Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Use DuckDuckGo to improve your privacy online (2018)

spreadprivacy.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 182 posts

Re: Use DuckDuckGo to improve your privacy online (2018)

#22

Post by mrweasel »

pixelbreaker wrote: post #12

I first tried DDG in its early years and it just didn't yield the results I needed, I tried it again a couple of years ago and have stuck with it ever since as it has must better results these days.

Every now and then I search for something and don't get the results I'd expect. So I turn to Google, but for the past year or so I noticed that Google can't find what I expect for those search terms either. The difference seems to be that Google starts guessing and excluding keywords, without understanding that those keywords where important.

For me personally, Google is a less pleasant experience these days.

The DuckDuckGo privacy extension is currently the only type of "ad-blocker" I currently use. I really like the look and feel, as well as the functionality. The automatic downgrade from an A rating for the lack of an entry on https://tosdr.org/ is a little over the top for me though.

Re: Use DuckDuckGo to improve your privacy online (2018)

#26

Post by arcticwombat »

ctnb wrote: post #24

I'm glad most a lot of these comments are saying DDG works for them; I still have a lot of issues with the search quality and switched to Startpage a while ago which uses anonymized google results.

For me it works well about 90% of the time, when it doesn't I hop over to Google for those specific queries.

Re: Use DuckDuckGo to improve your privacy online (2018)

#27

Post by x775 »

webmobdev wrote: post #17

Why would I use another AMERICAN / Western search engine? I personally feel we would be better off using Yandex (Russian) or Baidu (Chinese) search engines. We need more COMPETITION to reduce our reliance on parasites like Google / Microsoft / FB etc and thus force the industry to reevaluate their business model on how they make money from us. Yandex has a pretty decent search engine, and also helpfully provides a li…

The main reason, I suspect, many, including myself, opt for using DuckDuckGo is because people have started to care about privacy; not because they necessarily wish to help foster competition. I see fostering competition as a nice, natural byproduct of valuing privacy.

Re: Use DuckDuckGo to improve your privacy online (2018)

#28

Post by sp332 »

maewsa wrote: post #14

Does this offer anything unique that other content blockers cannot? From what I can see it would only be the forced encryption and I guess the letter grade. I love DDG for search but not sure this browser competes with 1Blocker X Safari integration on iOS.

It's not a content blocker. It does have a lot of "instant answers" with information put in a box next to search results so you don't even have to click through. e.g. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=who+is+the+prime+minister+of+malay...

Also it has "bangs" which give you shortcuts to lots of other services. https://duckduckgo.com/bang

Re: Use DuckDuckGo to improve your privacy online (2018)

#29

Post by parthdesai »

ctnb wrote: post #24

I'm glad most a lot of these comments are saying DDG works for them; I still have a lot of issues with the search quality and switched to Startpage a while ago which uses anonymized google results.

I'm with you. I switched to DDG, and within a day i started subconsciously adding `!g` to my query. And it's for simple things, not even complicated programming queries. For example, if i wanna see what the weather is, typing "Toronto weather" in google gives me the current weather right on the front page, whereas with DDG, i have to scan for weather network and click on it to actually get the information. Same goes for a TV show/movie/sports score. Google has Imdb rating/current live score right there on the home page.
Post reply on HN