Inside DuckDuckGo, Google's Tiniest, Fiercest Competitor

http://www.fastcolabs.com/3026698/inside-duckduckgo-googles-tiniest-fiercest-competitor?partner

by marban • 12 years ago

462 235 12 years ago

marban2• 12 years ago

Quite surprised about the humongous boost following the Surveillance revelations [https://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html]

The bump was just a representation of what is sure to be a momentary[relatively] state change in the finite state paranoia machine of a few nearly self-aware 'puter users.

The less self-aware majority still have nothing to hide, and the other side is using Google via proxy.

antr2• 12 years ago

If surveillance are users' concerns, I don't understand how some users believe DDG is "exempt" from US legislators, untouchable by warrants and NSA tapping... Will DDG respect user's privacy yes, but to default to DDG for "surveillance fears" just says so much about who uses it.

hdevalence• 12 years ago

I think that one can be concerned about privacy enough to choose to use a service which does not log queries, without thinking that this choice makes them immune to surveillance by state actors.

_mayo• 12 years ago

Ah, I'm getting linked to an article Nice Laundry, not duck duck go.

machbio• 12 years ago

Redirecting to this page - http://www.fastcodesign.com/3026431/this-company-wants-to-ma...

marban2• 12 years ago

not for me?

mradmin• 12 years ago

I have no idea what's going on. First time I viewed the link, it took me to nice laundry (after skipping the ad). The second time I viewed the link, it took me to the correct article. :/

hoggle• 12 years ago

As a quacking/ducking web developer, results often are more relevant than with google these days. If I'm not happy with what I find through duckduckgo I just add a quick !g and skim the google results - best of both worlds.

zacinbusiness• 12 years ago

I've been a happy DDG user for about 3 years now. I initially started not because of privacy, but because I think the home page and search results are much cleaner and more minimalist. And I've told myself that if Google ever produces a search result that I couldn't find just as easily with DuckDuckGo then I will switch back. So far that hasn't happened.

Now I use DuckDuckGo as my home page and it's my only search engine. And the search results just keep getting better and better.

DanielStraight• 12 years ago

This has been my experience as well. I have used DDG as my primary search engine for years. The results have been great, and the lack of !bangs on Google makes it extremely frustrating when I'm forced to use it. (Note for DDG users, you can type the bang on its own to go right to the main site. So just "!w" on its own to go to Wikipedia, or "!a" on its own to go to Amazon, which I find quicker than using the address bar.)

crassus• 12 years ago

Google doodles are distracting. I don't need to see a clever flash game commemorating something-or-other every time I open a new tab when I'm working, thanks.

vacri2• 12 years ago

The games aren't flash, and they don't show up on either the search bar in your browser or the search results page.

dredmorbius5• 12 years ago

The Summer Olympics games were really, really annoying.

I don't recall many doodle since, as I'm not using Google much and rarely from the homepage even then.

JetSpiegel• 12 years ago

Not to mention there's a dark mode. My eyes thank them for that piece of CSS.

davidpaulkrug• 12 years ago

Now that's the company Facebook should have bought.... Not Whatsapp....

tosseraccount6• 12 years ago

good point !

afhsfsfdsss882• 12 years ago

Facebook can only grow ad revenue by purchasing it's competitors[who ironically swore to never be Facebook] now. WhatsApp has a large pile of users to make money from before they jump ship after Facebook is done alienating them all.

lingben• 12 years ago

why exactly?

AznHisoka• 12 years ago

The unique advantage of DDG is its privacy. If FB were to buy it, most/all DDG users would flock elsewhere, so what would e the point?

therealmarv2• 12 years ago

NOOOOOOO. Me and my friends switched away from WhatsApp just because Facebook bought it!

tosseraccount6• 12 years ago

Duck duck is barely usable ... but they don't spy on you. The !g and !b commands make it my first choice. If the results aren't getting what you want, try the search on google or bing. IF you don't mind Sergy Brin or Bill Gates tracking you.

I still think there's room for a search engine that supports boolean(ish?) operations like AND, OR , NOT and NEAR. Providing links directly to the source and not a redirect to the search engine company would be a really good thing.

A cookie-less search engine would be double plus good.

mscarborough• 12 years ago

Can we stop with this "bill gates is watching your searches" nonsense? I know you're fascinating, but Brin and Gates may be concerned about many things not related your internet activity.

Corporations in data monitoring projects, OK.

tosseraccount6• 12 years ago

I do not enjoy the "targeted" advertising. If I visit finance.yahoo.com, I'm okay with an advertisement that appears from the same IP address for a brokerage. I am not okay with the 500 advertising companies contacting each other (and slowing down the internet) to track me.

Sorry, it sucks.

arca_vorago• 12 years ago

No, we absolutely cannot stop bringing up the privacy implications of an entity knowing more about us than they deserve to, and no amount of waving it away under the (false) pretense that they "need" it to do "other" things is going to work.

I'll ignore the entire filter bubble issue and get right down to the privacy implications. When often people use search engines or other related websites (reddit search) to look up all kinds of information that in single snippets would probably be meaningless to most people, in aggregate it can paint an entire picture about that person, their interests, their computer activity and location through IP logs, and I would even venture to say we aren't too far off from a psychologist doing a persons mental profile from their search history in a court case, or even textual analysis of writing style to prove a person wrote something. (dangerous implications)

Google and MS are concerned almost entirely with our internet activity, as opposed to your claim. It is the core data metric of what makes them their shit-tons of money. More google than MS, but they are making huge moves into advertising (I have been doing SEO research for my company), and they are increasingly involved in politics of a questionable nature which include the NSA, the State Department, the CIA, and others.

So no, we will not stop talking about privacy, and if your argument is that privacy is dead, then at least skip the many times proven bad "if you have nothing to hide" implied argument you make.

esemiss• 12 years ago

From http://gawker.com/5637234/gcreep-google-engineer-stalked-tee...

In at least four cases, Barksdale spied on minors' Google accounts without their consent, according to a source close to the incidents. In an incident this spring involving a 15-year-old boy who he'd befriended, Barksdale tapped into call logs from Google Voice, Google's Internet phone service, after the boy refused to tell him the name of his new girlfriend, according to our source. After accessing the kid's account to retrieve her name and phone number, Barksdale then taunted the boy and threatened to call her.

In other cases involving teens of both sexes, Barksdale exhibited a similar pattern of aggressively violating others' privacy, according to our source. He accessed contact lists and chat transcripts, and in one case quoted from an IM that he'd looked up behind the person's back. (He later apologized to one for retrieving the information without her knowledge.) In another incident, Barksdale unblocked himself from a Gtalk buddy list even though the teen in question had taken steps to cut communications with the Google engineer.

adrusi• 12 years ago

In what way do you find it barely usable? I've used it for about a year and I find the results to be great. I don't think there's been a time when I couldn't find the result I wanted with ddg but could with google.

tosseraccount6• 12 years ago

Good question. Google is better at guessing your focus. I'm not sure how they do it. Sometimes duckduck is pretty lost and scattershot. I have the opportunity of rephrasing the query or just hitting !g . If I don't mind google tracking the query, then I'll do a !g and often what I want is in the top 3. Sometimes, I don't want google tracking me (e.g. to check out a health issue) , then I'll work out a better query on duck duck.

bradleysmith• 12 years ago

I'm a new Duck Duck Go user, and I have noticed the same as user tosseraccount: that I've trained my google returns to meet my needs much better.

I've noticed trying to find news stories that are not in wide circulation (small events in foreign countries or not-so-wide-spread announcements) are much harder to find on DDG.

Having said that, I try to use DDG FIRST, then move on to other engines if it will not provide. It does feel like a sacrifice from Google; I guess they know me real real well.

pbhjpbhj2• 12 years ago

I've had a serious go at DDG 3 times now - last month I tried it but I ended up just using !g for every search and so went back to Google. The thing I use most often, and major frustration with Google, is limiting the search by time period : I wish the additional tools would be sticky.

I did blind search engine testing and Google came out on top.

That said Google is frustrating me more and more, especially now you need to "put it in quotes" if you don't want them to just show you things they think might be tangentially related in some way to your search and, you know, show you results with the actual terms in.

It's quite interesting to me that Google's main advantage when I first used it was I didn't need to AND all my terms together, it was the differentiating feature that won me over (I can't recall who from, it was around the time of Teoma and AllTheWeb IIRC). Now even when you use the cumbersome notation to say a term is required it still shows you pages without the term on ... but it nonetheless is the best offering I can find (for me). Argh!

rjzzleep4• 12 years ago

i've started using it as my main engine a while back but i absolutely have to go back to google fairly often. i'm using pentadactyl so i never noticed the !g !gi etc. commands. thanks!

tosseraccount6• 12 years ago

By the way ... for anybody interested in !g and !b it's literally "!g" or "!b" in the actual query. Use spaces on both sides if you need to separate it. Easiest thing is just append it to your query you typed in. It works in the duckduck default search on your browser, too.

It is not !g typed when you are not focused on the query box.

hootener• 12 years ago

Or there's always the best of both worlds: http://www.duckduckgoog.com/

therealmarv2• 12 years ago

I also tried to use duckduckgoog some time. The biggest difference is speed. And this is also my main concern with duckduckgo. I'm faster with Google and auto suggestion and the loading of search result is also faster.

Zarel• 12 years ago

I'm confused. What does it do?

"Searches Google and !bangs DuckDuckGo."

What does this mean? It's the equivalent of a DDG !g search? Isn't that exactly the same as just searching Google?

jmsduran• 12 years ago

I applaud what DDG is doing. I've been using it as my default search engine for roughly 2 years. Yes, there are some areas for improvement, especially when it comes to complex technical queries. But for the majority of everyday things, DDG is excellent, and returns less advertisement bloat within its results than Google/Bing.

Plus ducks are my favorite animal, so launching DDG as I begin the work day is a joy!

TallGuyShort2• 12 years ago

> Plus ducks are my favorite animal

The "I'm feeling ducky" feature never fails to illicit a smile from me.

donut2d• 12 years ago

This was my experience with DDG as well. For everyday searches, it does a fine search. But it fails pretty miserably with complex technical queries which is probably 95% of what I use web search for. For that reason, after trying DDG for about a year (for the second time) I switched to startpage.com.

simias• 12 years ago

I try to switch to ddg roughly every 6 months. I usually switch back within the hour.

One example I can remember:

I was working on some linux V4L2 code and wanted to get more informations on the "buf_queue". By mistake I searched for "vbuf_queue". Google's results:

https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=vbuf_queue

It only shows 3 results where I am (and 0 a few months ago when the problem occured) which makes it pretty obvious I'm not searching for the right thing.

As for DDG:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=vbuf_queue

It displays a pageful of garbage that I will parse for a while until it occurs to me I made a typo.

And it does it for pretty much any bogus query as well, compare:

https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=aoeulcrnh34ui345u34iyi...

with:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=aoeulcrnh34ui345u34iyi3euieuiaeoua...

In this case ddg happily outputs what appears to be misinterpreted binary files.

Maybe DDG works well for non-technical contents but 90% of my queries at work are obscure programming/electronics stuff, component datasheets and the like. For that ddg is simply not usable by my standards.

SonicSoul• 12 years ago

Plus ducks are my favorite animal

Good point, if anyone made a search engine run by koalas I'd have to use it no matter how bad it was

unicornporn• 12 years ago

Barely usable, yes I agree. So use Startpage.com. They also say they don't spy on you. It works just as good as Google, because it uses Google (see it as a proxy).

DDG is especially terrible if you are used localized versions of Google. I was used to "Swedish Google", and using a localized (Swedish) DDG was totally unusable. And so I found Startpage. Works better than the real deal for me. There are a few differences though. A search operator like site: is named host: as an example.

MisterWebz• 12 years ago

How come Startpage always shows me local results?

rjzzleep4• 12 years ago

why don't inurl: site: etc. work properly in startpage.com anyway?

dredmorbius5• 12 years ago

!sp == StartPage.

That's usually my first fallback before going !g

rakoo• 12 years ago

but they don't spy on you

How can you be so sure of that ? A few months ago, pretty much anyone would say "but the NSA don't spy on you". From a paranoid (ie security) point of view, DDG is not better than Google et al.

Now, I do believe they are more respective of everyone's privacy, but there's absolutely nothing more than words to back this.

Munksgaard• 12 years ago

I don't think anyone with just a tiny bit of knowledge of NSA would have said that. After all, the Utah data center was public knowledge. What surprised everyone was the extent of their spying.

wslh6• 12 years ago

Google supports AND, OR, NOT and NEAR. There is an AROUND operator that is similar to NEAR.

I think the way DDG can gain more traction is motivating top sites to enhance their local search pagerank. It's incredible how Google search restricted to Stack Overflow works better than the Stack Overflow local search engine. I wrote a rant about this at Challenging Google’s Search Engine [1].

[1] http://blog.databigbang.com/letters-from-the-future-challeng...

lostlogin• 12 years ago

If double up votes were possible... This isn't uncommon though. Try search "yllow submarine" on Spotify. Is there any other thing this could refer to? Not only do they not have the Beatles, but the search is awful. Nearly as awful as Apple mail. I suspect the real problem isn't that others are bad - Google has spoilt us with how good it is.

dclara5• 12 years ago

It's interesting that you are talking about "two-tiered search would decentralize efforts to improve algorithms". But you mentioned that "this solution does not need to be distributed: sites can share their local indexes and ranking algorithms with the routing search engine."

Can you elaborate a little bit about why it's not a distributed solution if sites share their local indexes with the routing search engine?

laureny• 12 years ago

Duck duck is barely usable ... but they don't spy on you.

1. You don't know that.

2. No search engine ever spied on you when they started.

rjzzleep4• 12 years ago

absolutely true, but basically it just means, we need to make it easy to build search engine infrastructure

sdegutis• 12 years ago

I wonder if it's possible to make a search engine that people can verify is not spying on them. One where the source is truly open source. Not just on github, but where anyone who wants to can ssh into the server and have full read-only access to the whole system to verify that the code they see is really what's running. Sure, there'd be some security things to work out to make it balance how easy it'd be to hack it, but maybe it's doable.

a1a• 12 years ago

1. I guess nothing is certain - but even if they are a complete hoax they still can't correlate searches with my other data (mobile, mail, documents, http header data from javascript api calls on basically every site I visit, ....). This correlation is something other search engines explicitly state that they will do.

2. You don't know that.

herokusaki• 12 years ago

1. You don't know that.

Have they been audited? That could help.

quadrangle• 12 years ago

I don't know what the hell you mean, "barely usable". I basically just use it and I search for things and find things, there's nothing "barely" about it's usability. Maybe I don't know what I'm missing, but I've never experienced search as though it magically reads my mind.

josteink• 12 years ago

Duck duck is barely usable

On the contrary, I find Google barely usable these days, with everything covered in layers and layers of horrible bloat, random UX mess of the week and constant pestering about G+.

DDG is nice and clean, has features Google is (still) lacking and just gets me the results. I may resort to other search-engines (like Google) once a week or so, but at this point, there's no way I'm going back to having Google as default.

That's just not worth it.

SomeCallMeTim• 12 years ago

I've been using DDG as my primary search from desktop for several years now, and I find its results to be equivalent to or better than Google's most of the time.

When I can't find something, I'll try a !g, but only rarely does that help any more.

cpncrunch5• 12 years ago

Google's interface seems to have improved recently, now that they have removed the duplicate left-hand column and put the options on top.

As for search results: I tried DDG again last week, and was shocked by the poor quality of results compared to google, bing or yandex. Search for "html table tag" and you'll see no w3schools or MDN results. Instead a lot of other, crappier sites. Google, yandex and bing all show w3schools and MDN near the top, so DDG must be filtering these results (which is ironic, given that they say they don't put you in a "filter bubble").

skizm• 12 years ago

Google + Adblock is your friend. All results are now relevant :D

res0nat0r• 12 years ago

Im not sure where all of these cluttered Google search UI comments are coming from, this is what I see. Maybe a reality distortion field due to pent up HN Google hate? Just a few icons in the top right off screen with my profile pic and configuration wheel icon you can't see.

Things look fine.

http://i.imgur.com/J9AqaQK.png

coin• 12 years ago

I find the infinite scroll annoying, taking away from its otherwise clean feeling.

JoshTriplett• 12 years ago

Agreed. It took me a little time using DDG before I could reliably tell the difference between "poor results" and "results that don't feel like Google results".

teaneedz• 12 years ago

It replaced Google search for me. I like adding !sp whenever I feel like getting Googly ;)

edj• 12 years ago

Duck duck is barely usable ... but they don't spy on you. The !g and !b commands make it my first choice.

I keep leaving DDG for the not-always-super-relevant results, and I keep coming back for the privacy, clean interface, and !bang syntax.

I love that using it means my searches are private by default. But the real killer feature is !bang. I find that it's faster to do a Google image search using DDG with "!gi" than to search in Google and then move my hand to the mouse and click "Images".

joesb• 12 years ago

Why do people talk about this !bang syntax so much? I can do the same thing with search provider shortcut in my browser.

For example, after setting up once, I can press "Ctrl+L" then type "gi" then "Tab" and start typing my search keyword. I don't even have to first go to Google or DDG.

treenyc• 12 years ago

toseraccount, I know what you mean by 'barely usable'. I often find it hard to find programming related (as well as other things) on DDG. However, I do mostly use DDG. That shall give you some idea on how important privacy is to some people. They would rather have what you consider

'barely usable'

results than compromise privacy.

It is not so much that I am not willing to share stuff (even with the government). I used to run a small SaaS for a specific legal industry, and I was subpoenas by the attorney general's office. So I am well aware of the process and I do think in some cases, government do need access to our data to ensure security.

The difference is to ask for permission (court order and transparent due procedure) and have transparency. Maybe the big difference is the exercise of Power instead of Force.

And power is a word with many means, so to be rigorous, this is what I meant by power:

"Power means pretty much the same thing as freedom. Power is a thing that everybody wants the most they can possibly have of. That is, skiing is power, sex appeal is power, the ability to make yourself heard by your congressman is power. Anything that comes out of you and goes out into the world is power and in addition to that, the ablity to be open, to appreciate, to receive love, to respond to others, to listen to music, to understand literature, all of that is power. By "power" I mean human faculties exercised to the largest possible degree. So, in a way, in a large sense, by power I mean individual intelligence. Now when you reach out to another person through the energy or creativity that is in you and that other person responds, you are exercising power. When you make somebody else do something against their will, to me that is not power at all, that is force, and force to me is the negation of power." - Charles Reich

And Free Software (Free as in freedom) is a good real world exercise in power.

dublinben• 12 years ago

I've been using DDG for a few years now. I recommend it to anyone who will listen, and really hope they continue to grow. It's been fascinating to watch Google copy their zero-click results.

jonalmeida2• 12 years ago

I'm another happy DDG user a few years now. They sent me a bunch of stickers, and I've been putting them up in my university, work places & friend's laptops.

nvk• 12 years ago

Nice to see the internals of other companies like us. We love tiny team sizes at Coinkite.com.

It's incredible how much you can accomplish with very very few focussed makers.

We created our own rack mounted HSM, our own Hardware POS payment terminals, and all the payment web structure. Answer to support and automated the supply chain.

Stop hiring!

mihok• 12 years ago

I switched over to DuckDuckGo as my default search provider, for about half a year. It was alright for a while... but eventually I would search for things on both DDG and Google and realized how much I was missing... Sadly I've moved back to Google since then.

Another issue that kept coming up for me, was their lack of keyboard controls on search result pages. Although, this isn't really as relevant to most users I would speculate

GhotiFish• 12 years ago

this is my experience as well. I've got two keywords set up for firefox, g for ddg, and go for google.

I type in "go blahblahblah" a whole lot more nowadays.

Aoyagi• 12 years ago

I use either DDG or https://startpage.com/ . I still have to go to Google about once or twice month though...

chidevguy• 12 years ago

The only reason I still use Google over DuckDuckGo is the keyword suggestions as I'm typing. I find that to be very useful when I'm searching for something but not quite sure how to phrase it. I would for sure switch over if DDG added that!

cbr• 12 years ago

This would require keeping logs of searches. You could anonymize the logs, but a lot of people like that DDG keeps as little as possible.

tzz• 12 years ago

How does DDG work? Do they have their own algorithm to rank the web pages? What makes their algorithm better?

Pwnguinz• 12 years ago

Behind the scenes, DDG uses Yandex and Bing to power its search results. It also does its own crawling (however, I'm not sure to what extent).

Their algorithm isn't necessarily better, but if you were to just give it a try, you'll notice their 'Instant Answers' section at the top of a search that usually gets you exactly what you want without having to click on a single result (much like how certain search queries on Google will return you an instant answer).

DrinkWater• 12 years ago

lol at the pic with the server setup

bsbechtel• 12 years ago

I reached out to Gabriel a few times while living in the Southeast PA region for entrepreneurial related questions. He always got back to me within a day or so...incredibly helpful and nice. I switched to DDG a while back, and while it took a little bit to get used to the changes, I use it for 80% of my searches now. The only way they will improve is by us using them more and more often. You can complain about how they aren't as good as Google, but that doesn't help them improve. Getting involved in the DDG community and setting them as your main search engine does.

JunkDNA• 12 years ago

I'll second this. Gabriel is an extremely nice guy. I approached him over 5 years ago for info about the Philly startup scene and he wrote me a huge, detailed email that I'm sure he didn't really have the time to write.

I switched my default search engine to Duck Duck Go a few years ago mainly because of that interaction. I still need to fall back on the g! shortcut a lot, but search quality has improved quite a bit over the years. I like supporting a hometown startup that exists outside the Bay Area bubble.

iqster2• 12 years ago

I have lots of respect for the founder. One of his blog posts motivated me to buy my own rack + datacenter class equipment. So much fun!!

jonalmeida2• 12 years ago

Link?

I need motivation.

iqster2• 12 years ago

Here ya go:

http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2011/12/duckduckgo-used-...

Tip from experience: Really think about logistics before diving in. Racks (even quarter racks) are heavy!! Data center equipment is also noisy. You eventually also hit limits on household electric circuits. It is fun though :)

tosseraccount6• 12 years ago

Is there some "sociopath" cron demon on HN that downvotes posts based on being "too popular" or "responded too quickly"?

Edit: it appears to be a "karma balancer" that docks points in a thread if it measures participation as unbalanced. That'd be my guess.

fredgrott• 12 years ago

hmm competitor? Does Sprint call one of its MVOs Virgin a competitor?

hissworks• 12 years ago

This article ended abruptly.

jarofgreen2• 12 years ago

Serious point, it actually took me a couple of seconds to make sure I hadn't missed a "Next Page" link. I'm still not sure I haven't.

(edit to add) I read somewhere that the first Google home page just had the search box on, and people used to wait because they thought it hadn't finished loading. So they added the copyright notice as a footer just so people would realise it had.

fiorix• 12 years ago

DDG is excellent.

Beliavsky• 12 years ago

Can't you just browse and search "incognito" with Google Chrome?

hrjet• 12 years ago

I am not sure of that. Some discussion here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6701321

bduerst4• 12 years ago

Not quite - you still have tracking in Google Chrome that links by IP.

You can compile Chromium with the tracking flags off, and then search in incognito.

hmsimha• 12 years ago

Browsing google incognito doesn't prevent Google search from receiving your IP address, which they are still able to do tracking and geolocation by.

pielud2• 12 years ago

The killer feature for me with ddg (as a programmer) is the ! searches for documentation:

  !php strstr
  !python os.makedirs
  !pypi requests
  !js String

etc.

This gives you a single search bar for all documentation, which is amazing.

edit: formatting

ultrasandwich• 12 years ago

Wow I didn't know about this. +100 for DDG.

PLenz• 12 years ago

This is ultimately the thing got me to switch the DDG about 2 years ago.

wila• 12 years ago

That's absolutely fabulous. I'm a DDG user already, but didn't knew about this trick. A brilliant time saver.

Thanks for sharing.

pielud2• 12 years ago

Here are all of the supported ! searches:

https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html

or just search ddg for !bang

rjzzleep4• 12 years ago

ironically !c# brings you to a forbidden place :p

gkya2• 12 years ago

!csharp doesn't, which is even more ironic.

edraferi• 12 years ago

absolutely. this is why DDG is the default search on my browser. It's site-specific search for all the sites I actually care about rules into one easy command line interface. It's also replaced the desktop calculator thanks to wolfram alpha integration.

seriously, I don't know how I would function without !python, !pypi, !w, !gmap, and !hn

lmm3• 12 years ago

I already have that in my browser. And have since before DDG was launched.

atmosx• 12 years ago

DDG is good but not for non-english context. I mean, comparing to google for Greek text search is laughable at best.

That said, I hope the grow strong so I can use their engine.

_mhr_• 12 years ago

What's repeatedly surprised me is how I'll get results from DuckDuckGo and think that, "You know, I bet Google would have given better/more relevant results." And then I'm proven wrong! When DuckDuckGo gives nonrelevant results, Google often isn't any better, and when DuckDuckGo gives relevant results, sometimes they're often as relevant or more relevant than Google. I switched cold turkey a few months back, and I'm very pleased with how usable it is. I also really like the !word features, it's better than Google in that respect. I should mention that it's easier to do math in Google because Google infers more (such as inferring parens in an expression like: "2 + 2) * 4", outputting "16". DuckDuckGo can't handle that at the moment.

wil421• 12 years ago

Most of the time when I have tried DDG the results I got back looked like spam I would get if I clicked on the 3 or 4 result page from a Google search.

6cxs2hd6• 12 years ago

We give everyone their own dev environment that's a full stack of DuckDuckGo. It's a full machine. Some people are using eMacs.

Is this like how foreign words get remapped into Japanese syllables? Fast Company tech writers only speak Apple? chuckles

mrfusion• 12 years ago

I've actually been turning to reddit for a lot of my searches. Yes, you read that right, reddit.

I found that a lot of times when I was looking for general advice from other people (recent examples: how to treat dandruff, how to start a garden) I actually get really well thought out answers from real people who have done the same things. And I know they're not trying to sell me anything or just get page views.

Doing those same searches on google just returns vapid SEO filled articles from ehow and wikihow, and those kind of places, pretty worthless.

rwl4• 12 years ago

I do the same but with one twist for better results. I go to Google and search like this:

  site:reddit.com start a garden

Google is a much better Reddit search than Reddit is.

moya• 12 years ago

Same here. I've been using reddit primarily as a search engine for the last two years. It's a good supplement to filter out the bs.

dmnd• 12 years ago

Google used to have a "discussions" results option I used heavily for the same reason. But they inexplicably killed it: http://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-filters-gone-17993...

ithkuil5• 12 years ago

I'm impressed, it works quite well.

However, just to put DuckDuckGo's 4 Mqpd into a broader context:

Google 2013: 5.9 Gqpd Bing 2012: 3.1 Gqpd

Not to put DuckDuckGo down or anything, but it's important to understand what a >1000x difference in scale means, in terms of operating costs and scalability issues. For example, for a single person is very easy to get hold of $10k but it's extremely difficult to get $10M. (I'm not actually interested in money, it's just an example measurement unit, and particular range, that people are familiar with).

Sources: http://www.statisticbrain.com/google-searches/ http://leaderswest.com/2012/07/02/how-bings-search-increased...

gkya2• 12 years ago

Is Gqpd = giga queries per day?

theknown992• 12 years ago

That seems insanely low for Google.

ck22• 12 years ago

I applaud the DDG spirit but without their own crawling data their future is doomed.

If their data sources ever cut them off, it's over.

They need to build their own crawlers like gigablast.

ithkuil5• 12 years ago

https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckbot ?

ck22• 12 years ago

They aren't collecting much if anything.

hueving• 12 years ago

They need to build their own crawlers like gigablast.

Unfortunately the opportunity for that is pretty meek. Many webmasters block crawlers that aren't the top search engines. :-(

mverwijs• 12 years ago

Can't duckduckbot just present itself to the webserver as GoogleBot?

dandroid17• 12 years ago

Seems like DuckDuckGo went down. Not loading for me.

jaryd• 12 years ago

All systems are go over here. Was the site not loading at all, or just loading slowly for you?

frigg• 12 years ago

How does DuckDuckGo make money to support itself?

_delirium2• 12 years ago

Syndicated Yahoo/Bing ads at the top, and affiliate links on the eBay + Amazon results: https://duck.co/help/company/advertising-and-affiliates

theknown992• 12 years ago

Advertising, just like Google.

Siecje• 12 years ago

Does DuckDuckGo have image search?

I don't like that when I press tab I go to the search field I would like to go to the first link. Also I type in YouTube and the first link is for the Wikipedia entry.

myared• 12 years ago

DDG gives me freedom to better craft my queries, and it's won my browser's default search engine for years because of the bang syntax. I can !anything and it almost always gets me what I need. I still !g and !b quite a bit, but I do so deliberately based on what I'm looking for (and I do think about whether I want the search affecting my Google Now results).

sytelus• 12 years ago

DuckDuckGo does not have its own index. They are pretty much layer over Bing plus some customizations for query parsing and head queries for trusted sources which they do index. If Bing decided to block DDG tomorrow, they will be toast. The only impressive thing for me about DDG is that they are able to turn privacy thing in to marketing for geeks and get tiny trickle of traffic to stay alive in hope someone would buy them out.

adrianwaj• 12 years ago

Is there a ddg cheat sheet? How can one make it the default search in Chrome's url field?

tiatia• 12 years ago

I prefer ixquick.com

dredmorbius5• 12 years ago

I made two attempts to convert to DDG, the first nearly two years ago, then, successfully, this past June. And in large part, it's working better than Google. Searches are fast, they're unfiltered, the !bang syntax is great, privacy is respected, and overall site weight and load is much preferable to Google. While I don't always find what I'm looking for, switching to !g often doesn't turn up what I was hoping for either -- sometimes it's just search refinement that you need.

All in all, I'm happy with it. This after sixteen years of Google use.

wuliwong• 12 years ago

It is so cool to see them growing like this. Gabe, the founder is a great guy. When I lived in Philly, he would have periodic hack nights in that office, open to all. I met some cool people there.

nnkh• 12 years ago

My main concern with DDG is its founders history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_Database

His past isn't exactly one I'd look for if I wanted a trustworthy search operator, I think.

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