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Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#41

Post by chongli »

StevePerkins wrote: post #24
cvnyw wrote: post #2

I've been using it for a few months and I find myself using !g for like 4 out of 5 requests. Also image search is VERY slow, images load like in a slideshow. I'll end up going back to Google. I like the idea of DDG and I have a strong dislike for Google but DDG is simply not there yet. Having said that it's better than it was five years ago, when it was simply insufferable. So, maybe in five years? ;)

I'm the other way around, I only have to use !g for 1 out of 5 searches (Google still does a lot better when searching technical topics). Although I DO get frustrated by DDG's image search. Google's actually takes you to the actual image URL, so it's easier to get a link for sharing. DDG shows all images through their weird proxy thing, such that you can't easily get the raw URL.

To get the raw URL in DDG image search, click on the image and then click "View File". This sends you directly to the image itself.

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#43

Post by looeee »

lucb1e wrote: post #14

Going one step further, I removed my websites from the Google index: https://lucb1e.com/?p=post&id=130 If you want to find my stuff, you now have to use DDG or some other search engine. Hopefully we can signal to Google that we are not okay with monopolistic behaviour (that's why I blocked them, not just for being the biggest or monopolist, but for also behaving like it -- see the blog post for details).

I mean, that's great and all. But I actually want people to use my website.

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#44

Post by lucb1e »

cvnyw wrote: post #2

I've been using it for a few months and I find myself using !g for like 4 out of 5 requests. Also image search is VERY slow, images load like in a slideshow. I'll end up going back to Google. I like the idea of DDG and I have a strong dislike for Google but DDG is simply not there yet. Having said that it's better than it was five years ago, when it was simply insufferable. So, maybe in five years? ;)

Try Bing for images. Again not as good as Google, but a whole lot better than DDG -- in terms of search results, that is. In terms of speed, I think Bing and Google images are on par.

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#47

Post by lucb1e »

appleflaxen wrote: post #30
lucb1e wrote: post #14

Going one step further, I removed my websites from the Google index: https://lucb1e.com/?p=post&id=130 If you want to find my stuff, you now have to use DDG or some other search engine. Hopefully we can signal to Google that we are not okay with monopolistic behaviour (that's why I blocked them, not just for being the biggest or monopolist, but for also behaving like it -- see the blog post for details).

that's an awesome idea! how do you determine which IPs are the google webcrawler, though?

I match the user agent string on containing "Google". It seems that Google Chrome only includes "Chrome", so I don't block users this way. Here is an overview of all Google crawlers' user agent strings: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1061943 As you can see, they all include Google (capitalized).

I don't use robots.txt because they say that doesn't stop them from including the site in search results: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6062608 I don't know if returning a HTTP 403 error will, but it seems like it's worth a try.

I also looked into banning IP ranges (that would have been my preferred option), but if I remember correctly they were subject to change and it seems overkill to write a scraper for that page that would then have to generate a config file and reload a service.

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#49

Post by StevePerkins »

chongli wrote: post #32
StevePerkins wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even if they added a Patreon button (or whatever the "ethical" provider is this month), 99.99% of their revenue would still come from ads. Seems like some weird mental gymnastics to pretend their business model wouldn't be what it is.

Like it or not, it's fantasy to pretend that donationware scales beyond individual devs. It's rarely even enough to support individual dev stuff.

Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often

#50

Post by imiric »

topherPedersen wrote: post #19

I 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…

Have you tried Searx[0]?

It returns results from the major search engines (and can be customized for more) while attempting to maintain privacy as much as possible. I'm not sure how effective it actually is from a privacy standpoint, but being able to see aggregate results in a single, clean UI has been a big productivity boost for me. I've been running a self-hosted instance for a few months now and haven't had major complaints.

[0]: https://github.com/asciimoo/searx

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