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

DuckDuckGo Is Now a Default Search Engine Option on Android in the EU

searchenginejournal.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 233 posts

Re: DuckDuckGo Is Now a Default Search Engine Option on Android in the EU

#91

Post by inertiatic »

franga2000 wrote: post #86
blululu wrote: post #76

Something that doesn't sit well with me about DuckDuckGo is their hidden use of affiliate links to Amazon and eBay. Fundamentally search engines are vulnerable to predatory business models. Privacy is one issue. Providing financially motivated information is another. To my knowledge (would love to hear more), Google is pretty up front about what is an ad and what isn't while DuckDuckGo covertly sells you to Amazon wh…

As long as they don't alter the search results to give those links an advantage, I have no problem with them using affiliate links. It makes them money to absolutely no loss to me, right?

If for convenience I search for "Amazon product X" on my browser bar instead of directly on Amazon, that means that in order for Amazon to generate a certain amount of profit on that product they also have to pay my search engine now, which means all other things equal, this costs me money.

Of course in real life it's not that simple a situation but it's easy to see that everyone behaving like this ends up with the consumer essentially losing money.

Re: DuckDuckGo Is Now a Default Search Engine Option on Android in the EU

#92

Post by ace_of_spades »

therealmarv wrote: post #10

It's somehow funny to see that Bing search results are so successful when packaged with privacy in mind into DuckDuckGo. I don't like bing search results, especially for Europe. They are just bad for many local things. The only other search engine beside Google which is interesting and surprising for me is maybe Yandex. It's also not as good as Google in (most of) Europe but it's interesting to see that many things a…

Do you have an objective (or at least intersubjective) measure for search result quality which could provide some evidence for your claim?

Right now you are grounding on anecdotal evidence which is generally accepted to be a quite weak form of argument.

I am asking out if interest because I am a happy user of ddg and wonder what I am missing out on? Are my needs so different from other users that I don’t have the issue that you are describing at all? Are you sure it’s not just a “this is slightly different so it must be worse” type situation?

Re: DuckDuckGo Is Now a Default Search Engine Option on Android in the EU

#94

Post by tjpnz »

blululu wrote: post #76

Something that doesn't sit well with me about DuckDuckGo is their hidden use of affiliate links to Amazon and eBay. Fundamentally search engines are vulnerable to predatory business models. Privacy is one issue. Providing financially motivated information is another. To my knowledge (would love to hear more), Google is pretty up front about what is an ad and what isn't while DuckDuckGo covertly sells you to Amazon wh…

I'm more than fine with this approach (assuming you're made aware of it being an affiliate link), especially when the alternative is giving up my privacy to a glorified advertising company.

Re: DuckDuckGo Is Now a Default Search Engine Option on Android in the EU

#95

Post by fxtentacle »

therealmarv wrote: post #10

It's somehow funny to see that Bing search results are so successful when packaged with privacy in mind into DuckDuckGo. I don't like bing search results, especially for Europe. They are just bad for many local things. The only other search engine beside Google which is interesting and surprising for me is maybe Yandex. It's also not as good as Google in (most of) Europe but it's interesting to see that many things a…

I suffer through DDG to avoid Google, but it's not pretty. Especially for terms with ambiguous meaning, DDG just performs way worse than Google.

For example, the tensorflow terminology for reducing dimensionality is "squeeze" and the scipy Gaussian distributing is called "normal".

A DDG query for "python squeeze normal" shows me stuff about the animal. Google correctly infers that I want programming advice.

I also really don't get why when I search for a TensorFlow function name, DDG will show me random pages with code examples instead of the official manual page for that function, which has my exact search query as meta title and as top h1.

Re: DuckDuckGo Is Now a Default Search Engine Option on Android in the EU

#96

Post by gdfasfklshg4 »

mindslight wrote: post #57
multiplegeorges wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google knows that when I type 'rails' into their search box I mean Ruby on Rails and gives me relevant results, instead of railroad tracks or hand rails. It's not a big leap to think they'd do that globally for extreme results like DS where most people want to know about them and not actually visit the site.

It's a website. Shouldn't your first stop be visiting the site itself to form your own opinion?

Yes but in many countries this can get you into legal trouble.

Re: DuckDuckGo Is Now a Default Search Engine Option on Android in the EU

#97

Post by nfoz »

franga2000 wrote: post #86
blululu wrote: post #76

Something that doesn't sit well with me about DuckDuckGo is their hidden use of affiliate links to Amazon and eBay. Fundamentally search engines are vulnerable to predatory business models. Privacy is one issue. Providing financially motivated information is another. To my knowledge (would love to hear more), Google is pretty up front about what is an ad and what isn't while DuckDuckGo covertly sells you to Amazon wh…

As long as they don't alter the search results to give those links an advantage, I have no problem with them using affiliate links. It makes them money to absolutely no loss to me, right?

IMO there is a privacy loss to you. Amazon should not get to know what search engine you use.

Re: DuckDuckGo Is Now a Default Search Engine Option on Android in the EU

#98

Post by gdfasfklshg4 »

surround wrote: post #38
Pxtl wrote: post #23

Honestly, I've been using ddg daily and I find I'm having to hit !g more than I'd like. Google in particular seems better at finding matches that come related to the ordering of the words, whereas ddg I have to quote them (and risk getting no results because I misremembered one word) when searching for a specific phrase.

Try !s (Startpage, which is based on Google’s index)

Didn't Startpage change ownership recently?

Re: DuckDuckGo Is Now a Default Search Engine Option on Android in the EU

#99

Post by nfoz »

gempir wrote: post #93

I personally hope DDG is going to namechange soon. I don't hate their name, but if you present the user with a choice of - Google - DuckDuckGo - Yandex Why would he click the "silly" option besides humor. It's a bad brand name IMO

As a very happy DDG user for many years now, I agree. I'm embarrassed to search things when anyone can see my screen, because I usually get weird comments about it.

Re: DuckDuckGo Is Now a Default Search Engine Option on Android in the EU

#100

Post by rapnie »

gempir wrote: post #93

I personally hope DDG is going to namechange soon. I don't hate their name, but if you present the user with a choice of - Google - DuckDuckGo - Yandex Why would he click the "silly" option besides humor. It's a bad brand name IMO

I think the bigger issue is the use in common language as a verb. People say "Why don't you just google it?" and you go to Google to do so.

I sometimes say "You should duckduck the info" (or use a single duck) if I have time to explain what I mean.

Though, writing this, I guess people will become familiar with that term too if DDG gains enough traction.

Post reply on HN