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Why I Switched to Duck Duck Go Permanently

bookflavor.com

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Re: Why I Switched to Duck Duck Go Permanently

#41

Post by thaumaturgy »

epi0Bauqu wrote: post #5
burgerbrain wrote: post #3

I really wish I could do this, but Duck Duck Go really just seems subpar when it comes to anything I actually still use a search engine for these days (technical searches). A better solution for my use case is to 1) avoid search engines where possible (far easier than you might initially think) and 2) just use googlesharing with ssl to provide myself with some anonymity while using google.

That's curious because I really have been working hard to get it much better for technical searches, and I often get the opposite report (that it's better for those with integrated SO , less content farms, other zero-click & goodies). I guess it varies by specific type though. In any case, I'd really appreciate specific examples so I can improve!

I find that DDG is great for finding most of the programming-related stuff I'm looking for, but if I need to find more recent information, it's starting to fall behind.

For example, a recent AVG update caused widespread boot failures on 64bit versions of Windows 7. Searching "avg windows 7 crash" in DDG (and some other variations) is not returning very high-quality results at the moment; the top couple of results are from much older issues, the next one is a couple of paragraphs from some site about AVG apologizing for the trouble, and so on. Google isn't a lot better, but at least its top result is a brief article from Computer Weekly on the issue.

Re: Why I Switched to Duck Duck Go Permanently

#43

Post by bcrawl »

DDG and Blekko definitely have a place besides google, bing and yahoo. One must appreciate Gabriel for his commitment to include BookFlavor. But on the other hand, I thought the article was pretty lame. Author did not give any convincing reason why he switched. Except, Gabriel was kind to him. Maybe he should investigate what DDG really has to offer and how it can maybe help him in his daily searches before committing to something as important as his daily to go knowledge resource. I use DDG and google to search for specific technical info. Google for obviously everything else. Simple as that.

Re: Why I Switched to Duck Duck Go Permanently

#44

Post by Tycho »

jawee wrote: post #39
Tycho wrote: post #37

I wonder, if DuckDuckGo really hit the bigtime, could it usher in a new age of 'verbose' or 'wordy' startups/.coms? There's only so many flickrs, twittrs, readrs, peckrs, etc. that can be registered as domain names. But a nonsense phrase of several words? Endless opportunity

I was trying to show somebody DuckDuckGo today and I could not even find it with Google as the name had escaped me. In fact, all I could think of was Go Dog Go. It has its disadvantages too.

i'm not so sure, i mean i once spent half an hour trying to find Joomla after somebody told me about it. I was searching for similar words like doopla, dupla, doopler, joomler, jumla. At least if you could remember 'DuckDuckGo' you wouldn't have any trouble spelling it. Also when I think of TV adverts, it's often the catchphrase i remember over the company/brand itself

Re: Why I Switched to Duck Duck Go Permanently

#45

Post by burgerbrain »

danwolff wrote: post #36
burgerbrain wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More or less, yes. I have bookmarks to all of my prefered news sites and blogs, use wikipedia or imdb for most of my general knowledge searching, and most of my technical questions are answered by official documentation or source diving.

Is this mostly about saving time, saving mental effort, simultaneously finding tangential content, aligning with some ideology, or something else? Actually curious.

For the most part it's just coincidence and me trying to keep myself away from a computer screen. I try to keep what I do on the internet in a narrow purposeful tract, so that I don't spend more time on the internet than I really need to. It just so happens that the things I really need the internet for rarely involve search engines.

I do use googlesharing just on principle, but that's pretty much the extent of my ideological reasoning.

Re: Why I Switched to Duck Duck Go Permanently

#46

Post by aberkowitz »

ohyes wrote: post #32
burgerbrain wrote: post #3

I really wish I could do this, but Duck Duck Go really just seems subpar when it comes to anything I actually still use a search engine for these days (technical searches). A better solution for my use case is to 1) avoid search engines where possible (far easier than you might initially think) and 2) just use googlesharing with ssl to provide myself with some anonymity while using google.

I just add !google when DDG it doesn't return what I want. thinking about it i also do !wikipedia and !java, !lisp. !amazon is also pretty awesome. I use it more like a command line to search specific things from my browser bar than a general search engine like google.

I can save you eighteen characters -

!google -> !g

!wikipedia -> !w

!amazon -> !a

Re: Why I Switched to Duck Duck Go Permanently

#47

Post by aberkowitz »

jawee wrote: post #39
Tycho wrote: post #37

I wonder, if DuckDuckGo really hit the bigtime, could it usher in a new age of 'verbose' or 'wordy' startups/.coms? There's only so many flickrs, twittrs, readrs, peckrs, etc. that can be registered as domain names. But a nonsense phrase of several words? Endless opportunity

I was trying to show somebody DuckDuckGo today and I could not even find it with Google as the name had escaped me. In fact, all I could think of was Go Dog Go. It has its disadvantages too.

I remember it because it is shorter than google.com.

dukgo.com

Re: Why I Switched to Duck Duck Go Permanently

#48

Post by rjvir »

SageRaven wrote: post #28

As much as I love DDG, I personally find it a hard pill to swallow knowing that it's not truly an independent search engine and just an API relay of Google's stuff. I do take comfort that Google isn't getting data from 90% of my online searches, but it would be awesome to know that DDG was truly its own entity and won't be cut off for some reason in the future, like we've seen with Scroogle (which, I believe, was mos…

Even if DuckDuckGo did get blocked eventually, it could easily switch to using a separate service. If Bing ever blocked it off, the code could be slightly altered to use Google instead.

Re: Why I Switched to Duck Duck Go Permanently

#50

Post by beefman »

aberkowitz wrote: post #46
ohyes wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just add !google when DDG it doesn't return what I want. thinking about it i also do !wikipedia and !java, !lisp. !amazon is also pretty awesome. I use it more like a command line to search specific things from my browser bar than a general search engine like google.

I can save you eighteen characters - !google -> !g !wikipedia -> !w !amazon -> !a

I can save you 3 characters and a ton of bandwith, by using the address bar -

!g -> g

!w -> w

!a -> a

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