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What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)

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

#171

Post by bogwog »

rkangel wrote: post #151

DDG is surprisingly good, but still not good enough. I have my desktop browser using it, but still haven't on mobile. When searching for technical queries Google tends to give much more useful answers - useful is the key word here. To give an example from yesterday, the query 'elixir zlib'. In DDG I get links to C files in Linux kernels on a server called elixir. I get a useful answer 5 results down (which is fine, i…

> Things like error messages, queries involving the name of a programming language etc. are often just not as good in DDG.

I don't have any problem with those types of searches on DDG. Even obscure error messages turn up most of the time, and when they don't turn up in DDG they don't turn up in Google either.

Even when I do searches for a relatively less popular language like Haxe, I don't have trouble finding what I'm looking for. I only remember a handful of times over the 3+ years I've been using DDG that Google returned an ancient IRC log referencing my issue while DDG didn't return anything, but just the same I've had Google return irrelevant results while DDG gave me exactly what I was looking for.

Since my anecdotes offsets your anecdotes, the only conclusion is that anecdotes are useless to compare these things :)

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

#172

Post by ravenstine »

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?

Not to delegitemize your use of `!g`, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who never needs to use that, and if that's true, I think we need to hear more from the people who are perfectly happy with DDG by itself.

Who else here doesn't use !g?

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

#173

Post by ravenstine »

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?

If you regularly use !g, then why don't you just use Google? Serious question. It seems like if you are resorting to Google enough, there's almost no point for you to be using DDG.

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

#174

Post by gxqoz »

ravenstine wrote: post #173
lostlogin wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

If you regularly use !g, then why don't you just use Google? Serious question. It seems like if you are resorting to Google enough, there's almost no point for you to be using DDG.

I'd say I need to use it for less than 5% of queries. And often those 5% aren't solved by Google either because they're just hard to search for stuff or my original query wasn't good enough.

I do regularly use other Google search services, though. In particular, Google Books.

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

#175

Post by finiteloops »

JTon wrote: post #149
lostlogin wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 r…

This works for the masses, but in my experience when machines force a use case, it causes more headache than not cause I'm not like the masses.

A barely related side rant: my microwave decided it wants to error out when it thinks you're trying to microwave air. i have a bowl in there. stop telling me to open the door to put something in. Whatever engineer at GE thought they would be smarter than the user, you're one of the many reasons your company is going out of business.

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

#177

Post by Frost1x »

thesuitonym wrote: post #161
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…

Even DuckDuckGo is becoming more like Google in it's uselessness. I think the problem stems from the idea that new is always better, so all search platforms become infested with garbage sites that are automatically generated to capitalize on the current search patterns. For instance, I was feeling nostalgic and wanted to look at the Space Jam website last night, but I couldn't remember the URL, so I searched for "spa…

>I think the problem stems from the idea that new is always better...

This is definitely one of the curses of the tech/software industry and we keep cycling through certain phases, it seems, building nearly unmanagable complexity in the process.

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

#178

Post by saagarjha »

reaperducer wrote: post #156
Mirioron wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does it compare to Wolfram Alpha in your opinion?

Siri draws answers from Wolfram Alpha, so maybe Spotlight does, as well.

Spotlight uses a private framework for mathematical expressions called Calculate.framework. (Fun fact: it seems to be based on Bison.)

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

#179

Post by saagarjha »

reaperducer wrote: post #157
wegs wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oddly, I don't find WA to be great. WA can do complex math, but it's slow. To give a good example of what I've come to expect from all three, type "2 feet + 2 meters" into: * WA: You'll get a correct result, but it takes 4 seconds. * Google: 0.185806 square meters, obviously (instantly) * DDG: Search results Curiously, I find Google's to be the most helpful. I see the obviously incorrect result and instantly fix it.…

"it's slow... it takes 4 seconds" My, how far we've come.

With the computational power available at our fingertips, one would hope so…

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

#180

Post by [deleted] »

gxqoz wrote: post #174
ravenstine wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you regularly use !g, then why don't you just use Google? Serious question. It seems like if you are resorting to Google enough, there's almost no point for you to be using DDG.

I'd say I need to use it for less than 5% of queries. And often those 5% aren't solved by Google either because they're just hard to search for stuff or my original query wasn't good enough. I do regularly use other Google search services, though. In particular, Google Books.

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