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

DuckDuckGo is good enough for regular use

bitlog.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 490 posts

Re: DuckDuckGo is good enough for regular use

#291

Post by [deleted] »

jp_sc wrote: post #73
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please teach me how to use DDG, as I’m clearly missing something. I’m happy to switch to a service that provides better results in exchange for a bit more effort in constructing search queries, but the results I get for that effort really do need to be better. The only specific advise I’ve ever seen is “use !g if you don’t get good results the first time”, which really isn’t encouraging.

It’s not about better results. It’s about good enough results without all the spying.

[deleted]

Re: DuckDuckGo is good enough for regular use

#292

Post by ebg13 »

nice_byte wrote: post #253
ebg13 wrote: post #176

I'll believe this when the third result for "filled torus" isn't "Cum Filled Pussy Porn Videos" unless safe search is enabled. DDG's contextual awareness is abysmal.

i'm not getting porn but this is nonetheless a perfect example of how bad ddg is. first result is the "torus" article on wiki, which is _not_ what the query asks for. by contrast, google's top result is the "solid torus" wiki article - much better.

That's fascinating. If DDG's whole shtick is not profiling, what accounts for the difference?

Re: DuckDuckGo is good enough for regular use

#293

Post by FalconSensei »

kube-system wrote: post #287
FalconSensei wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

then, why not just use yelp?

The same reason that any ddg bang is useful: fewer keystrokes, one less page load.

IDK, for all sites I use I have them as custom searches. So Yelp would be: "y" -> tab -> search -> see Yelp results page

Re: DuckDuckGo is good enough for regular use

#294

Post by dublinben »

robotnikman wrote: post #216
lobotryas wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure that’s because google got hit with a lawsuit about hot linking. DDG will suffer the same fate once they get big (and rich) enough.

Yep, Getty Images sued them and Google had to remove the view images button, making the process of viewing the source image more difficult and convoluted. I've now resorted to using DDG anytime I need to do an image search, and have been using it more and more myself when searching for anything related to IT or programming.

Yandex Image search is also very good, with none of the annoying limitations that Google has introduced. There also seems to be less Pinterest spam as well.

https://yandex.com/images/

Re: DuckDuckGo is good enough for regular use

#295

Post by mkchoi212 »

Feel like DuckDuckGo has been good enough for regular use for awhile. Search results are decent and what seems like an absence of ads is great.

The only thing I miss from Google? The giant cards that show up with an answer if I ask something like "How old is [Insert Celebrity Name Here]"

Re: DuckDuckGo is good enough for regular use

#297

Post by tus88 »

schoen wrote: post #238
bloodorange wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently had to search for something similar to this: march 12 2019 + 366 days and DuckDuckGo gave me exactly what I wanted while Google gave me not-very-useful results.

The date command can also answer this question: $ date -d 'march 12 2019 + 366 days' Thu Mar 12 00:00:00 PDT 2020

I starting thinking about the Python equivalent of this and it was disgusting.

Re: DuckDuckGo is good enough for regular use

#298

Post by astatine »

I have DDG set up as the default search engine and it works quite well. I would think that I don't need to use g! about 75% of the time. When the result is from wikipedia or stack overflow or some similar popular site, DDG works alright but seems to miss specialized blogs. So if I don't find the answer on the mainstream sites I find myself doing g! more often.

75% is not bad at all and if you approach with that perspective then DDG works just great but if you think you should never have to use Google, then please wait - not sure how long.

Re: DuckDuckGo is good enough for regular use

#300

Post by yingw787 »

I switched from Chrome/Google to Firefox/DDG three months ago, as part of a larger switch from macOS to laptop Ubuntu. There are things I don't like about DDG. DDG continually offers to play YouTube videos in its own window due to privacy concerns, and it's not clear to me when it redirects and when it offers its own window. Some searches don't work well; for example, "weather 22203" returns weather for Arlington, TX instead of Arlington, VA in the DDG modal, and for things like precipitation I still need to g! the query.

These minor concerns are all peanuts compared to the benefits though. I've found I'm very much a "live free or die" kind of guy, and I like how both Firefox and DDG care about the user. I also like how they work well without too much configuration out of the box :P

Post reply on HN