Do you know that DDG is just a sophisticated proxy to another search engine under the hood, which probably has even lower standards for privacy than Google and using DDG you indirectly support it?
Well, yeah... hence the point of a proxy.
Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often
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Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often
#32Does anyone know how to donate to DDG? It doesn't say on their site, but I want to contribute to their success.
Just disable your ad blocker for their site. They're not a philanthropy, they have a profitable ad-based business model.
Plenty of people (particularly here on HN) consider many or even all forms of advertising to be unethical. I don't think it's fair to ask someone to disable their ad blocker. For someone who never clicks on ads, the revenue generated by disabling is negligible anyway.
Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Weird, I haven't found their image search slow. I just wish I could search by usage rights. Also, I suggest using !s instead of !g so that you still get Google results without actually being redirected to Google.
Same. Its fine.
What is this !s and !g notation?
Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often
#34Does anyone know how to donate to DDG? It doesn't say on their site, but I want to contribute to their success.
Just disable your ad blocker for their site. They're not a philanthropy, they have a profitable ad-based business model.
They use Bing ads. It’s really unfortunate - I’d love to help them and advertise with them, but 99% of my ads will show on Bing and its other properties, which is not what I want to support.
Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often
#35For the uninitiated, !bang is a pretty great feature: https://duckduckgo.com/bang
Am I the only one who really doesn't like having to prefix that symbol and never types bangs? I type faster than most other tech people but putting my whole left hand on the left side of the keyboard to press Shift with my pinky and 1 with my ring finger is more trouble than adding a keyword for the search in Firefox (http://kb.mozillazine.org/Using_keyword_searches). Especially because I type the G, Y, and W (google, google-images, youtube, wikipedia... the thing you use this for) with my left hand as well.
Bangs are recommended almost every time ddg comes up, and I see people like my brother using them, so it seems like nobody else minds and the choice of symbol will never change. Am I alone in thinking it's one of the worst possible prefix characters?
Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often
#36I launched BuckBuckMoose.org recently so I could start using DuckDuckGo more often. The idea with BuckBuckMoose is that you can search DuckDuckGo without fear of missing out on Google. How it works is you simply enter your search query, and then a two split screen windows pop up with Google search results on the left and DuckDuckGo results on the right. If you want to try it out as your default search engine you can…
Hmm, I went to http://buckbuckmoose.org and noticed no TLS. Perhaps it doesn't need crypto because the popups themselves utilize crypto.
Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often
#37The thing with Google is that, like it or not, their analytics and their knowledge of you as an individual helps produce better search results for you. Google will always be the better search engine. That being said DuckDuckGo is definitely getting much better nowadays. Still end up going back to Google after a few days though.
> like it or not, their analytics and their knowledge of you as an individual helps produce better search results for you. Google will always be the better search engine.
I actually disagree. Googles optimizing function is to get you to visit sites with their ads. Because DuckDuckGo doesn’t have an ad network on every website, their optimization function is to get you to come back to search (where their ads are).
I think people have also missed Google slowly manipulating search results to maximize profit. Their motives are not aligned with people looking for information (at least not any more)
Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often
#38Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often
#39I launched BuckBuckMoose.org recently so I could start using DuckDuckGo more often. The idea with BuckBuckMoose is that you can search DuckDuckGo without fear of missing out on Google. How it works is you simply enter your search query, and then a two split screen windows pop up with Google search results on the left and DuckDuckGo results on the right. If you want to try it out as your default search engine you can…
If I'm logged into google do I get my customized search results? Would be nice to have a choice on this behavior (actually, would be interesting to have an iframe for each mode to see the difference in results).
Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often
#40I've been using DDG for a year on my desktop, 6 mo. on phone and laptop, 1 mo. at work.
I don't get the people that are claiming worse results from DDG than google - the only thing I can think is that we write our searches differently. But that seems a long shot.