Back in the day, before I just defaulted to using Google, I remember checking multiple search engines to find the thing I was looking for. You'd check Yahoo/Google/Lycos, try a couple of different phrasings, and then if that didn't work try searching on a few other search engines. Somewhere along the way, Google had won me over, because I almost always found my answer. I had stopped even considering other search engines.
Now that I'm on DDG, I find that I'm following a similar pattern of searching DDG, then searching google, and I'm finding that most of my searches work great on DDG. What's surprising to me is that when I move on to using Google, I'm considering widening my search even beyond DDG and Google. It feels like, by considering different search options, I'm going back to how I used to explore the internet, rather than defaulting to taking Google's results as truth.
And now, seeing a variety of options from DDG, I am surprised at how irrelevant some of the links are on Google some times. It feels like when I search on Google, Google is telling me 'No no, you don't care about JsonAPI parsing performance, you care about parsing json, because we know best'.
I'm glad that DDG is alive and doing well. I love using it and I don't notice any difference for most queries, and falling back to google hasn't really been as painful as I thought it would be.
* DDG is atrocious for anything other than English
* Programing/IT searches often yield garbage on DDG while on Google a good result is within the first 3.
I have it as my default now too, but "!g" is a constant companion.
===
Regarding Google and Amazon being unstoppable... it seemed the same once for Microsoft.
Once they get too big/powerful (which they arguably already are), they could be broken up or severely hamstrung by legislation.
They can also start to stagnate and be out-done by new competition based on new technologies.
All of those seem unlikely right now, but 10 years can change a lot.
Of course both Google and Amazon both enjoy large network effects and are pretty capital intensive. Which is typical for mono/oligopolies.
> It feels like when I search on Google, Google is telling me 'No no, you don't care about JsonAPI parsing performance, you care about parsing json, because we know best'.
I've experienced more of this lately, and see myself using the quotation mark syntax to a greater extent (quotations will tell Google to explicitly include a phrase in their search).
I don't know if at this point their are over-optimizing and now all the other data Google has about you matters more than what you type on the search box, but it's annoying sometimes. Or maybe they're giving your search a slight nudge to results where they could get a better profit? I wonder how they measure search effectivity, and what they are optimizing towards.
One feature that I like about DDG is their multiple site search (search string site:123.com,345.com).
Startpage or Google, last time I checked a long while back, don't have this feature. Since I use an index.html (as my local home page), I wanted to get something similar to Google's Custom Search (ability to only search a set of specific domains).
At the very top of my index.html, is DDG's search form with radio buttons beneath (for the multiple site searches) - it looks something like this (included a couple of sample radioButtons):
This is an ad-hoc (poor mans') replacement for Google's CSE (https://cse.google.com/cse/). Useful for a good number of category types (news, social media, etc) and/or to reduce typing.
It can certainly be improved but it works for me (constantly editing the home page with a lightweight editor so I want to keep it simple).
DDG is great; particularly for tech related topics, as it doesn't get skewed by whatever I was last talking about in corporate (gmail) email. One of the things I have noticed in recent years is how bad google is getting. It is definitely dropping the ball in many ways. Every behemouth looks unstoppable right before it gets stopped; remember when MS bailed out Apple? Bet they never expected trillion dollar apple.
FWIIW qwant and yandex (in english) are both excellent as well.
Situation is much different now. Most Internet users don't even know what's a search engine. They just type in the URL bar and the search is performed transparently. Google has majority share on two main platforms (Google Chrome on desktop and Android on mobile) ensuring that their search is the default for the majority of users and is something people would get used to.
If a user isn't aware that choice even exists, they have no choice.
I believe this was recognized by Google years ago and thus their move into Android and replacing Firefox. Looking back, those were really smart, well executed strategies.
Even if Google search were to drop quality, it's so entrenched that it would take enormous effort to replace it at #1 spot. You would have to build a mobile operating system, a browser and a search engine - and all three would have to better in some way for users to switch.
I used DDG for a while and I found amusingly I almost missed Google tracking me. I'd search for a restaurant to find opening times or address and the first result would be a restaurant of the same name but in a different city or different country. Google always seems to know where I am. I'm sure that's just some clever algorithms or balance of probabilities or something based on their profile of me. I don't like that idea but at the same time I can't say it's not useful.
I followed a similar usage pattern, but find myself using !g less and less. I use it if I know I need a google cache link, or on the odd chance the standard DDG search doesn't give me something relevant, but that is happening much less frequently.
This is my experience as well, I'd actually really love a search multiplexer that would run a query string on a bunch of search engines (which I could specify) and get the results back separated by the engine used.
I still have the opposite feeling. For a lot of things that I search, google still presents me more relevant results. Although DDG is catching up. Until recently, it always presented me with old.haxe.org results for some reason instead of the current version, but now it works fine.
The reason why DDG is my default url-bar search is because of the 'bangs'!g for google, !yt for YouTube, !w for Wikipedia and !t for thesaurus (when looking for variable names ;)), !gm for google maps, etc. Very handy.
What I've found with using DDG more and more is it's made me be a bit smarter in how I search. I, personally, found Google almost made me lazy in just throwing 2 or 3 words and seeing what comes back. I'm a little more specific in my queries now and it's gotten way better since doing so.
I've resisted for many years, but I use ddg more and more for streaming movies ilegally and for porn. For some reason google is heavily censored so that works great.
Now if I am using DDG that much, it must be that they're doing something right and that something is happening for them.
Also remember that when Google started, nobody tried to SEO or structure content to be searchable. Nowadays everybody has Google in mind when publishing .. yet its value to us is less. Smells like rot.
I use and like DDG but I can't believe this article didn't mention Bing, which powers DDG's organic results. Like, yes DDG is a small company based "just east of nowhere" in PA because Microsoft has spent literally billions of dollars on Bing.
To the extent we have a choice in search provider at all, it's entirely due to Microsoft's huge investment, and I feel like it's remiss not to consider those implications. If Microsoft eventually throws in the towel and shuts off Bing, then DDG will cease to exist. It's not like this plucky little underdog of a company that people are rooting for has any chance on its own. The market dynamics of running a successful search crawler and engine are important to consider here and totally brushed under the table in this article.
If DDG is not using some of that money to build their own crawler, they should give that money back to investors. It sounds extremely hard building yourself crawlers, but it's been done in various degrees by Archive.org, various SEO tools, and Common Crawl. The best time to have built the infrastructure was 5 years ago. The second best time is now.
I think the guys in DDG know this, but if they don't.. they're a bad business decision from Microsoft away from nonexistence.
You know what can stop google? a search engine that assumes I want every word in my query, or even better a search engine that honors a string in quotes to mean these words in this order. When did google stop doing this?
edit:
This wouldn't stop google, it would just make that part of my life as easy as it was 10 years ago.
I started using DDG as my default search engine about 6 months ago, and for 95% of the searches I do it's totally fine.
I don't know why people think that DDG needs to "stop" Google; did people think that Lycos and Infoseek and Yahoo couldn't coexist back in the 90's? I think it's good that both companies have some competition from each other.
Why must everything be a "company" killer? There's room in markets for choices. I think DDG is providing a good choice for folks. And having Apple data behind them isn't just potatoes.
Because, in the current economic environment, there really isn't much room in the markets for choices. It's increasingly been one quasi-monopoly that everyone knows about, and then a bunch of niche options for people who dislike the monopoly player for whatever reason.
I recently switched my homepage to be ddg. Most of the time it’s pure annoyance, returning unrelated results and never giving nice top of page summaries. I really didn’t want it to be this way, but most of the time (I’m pretty sure 2/3 at least) i have to revert back to google.
1. ...the current idea of superiority is absolute domination on the market (see: monopoly),
2. ...the age we live in promotes being only the BEST and the most AWESOME, without ever giving chance to the average and the mildly-good, which may not shine as brightly but does its job well,
3. ...there's unduly competition on the market – not just your healthy capitalist "We sell better 'cause we make better products, so step aside", but something more antagonistic on a more... personal? level,
or all of it, to some degree.
I could be biased on number three, given that I'm quite sensitive to antagonism in general. It does seem to me that, while there's no malvertisement (no one's saying "My competitors are shit, we're light-years ahead"), everyone seems to try and trump others in spirit.
id imagine speed isn't a current priority for Google as Gmail, calendar and maps have shown. It's probably a hold over from before, I'd give it a year before they roll out some improvement that allows it down.
Lot of people here are using DuckDuckGO. I tried that and some others that respect privacy. I like them but there is only one reason why I still use google.
Convenience. I do lots of movie, tv show, sports and Famous People search. Almost always I find what I am looking for directly on the google result page. If I have to open those links, I will have to go through all that js tracking and bloated sites. Google is fast. I keep track of sports scores and schedule through google search. Bing also does all of these.
I still !g a lot, but I’m alright with that. I wish it were a shortcut to add !g to a query.
One of the key things I’ve realised in the switching is that I actually LIKE a lot of the changes google has made from initial “just show the 10 results” like DDG does today.
I like the news carousel, when I’m searching for a news related article.
I like all the local info on a cafe / store, when I’m searching for it. The google implementation is WAY better than Yelp listings (constantly nagging me to install an app, Yelp seems to satisfy no one, it’s a middle man resource no one needs)
But overall I’m happy using DDG for a first crack, knowing my privacy is valued, and moving onto google when I need to.
It feels like I’m supporting a more private future, now, without hindering myself severely in the process. I’m happy with that compromise. Hopefully one day google will not be necessary.
Again, my one wish. Give me the !g tag in one click, one swipe, what ever. Don’t make me type it into the query box and search again!
Isn't DDG just bing with a different interface? Or do they actually build their own index now or am I just completely confused and totally wrong about my assumptions?
I'm glad DDG exists and it's my main search engine. But I'm using g! in about 50% of my queries.
For very technical queries I somehow already know that google gives me better results at the top. DDG results feel more like a dice roll.
Two things I also miss are "site:url" filters (dont know if ddg provides this) and date ranges, for example results within the last 3 years.
Well, maybe it's possible but I have other things to do than to browse around ddg or learn a bunch of bangs. In my opinion this is the main barrier to entry. Provide me all the possibilities on a single screen or behind a menu and don't expect user to dig around the docs. There's a lot of potential which will never be uncovered by alot of users, so they stick to google.
As long as DDG is not traded publicly it will do just fine. Investors would inevitably be screaming for more growth and ultimately force them to comprise their current values.
Bing gives me points I can cash in for Amazon gift cards. I rarely fall back to G, and when I do it seems like the sponsored search results are much more intrusive than even those on Bing.
What I'd really like is a meta-search engine incorporating Bing, G, and DDG...but I have never gotten around to doing this myself and don't know of any OSS project that does this.
What's most disappointing about Bing is the lack of good search results from Microsoft tech documentation.
Google doesn't need to be stopped, a lot of innovation is happening there. It just has to be more profitable to care about the users of the services than about the business-clients of Google. If privacy of end users would be a core business instead of selling data there would be no problem. Sadly I don't have any glimpse of an idea how that could be happening. The world is complicated and every little piece that makes interacting with the world more convenient is welcome. Google is convenient, so nobody[1] gives a damn about their data.
I use DDG for 90% of my searches, no complaints from my side.
[1] some do, but since many people Diabetes 2 can't be convinced for a more healthy life style, what do you really expect from others if consequences of habits are not even directly visible...
DDG is my default search. It's good for 85% of my searches. Its video and maps search clearly lag behind Google (mostly from a UI standpoint). It needs to find a better balance between shepherding privacy and UX. Most local search is weak, even if I enter in my city/state.
Once place they are long ahead on UI is the image search.
You can actually "view file" and not "view site" as google had to do after that lawsuit from getty [1]
But having said that, it is very annoying that they put a large nagging notification on the top right of the screen asking to switch to it as it's default.
If I want to do that I will do it myself thank you. I never figured out why webpages do this kind of thing (i.e. pop up a newsletter subscription form blocking the whole article). It just pisses off the users. It's actually the main reason DDG is not my default search engine.
I use DDG primarily now. I've noticed that I often get better results for my programming queries than from Google and there's always `!g` if I don't find what I'm looking for.
On a side note: anyone else think Apple will eventually buy DDG?
I've switched to DDG and I've hardly looked back. Google's search has been seriously declined in quality. Most search operators [1] are no longer supported. Even those directly in the "tools" menu don't work.
For example if you search "Nothing Can Stop Google. DuckDuckGo Is Trying Anyways site:medium.com", and set a custom date range to sometime last year. You'll see results which state this blog post was posted in 2018-October-31 for example, or which every date you prefer because I assume they just fuzzily fit the post date -into- that range. You can make google tell you this blog post is 2+ years old.
The Google.com I found useful in the early 00's even had document qualifiers so I could search for strings, but filter to just PDF's, or HTML, or JPG's. Now I have to pay for these features via a Google App-Engine private search instance. It just feels like having somebody spit in your face. When features were free, but they quietly became pay-to-play without zero warning.
Given the size and increasingly walled gardens of the web, is it even possible for a new search engine to launch in 2019 and compete with Google? Consider how much time and money Microsoft sunk into Bing. If Microsoft turned off its Bing API, could DDG spin up its own crawlers?
[+] [-] mangoman|7 years ago|reply
Now that I'm on DDG, I find that I'm following a similar pattern of searching DDG, then searching google, and I'm finding that most of my searches work great on DDG. What's surprising to me is that when I move on to using Google, I'm considering widening my search even beyond DDG and Google. It feels like, by considering different search options, I'm going back to how I used to explore the internet, rather than defaulting to taking Google's results as truth.
And now, seeing a variety of options from DDG, I am surprised at how irrelevant some of the links are on Google some times. It feels like when I search on Google, Google is telling me 'No no, you don't care about JsonAPI parsing performance, you care about parsing json, because we know best'.
I'm glad that DDG is alive and doing well. I love using it and I don't notice any difference for most queries, and falling back to google hasn't really been as painful as I thought it would be.
[+] [-] the_duke|7 years ago|reply
* DDG is atrocious for anything other than English * Programing/IT searches often yield garbage on DDG while on Google a good result is within the first 3.
I have it as my default now too, but "!g" is a constant companion.
===
Regarding Google and Amazon being unstoppable... it seemed the same once for Microsoft.
Once they get too big/powerful (which they arguably already are), they could be broken up or severely hamstrung by legislation.
They can also start to stagnate and be out-done by new competition based on new technologies.
All of those seem unlikely right now, but 10 years can change a lot.
Of course both Google and Amazon both enjoy large network effects and are pretty capital intensive. Which is typical for mono/oligopolies.
[+] [-] aylmao|7 years ago|reply
I've experienced more of this lately, and see myself using the quotation mark syntax to a greater extent (quotations will tell Google to explicitly include a phrase in their search).
I don't know if at this point their are over-optimizing and now all the other data Google has about you matters more than what you type on the search box, but it's annoying sometimes. Or maybe they're giving your search a slight nudge to results where they could get a better profit? I wonder how they measure search effectivity, and what they are optimizing towards.
[+] [-] O1111OOO|7 years ago|reply
Startpage or Google, last time I checked a long while back, don't have this feature. Since I use an index.html (as my local home page), I wanted to get something similar to Google's Custom Search (ability to only search a set of specific domains).
At the very top of my index.html, is DDG's search form with radio buttons beneath (for the multiple site searches) - it looks something like this (included a couple of sample radioButtons):
<form method="post" action="https://duckduckgo.com/">
<center>
<fieldset>
<input type="text" name="q" size="75" maxlength="255" value>
<br>
<input type="submit" name="ddg" value="Search">
<input type="submit" name="local" value="New Tab" formtarget="_blank">
<input type="reset" value="reset">
<br>
<input type="radio" name="sites" value checked>DuckDuckGo
<input type="radio" name="sites" value="github.com,sourceforge.net">FOSS
<input type="radio" name="sites" value="youtube.com,vimeo.com,dailymotion.com,metacafe.com">videos
</fieldset>
</center>
</form>
This is an ad-hoc (poor mans') replacement for Google's CSE (https://cse.google.com/cse/). Useful for a good number of category types (news, social media, etc) and/or to reduce typing.
It can certainly be improved but it works for me (constantly editing the home page with a lightweight editor so I want to keep it simple).
[+] [-] scottlocklin|7 years ago|reply
FWIIW qwant and yandex (in english) are both excellent as well.
[+] [-] babuskov|7 years ago|reply
Situation is much different now. Most Internet users don't even know what's a search engine. They just type in the URL bar and the search is performed transparently. Google has majority share on two main platforms (Google Chrome on desktop and Android on mobile) ensuring that their search is the default for the majority of users and is something people would get used to.
If a user isn't aware that choice even exists, they have no choice.
I believe this was recognized by Google years ago and thus their move into Android and replacing Firefox. Looking back, those were really smart, well executed strategies.
Even if Google search were to drop quality, it's so entrenched that it would take enormous effort to replace it at #1 spot. You would have to build a mobile operating system, a browser and a search engine - and all three would have to better in some way for users to switch.
[+] [-] gtsteve|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] auiya|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gnarbarian|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] koonsolo|7 years ago|reply
The reason why DDG is my default url-bar search is because of the 'bangs'!g for google, !yt for YouTube, !w for Wikipedia and !t for thesaurus (when looking for variable names ;)), !gm for google maps, etc. Very handy.
[+] [-] vaer-k|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TarpitCarnivore|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gamma-male|7 years ago|reply
Now if I am using DDG that much, it must be that they're doing something right and that something is happening for them.
[+] [-] JacobJans|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agumonkey|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fbn79|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] losvedir|7 years ago|reply
To the extent we have a choice in search provider at all, it's entirely due to Microsoft's huge investment, and I feel like it's remiss not to consider those implications. If Microsoft eventually throws in the towel and shuts off Bing, then DDG will cease to exist. It's not like this plucky little underdog of a company that people are rooting for has any chance on its own. The market dynamics of running a successful search crawler and engine are important to consider here and totally brushed under the table in this article.
[+] [-] otachack|7 years ago|reply
If DDG is simply a skin for MS Bing along with anonymous/little tracking, maybe that's what the people want?
[+] [-] AznHisoka|7 years ago|reply
I think the guys in DDG know this, but if they don't.. they're a bad business decision from Microsoft away from nonexistence.
[+] [-] agumonkey|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dec0dedab0de|7 years ago|reply
edit: This wouldn't stop google, it would just make that part of my life as easy as it was 10 years ago.
[+] [-] tombert|7 years ago|reply
I don't know why people think that DDG needs to "stop" Google; did people think that Lycos and Infoseek and Yahoo couldn't coexist back in the 90's? I think it's good that both companies have some competition from each other.
[+] [-] SpikeDad|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bunderbunder|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] verelo|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MarsAscendant|7 years ago|reply
I wonder if it's the fact that...
1. ...the current idea of superiority is absolute domination on the market (see: monopoly),
2. ...the age we live in promotes being only the BEST and the most AWESOME, without ever giving chance to the average and the mildly-good, which may not shine as brightly but does its job well,
3. ...there's unduly competition on the market – not just your healthy capitalist "We sell better 'cause we make better products, so step aside", but something more antagonistic on a more... personal? level,
or all of it, to some degree.
I could be biased on number three, given that I'm quite sensitive to antagonism in general. It does seem to me that, while there's no malvertisement (no one's saying "My competitors are shit, we're light-years ahead"), everyone seems to try and trump others in spirit.
Nah, probably not.
[+] [-] Theizestooke|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fareesh|7 years ago|reply
The bangs feature is really useful to me personally since it supports so many sites.
https://duckduckgo.com/bang
My only complaint is that it's noticeably slower than Google
[+] [-] dwighttk|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thinkingemote|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] birksherty|7 years ago|reply
Convenience. I do lots of movie, tv show, sports and Famous People search. Almost always I find what I am looking for directly on the google result page. If I have to open those links, I will have to go through all that js tracking and bloated sites. Google is fast. I keep track of sports scores and schedule through google search. Bing also does all of these.
[+] [-] RileyJames|7 years ago|reply
I still !g a lot, but I’m alright with that. I wish it were a shortcut to add !g to a query.
One of the key things I’ve realised in the switching is that I actually LIKE a lot of the changes google has made from initial “just show the 10 results” like DDG does today.
I like the news carousel, when I’m searching for a news related article.
I like all the local info on a cafe / store, when I’m searching for it. The google implementation is WAY better than Yelp listings (constantly nagging me to install an app, Yelp seems to satisfy no one, it’s a middle man resource no one needs)
But overall I’m happy using DDG for a first crack, knowing my privacy is valued, and moving onto google when I need to.
It feels like I’m supporting a more private future, now, without hindering myself severely in the process. I’m happy with that compromise. Hopefully one day google will not be necessary.
Again, my one wish. Give me the !g tag in one click, one swipe, what ever. Don’t make me type it into the query box and search again!
[+] [-] taf2|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zubspace|7 years ago|reply
For very technical queries I somehow already know that google gives me better results at the top. DDG results feel more like a dice roll.
Two things I also miss are "site:url" filters (dont know if ddg provides this) and date ranges, for example results within the last 3 years.
Well, maybe it's possible but I have other things to do than to browse around ddg or learn a bunch of bangs. In my opinion this is the main barrier to entry. Provide me all the possibilities on a single screen or behind a menu and don't expect user to dig around the docs. There's a lot of potential which will never be uncovered by alot of users, so they stick to google.
[+] [-] bstar77|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jackfoxy|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vxNsr|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tonyjstark|7 years ago|reply
I use DDG for 90% of my searches, no complaints from my side.
[1] some do, but since many people Diabetes 2 can't be convinced for a more healthy life style, what do you really expect from others if consequences of habits are not even directly visible...
[+] [-] debacle|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tyfon|7 years ago|reply
But having said that, it is very annoying that they put a large nagging notification on the top right of the screen asking to switch to it as it's default.
If I want to do that I will do it myself thank you. I never figured out why webpages do this kind of thing (i.e. pop up a newsletter subscription form blocking the whole article). It just pisses off the users. It's actually the main reason DDG is not my default search engine.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/02/internet-rages-after...
[+] [-] phaedryx|7 years ago|reply
On a side note: anyone else think Apple will eventually buy DDG?
[+] [-] valarauca1|7 years ago|reply
For example if you search "Nothing Can Stop Google. DuckDuckGo Is Trying Anyways site:medium.com", and set a custom date range to sometime last year. You'll see results which state this blog post was posted in 2018-October-31 for example, or which every date you prefer because I assume they just fuzzily fit the post date -into- that range. You can make google tell you this blog post is 2+ years old.
The Google.com I found useful in the early 00's even had document qualifiers so I could search for strings, but filter to just PDF's, or HTML, or JPG's. Now I have to pay for these features via a Google App-Engine private search instance. It just feels like having somebody spit in your face. When features were free, but they quietly became pay-to-play without zero warning.
[1] https://bynd.com/news-ideas/google-advanced-search-comprehen...
[+] [-] russley|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dwighttk|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cpeterso|7 years ago|reply