much better than DDG." This is interesting because it highlights the changing expectation of web search engines from when they were just tools to find relevant webpages for a query. Search engines have morphed into all-purpose utility and information tools. The bar for what…

I wonder if that’s an OS specific thing. I find that nowadays I use Spotlight on OSX for math expressions, not Google.

How does it compare to Wolfram Alpha in your opinion?

Re: What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)

#143

Post by jamespullar » Thu, May 28, 2020, 3:31 PM UTC

mikkom wrote: post #136

baryphonic wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I switched to DDG, I was happier with it than with Google. To me, DDG feels like Google felt ten years ago, before it was infested with "AI." Today, Google search results look more like the invasive shopping mall ads in Minority Report, tailored to what it thinks I'll click on, rather than relevant results based on my query. I only rarely (~once a month) have to use Google search to find something that DDG just…

Duckduckgo results are from bing via bing api so you are essentially saying that you like bing results more than google results.

Per https://help.duckduckgo.com/results/sources/, "...DuckDuckGo gets its results from over four hundred sources. These include hundreds of vertical sources delivering niche Instant Answers, DuckDuckBot (our crawler) and crowd-sourced sites (like Wikipedia, stored in our answer indexes). We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we also source from multiple partners, though most commonly from Bing (and none from Google)."

So yes, while they do get results from Bing, it's a bit disingenuous to say that DuckDuckGo is just Bing.

Re: What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)

#144

Post by lostlogin » Thu, May 28, 2020, 3:31 PM UTC

baryphonic wrote: post #114

wegs wrote: post #27

DuckDuckGo has 50-100 employees, according to CrunchBase, while Google has over 100,000 employees. The exact numbers are irrelevant, but Google has around three orders of magnitude more employees than DDG. a) DDG needs about 1/1000th the revenue of Google to survive at its current scale. b) Software quality does not scale linearly with manpower. A 50-100 person team can do /almost/ as well as a 10,000 person team in…

When I switched to DDG, I was happier with it than with Google. To me, DDG feels like Google felt ten years ago, before it was infested with "AI." Today, Google search results look more like the invasive shopping mall ads in Minority Report, tailored to what it thinks I'll click on, rather than relevant results based on my query. I only rarely (~once a month) have to use Google search to find something that DDG just…

> When I switched to DDG, I was happier with it than with Google.

I regularly do !g, but I think the thing that is reducing that fastest is the declining quality of Google results. If I search for ‘x, y and z’, I then see a load of results with small text underneath saying ‘include z?’. It drives me demented, why wouldn’t I want to include my search terms?

Re: What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)

#145

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 28, 2020, 3:32 PM UTC

naibafo wrote: post #43

politelemon wrote: post #13

While I am supportive of their business model, and search functionality, I find it off-putting the way they speak of privacy but then use maps provided by a GAFAM which are ultimately profit oriented and can _not_ be trusted to safeguard privacy regardless of their marketing. OSM would be a great choice here. I'll even dare to speculate that they were financially incentivized to make their choice in the face of a sup…

You can use different Map backends for the map functionality, OSM amongst them

[deleted]

Re: What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)

#146

Post by lostlogin » Thu, May 28, 2020, 3:37 PM UTC

naibafo wrote: post #41

pastrami_panda wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> c) Unsurprisingly, I find DDG's search results good enough. I rarely go to Google, and only when DDG fails me. Same, my problem is that whenever I search for something that isn't english DDG can't find even the most basic stuff. Aside from that the migration has been pretty painless for me though so I have my hopes up.

Have you set the localization to whatever language you are searching in? At least for German it has been working well that way IMO

Holy crap, missed by me too. It was set correctly but wasn’t turned on. Thanks.

Re: What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)

#147

Post by lostlogin » Thu, May 28, 2020, 3:39 PM UTC

riffraff wrote: post #85

rietta wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find myself throwing !g when I want to find a programming specific thing. Not sure this is because Google's results for niche tech sites is better or because I am more familiar with how to craft these as Google queries having used it almost exclusively since 1998.

I would bet part of it is the personalisation of results on google's side, I experience the same.

But do Google get to personalise it when it is a ddg !g search? I thought that went to Google via ddg?

Re: What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)

#148

Post by ashtonkem » Thu, May 28, 2020, 3:44 PM UTC

Mirioron wrote: post #142

ashtonkem wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if that’s an OS specific thing. I find that nowadays I use Spotlight on OSX for math expressions, not Google.

How does it compare to Wolfram Alpha in your opinion?

I never use WA, but I'm typically reaching for fairly basic math calculations that don't involve units. Last example was calculating an estimate cost of DynamoDB based on the peak RPS I'd found, which is just basic math with a lot of significant digits.

Re: What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)

#149

Post by JTon » Thu, May 28, 2020, 3:48 PM UTC

lostlogin wrote: post #144

baryphonic wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I switched to DDG, I was happier with it than with Google. To me, DDG feels like Google felt ten years ago, before it was infested with "AI." Today, Google search results look more like the invasive shopping mall ads in Minority Report, tailored to what it thinks I'll click on, rather than relevant results based on my query. I only rarely (~once a month) have to use Google search to find something that DDG just…

> When I switched to DDG, I was happier with it than with Google. I regularly do !g, but I think the thing that is reducing that fastest is the declining quality of Google results. If I search for ‘x, y and z’, I then see a load of results with small text underneath saying ‘include z?’. It drives me demented, why wouldn’t I want to include my search terms?

> It drives me demented, why wouldn’t I want to include my search terms?

Well, I think the answer to your question is Google is trying to be friendly to the layman. It's not hard to think of examples where the user inputs a something into the search box that a CS major knows will not result in the implied wants of the user. Google tries to do a lot of human to machine translation work, and I think you're seeing the result of it. That being said, you can use quotations to explicitly include terms.

Re: What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)

#150

Post by theferalrobot » Thu, May 28, 2020, 3:51 PM UTC

politelemon wrote: post #13

While I am supportive of their business model, and search functionality, I find it off-putting the way they speak of privacy but then use maps provided by a GAFAM which are ultimately profit oriented and can _not_ be trusted to safeguard privacy regardless of their marketing. OSM would be a great choice here. I'll even dare to speculate that they were financially incentivized to make their choice in the face of a sup…

> I find it off-putting the way they speak of privacy but then use maps provided by a GAFAM which are ultimately profit oriented and can _not_ be trusted

DuckDuckGo itself is profit oriented, as is ProtonMail and a ton of other privacy first companies. Those aren’t mutually exclusive and I don’t think most people operate with that level of distrust.

I think the problem people have with Google is that their business model itself (targeted advertising) isn’t currently compatible with privacy.