I switched a couple of times to DDG, and the first few false starts I remember coming away from that thinking Google was just better. This time around, DDG stuck. While DDG has been steadily improving, I think the quality of google results has steadily worsened significantly. The focus on top of the page answers and other changes seem to favor commerce vs information. I was recently researching home WiFi gear reviews and google was adamant that I was actually trying to buy WiFi gear. DDG has some of those results, but I also noticed that actual reviews and forum posts were returned instead of amazon and Best Buy links.
I tried DDG a few time, but Google knew too much about me, my intent and what sites I liked.
Now I find its all ads and other google services.
Thus DDG has become perfectly serviceable now and I am very happy with it.
Although, I have an idea that the web has changed also. Web pages are different, QA sites like StackOverflow have spammed results, the rise and relentless march of commercial focused SEO, and the death of blogs and personal websites has created a real problem in search.
Same for me. I find that Google has gotten worse for me over the last two years, and switched to duck-duck-go. It feels like Google is trying to control me and my searches more than it used to. I like my search engine being a tool, not my mom.
My hope is that one day DDG can have its own crawler to improve upon search results as well. Since atm it just tries results from different engines.
I somewhat wish Microsoft would sponsor DDG but not necessarily a buyout cause people will freak out. Or if they did a buyout that they would do with it as they did with Minecraft. They didnt make things worse just provided more resources to the developers.
In an ideal world someone like Apple could take DDG even but they are so unlikely to but it would further push their privacy branding. Heck DDG now owns duck.com thanks to google... So it could have a sleek marketable name.
I know other people have already echoed your comment, but I feel the same. About a month ago I switched from chrome and google search to firefox and ddg. After about 2 days I completely forgot I was using ddg. It just stuck.
Oh man, I so badly want to use DDG. I was actually using DDG for the past several months and just switched back to Google today. As a developer, I'm constantly searching for things and I just couldn't justify the additional 5-10 seconds it would take me to re-do a search. Say I make 100 searches/day: (.2 * 100 * 7.5)/60 = 12.5min/wk. Not to mention the disruption in flow caused by those repeat searches. I applaud DDG for what they're doing, going up against a behemoth, but I just can't seem to make it work for me.
DDG just doesn’t work as well. Also, to ease switching friction it needs a gradient mode where it will start in what looks and feels like Google and then slowly transitions to their normal product.
Once you get over the initial UI muscle memory shock you eventually realize that the results aren’t as good and you jump back.
I can rarely find what I need with DDG and usually always find it instantly with google.
FWIW, I prefer DDG's UI and instant answers over Google's (and DDG's !bang searches). I dislike how Google will frequently disregard words in my search queries. I only fall back to Google for extremely narrow searches for technical topics or recent events.
I did a hard cut to DDG almost 4 years ago now, when I last changed jobs. I honestly haven't missed Google as a search engine, with the exception of maps/directions. If anything I've found it easier to get what I want from DDG search than Google, especially on technical subjects.
I was you a few months ago. I had tried DDG on and off for years. It is significantly better now, though I can't say it's quite as good at google. For example, searching reddit is much better done with Google.
But in general, it is good enough that I switched and stayed switched. The most eerie thing, actually, is that so many ads have become de-contextualized. I no longer see ads for things I've recently searched for and it's so obvious that it's a little weird.
This is all that matters. For most users, privacy is simply less important than the quality of search results. DDG is toast unless they can figure out how to match or beat the quality of Google's results with 1/100th of Google's engineering capacity. They've been around for over 10 years and haven't really made much of a dent, so I don't see it happening.
I don’t look at it as all or nothing. I set DDG as my default search and find what I need the vast majority of the time. Occasionally I’ll add !g to my query if I’m not having luck with the results.
With this ~95% of my searches avoid google and as DDG keeps improving that percentage will get higher.
With regard to UI, it’s quite nice that DDG supports dark mode automatically.
Same here. The big areas where I find DDG lacking and Google to really shine are technical questions (e.g. "what's wrong with my code, I'm getting stack trace X"), live sports coverage, and of course anything to do with maps.
It’s a pain, but I’d say Qwant works about 60% of the time, usually for basic stuff. I find DDG to generally be more relevant than Qwant, but Qwant to be a bit more novel, which is part of why it’s my mobile default.
But take that with a MASSIVE grain of salt. I can’t say I’ve done any thorough analysis or paid close enough attention to judge that well. I’ll probably switch to DDG again regardless, as Qwant thinks I’m a bot fairly regularly.
Can you please provide a list of at least 10 examples where ddg doesn‘t work for you but google does? Ideally write an additional line per item what the problem is. I use ddg and have no problems whatsoever but maybe we have a different query profile?
Jumping in here with an example, since I'm in the middle of doing this right now.... I maybe have some ID Theft issues, so I'm doing some searches to try and figure out if I can find anything that might help me answer what's going on. Did this company screw up and confuse my account with someone else or do I have a real problem? I'm doing different searches for names, locations and some other searches for very specific things. Google results are far and away better, in that they are returning things that are useful. DDG results are... different, and when compared to what I'm getting with Google, they are not as good. I don't know how much I can generalize from this one example, I don't normally compare G with DDG, but right now, G is winning. It's really interesting comparing the results though. DDG may indeed find something G didn't since the results are pretty different.
I've been switching to DDG as well and I haven't noticed my life change in any measurable way. You might be right and my results may have been better using Google, but I am willing to make that sacrifice in order to participate in a world I prefer.
I suppose I consider it like this, Google's results might also be better if they didn't show me so much spam. I don't know. My life isn't that much improved due to them. I don't know what I don't know.
I'm okay not having a 10% faster car as well. I'm okay with that. I'm willing to drive a slower car to save the environment. I'm willing to make that personal decision for what I think will be a better internet too.
We can't constantly say, what's best for me, what's best for me without expecting that everyone on the planet doing that will never lead to a planet that's best for all of us. My search results might be 10 or 20 or even 30%, without Google, but the world is better without Google, IMO.
I use DDG as my primary engine and my habit is to search there first. I have to say, I often don't get the results I'm looking for. So, I simply "bang" out a google search immediately after using DDG search "!g [search phrase]". My coworkers chastise me for being inefficient, but hey, I see it as a small price to pay to support DDG while still getting the results I need.
At this point, each has its strong points and weak points. For what you're doing right now, Google sounds like the better choice.
But my experience has been that it really depends on what you're doing. There are a number of projects I've researched where the duck has provided better information.
For now, it's worth trying both. That can be seen as a disadvantage because it's twice the work, or as progress because competition is a good thing.
From the sound of the comments alot of people don't know how to search in DDG. I have absolutely no problem finding the information I need and would say I'm a pretty serious power user. Or I've just been using it for so long I don't know what I'm missing.
If you have to "know how to search" in DDG, e.g. do something different than your intuition (which Google handles very well), then it's simply a worse search engine.
For example, I shouldn't need to add extra context to "elm dict" to get to Elm's Dict package documentation. And I'm not even sure what I need to add to get DDG to know what I'm talking about. Google knows.
DDG is pretty much always worse query-for-query than Google in my experience especially for anything long-tail or in a different language. I don't think there's any nuance to add here. Presumably you're using DDG for other perfectly valid reasons which is where I'd focus my evangelism than "it's just as good if you know how to use it" which is simply wrong because it (basically Bing) is just not as good.
My thoughts exactly. I always hear these complaints but I never have an issue. If I’m going technical I’ll use the bang feature (! g) and I’m all set. I’m not going back to ggle
I use Duck Duck Go and I actually find it better than Google Search (better in the sense that there's something refreshing about the results I get as opposed to the stuff I see on Google Search, I can't comment on accuracy). I never read any documentation or a blog on how to use it. Just downloaded it and started typing
"It all started with a realization: Most the things I search for are easy to find. Did I really need the all-seeing, all-knowing algorithms of Google to assist me? Probably not."
"As a result, I’ve had a fairly tedious but important revelation: I search for really obvious stuff. Google’s own data backs this up. Its annual round-up of the most searched-for terms is basically a list of names and events: World Cup, Avicii, Mac Miller, Stan Lee, Black Panther, Megan Markle. The list goes on. And I don’t need to buy into Google’s leviathan network of privacy-invading trackers to find out what Black Panther is and when I can go and see it at my local cinema."
"I had, based on zero evidence, convinced myself that finding things on the internet was hard and, inevitably, involved a fair amount of tracking. After two years of not being tracked and targeted, I have slowly come to realize that this is nonsense."
Every user is different. What is appealing to the author may not be appealing to the reader. The author was searching for obvious things. HN readers and commenters may have more difficult searches.
Outside of HN, it appears there is a very large quantity of users who search for the same "obvious stuff".
As a HN user and commenter, I've found DDG just fine as a daily driver (switched nearly 2 years ago). I do occasionally have to fall back to Google, but most of my searches are served just fine by DDG.
Agreed that every user is different. I think the overall verdict is that DDG is certainly not as good at Google on an overall number-of-people-always-satisfied scale, but it does quite a good job for most people.
I switched from Google to DDG on my mobile due to Google AMP pages sometime last summer.
While I find DDG to be equally good for most "dry facts" searches, it stinks for the sort of thing that I'm usually looking for on the road — "best Sichuan in Chinatown" or "glossier sticker blackberry" (long story).
Ironically, I could probably get by just fine with DDG on the laptop where I'm mostly using search as a proxy for Stack Overflow and Wikipedia, and Google on the mobile for shopping and esoterica.
100% agree with this. I switched a while ago and 98% of my searches are easily found through DDG. I use Google's search as a backup when I'm in the rare case of actually searching for something hard to find or very complex. And sometimes it's just something that can't be found or doesn't exist, even on Google. But using it as the backup is perfect.
It doesn't matter how good some results are, if the search engine manipulates the results, tracks the users, and even more so - steals the ideas and profiles the users.
Google has had some very public news stories of manipulating search results, tracking users, and profiling users -- people en mass left google's news site when they started manipulating it, profiling results for total control of Chinese population is pretty recent too, there are dozens of examples. And google profiling users and trying to guess what they are researching or thinking about it is too easy.
And face it, google no longer has a way to innovate but go the way of tracking, monitoring, and theft.
I have been using duckduckgo for years now and Im very satisfied. On google a lot of the search results are ads so they are most of the time useless for me. With ducduckgo I always find what Im looking for and the things I search for dont come back to haunt me in the form of ads.I feel like I have a more "clean" experience of the web. If I do a search for a smartphone I will not have ads trying to sell it to me on every other website I visit afterwards.
Sometimes DDG is better, particularly when google tries to infer intent rather than just searching for the keywords typed.
Sometimes DDG is worse, just generally, and sometimes much worse.
Either way, I think DuckDuckGo needs a different and simpler brand. DuckDuckGo does not roll off the tongue, it's not a verb or even verbable, and outside of the tech world very few have heard of it. Call it Duck, call it Go, call it something simpler and memorable.
> Once you realize most things you search for online are boring and obvious, you realize you don't really need Google in your life.
Yes! DDG really does work just as well as any other search engine for most day-to-day things, and then there's always the !g prefix. The first page of Google search results are half Amp and YouTube carousels anyway...
I use DDG as my main search engine because I like more privacy. But to be fair I think Google is way better most of the time.
And I believe this is because Google is much more context aware.
A fake example: if you search "lounge new york" DDG might show you lounge seats and things from New York, while Google 'understands' that you are looking for a place to chill in New York.
But while this gives better results for lets say 80% of the time in Google, the other 20% of the time it's very hard to search for things in Google if it uses the wrong context. At those times DDG is way better.
I tried DDG within the last year. And I tried really hard. But I used !G about 25% of the time.
Then I switched to ecosia.org, I know it is a front-end for Bing. But it is clean interface and the search results are more in-line with what Google would return. In months I have had to use Google for search arount ten times in the last month. And that was to find stuff I already searched on Google. But I knew what I was looking for was obvious.
DDG is great, and I use it by preference. The only thing I prefer Google for is when I want to search for something in a specific geographical location. Otherwise, I find DuckDuckGo more useful, and I wonder why others don't. Maybe it's residual search mannerisms I've retained from my Altavista days.
It's funny, because I'm finding myself using Google far more after switching to DDG years ago. At this point, more often than not the results I get in DDG make me go "oh ffs, !g", and I really wish that wasn't the case, but here we are. It used to be pretty great, now it's just... not?
I think DDG is decent and getting better. The tough thing though is that for search the bar is high. Alternatives need to be as good as google, not 80 or 90 or 98% as good.
Most users, once they experience just a few instances of worse results will just switch back to google.
[+] [-] S_A_P|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] firecall|6 years ago|reply
I tried DDG a few time, but Google knew too much about me, my intent and what sites I liked.
Now I find its all ads and other google services.
Thus DDG has become perfectly serviceable now and I am very happy with it.
Although, I have an idea that the web has changed also. Web pages are different, QA sites like StackOverflow have spammed results, the rise and relentless march of commercial focused SEO, and the death of blogs and personal websites has created a real problem in search.
[+] [-] toomim|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] giancarlostoro|6 years ago|reply
I somewhat wish Microsoft would sponsor DDG but not necessarily a buyout cause people will freak out. Or if they did a buyout that they would do with it as they did with Minecraft. They didnt make things worse just provided more resources to the developers.
In an ideal world someone like Apple could take DDG even but they are so unlikely to but it would further push their privacy branding. Heck DDG now owns duck.com thanks to google... So it could have a sleek marketable name.
[+] [-] themoat|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jahbrewski|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whalesalad|6 years ago|reply
Once you get over the initial UI muscle memory shock you eventually realize that the results aren’t as good and you jump back.
I can rarely find what I need with DDG and usually always find it instantly with google.
[+] [-] cpeterso|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Twirrim|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] foobiekr|6 years ago|reply
But in general, it is good enough that I switched and stayed switched. The most eerie thing, actually, is that so many ads have become de-contextualized. I no longer see ads for things I've recently searched for and it's so obvious that it's a little weird.
[+] [-] SheinhardtWigCo|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deeblering4|6 years ago|reply
With this ~95% of my searches avoid google and as DDG keeps improving that percentage will get higher.
With regard to UI, it’s quite nice that DDG supports dark mode automatically.
[+] [-] michaelcampbell|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reading-at-work|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway_tech|6 years ago|reply
Example?
[+] [-] on_and_off|6 years ago|reply
I finally took the plunge and replaced google with ddg in my browser omnibar last week.
After a couple of days I switched back after having to search on google too many times.
[+] [-] didericis|6 years ago|reply
It’s a pain, but I’d say Qwant works about 60% of the time, usually for basic stuff. I find DDG to generally be more relevant than Qwant, but Qwant to be a bit more novel, which is part of why it’s my mobile default.
But take that with a MASSIVE grain of salt. I can’t say I’ve done any thorough analysis or paid close enough attention to judge that well. I’ll probably switch to DDG again regardless, as Qwant thinks I’m a bot fairly regularly.
[+] [-] vips7L|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noja|6 years ago|reply
add !g somewhere in your ddg query to search google
[+] [-] CivBase|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ace_of_spades|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] lightedman|6 years ago|reply
Never had a single issue finding even the obscure stuff I look for when I get rid of Google habits and use habits of web 1.0
[+] [-] unicornporn|6 years ago|reply
Me neither. That's why I use https://www.startpage.com/
[+] [-] blakesterz|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anon1m0us|6 years ago|reply
I suppose I consider it like this, Google's results might also be better if they didn't show me so much spam. I don't know. My life isn't that much improved due to them. I don't know what I don't know.
I'm okay not having a 10% faster car as well. I'm okay with that. I'm willing to drive a slower car to save the environment. I'm willing to make that personal decision for what I think will be a better internet too.
We can't constantly say, what's best for me, what's best for me without expecting that everyone on the planet doing that will never lead to a planet that's best for all of us. My search results might be 10 or 20 or even 30%, without Google, but the world is better without Google, IMO.
[+] [-] JTon|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reaperducer|6 years ago|reply
But my experience has been that it really depends on what you're doing. There are a number of projects I've researched where the duck has provided better information.
For now, it's worth trying both. That can be seen as a disadvantage because it's twice the work, or as progress because competition is a good thing.
[+] [-] collsni|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hombre_fatal|6 years ago|reply
For example, I shouldn't need to add extra context to "elm dict" to get to Elm's Dict package documentation. And I'm not even sure what I need to add to get DDG to know what I'm talking about. Google knows.
DDG is pretty much always worse query-for-query than Google in my experience especially for anything long-tail or in a different language. I don't think there's any nuance to add here. Presumably you're using DDG for other perfectly valid reasons which is where I'd focus my evangelism than "it's just as good if you know how to use it" which is simply wrong because it (basically Bing) is just not as good.
[+] [-] zigzaggy|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smadurange|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 3xblah|6 years ago|reply
"As a result, I’ve had a fairly tedious but important revelation: I search for really obvious stuff. Google’s own data backs this up. Its annual round-up of the most searched-for terms is basically a list of names and events: World Cup, Avicii, Mac Miller, Stan Lee, Black Panther, Megan Markle. The list goes on. And I don’t need to buy into Google’s leviathan network of privacy-invading trackers to find out what Black Panther is and when I can go and see it at my local cinema."
"I had, based on zero evidence, convinced myself that finding things on the internet was hard and, inevitably, involved a fair amount of tracking. After two years of not being tracked and targeted, I have slowly come to realize that this is nonsense."
Every user is different. What is appealing to the author may not be appealing to the reader. The author was searching for obvious things. HN readers and commenters may have more difficult searches.
Outside of HN, it appears there is a very large quantity of users who search for the same "obvious stuff".
[+] [-] kelnos|6 years ago|reply
Agreed that every user is different. I think the overall verdict is that DDG is certainly not as good at Google on an overall number-of-people-always-satisfied scale, but it does quite a good job for most people.
[+] [-] Eric_WVGG|6 years ago|reply
While I find DDG to be equally good for most "dry facts" searches, it stinks for the sort of thing that I'm usually looking for on the road — "best Sichuan in Chinatown" or "glossier sticker blackberry" (long story).
Ironically, I could probably get by just fine with DDG on the laptop where I'm mostly using search as a proxy for Stack Overflow and Wikipedia, and Google on the mobile for shopping and esoterica.
[+] [-] tejtm|6 years ago|reply
Just the facts ma'am.
[+] [-] turc1656|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Isamu|6 years ago|reply
You may enjoy having a less menacing overlord in your browser.
[+] [-] ckrailo|6 years ago|reply
If you've themed your whole OS, terminal, text editor, etc to your favorite theme (solarized, nord, etc), then DDG is the search engine for you.
Solarized Dark Dark Go, for example... https://start.duckduckgo.com/?kae=%23073642&kj=%23073642++&k...
[+] [-] Anointmous|6 years ago|reply
Google has had some very public news stories of manipulating search results, tracking users, and profiling users -- people en mass left google's news site when they started manipulating it, profiling results for total control of Chinese population is pretty recent too, there are dozens of examples. And google profiling users and trying to guess what they are researching or thinking about it is too easy.
And face it, google no longer has a way to innovate but go the way of tracking, monitoring, and theft.
[+] [-] bumbacloth|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notadoc|6 years ago|reply
Sometimes DDG is worse, just generally, and sometimes much worse.
Either way, I think DuckDuckGo needs a different and simpler brand. DuckDuckGo does not roll off the tongue, it's not a verb or even verbable, and outside of the tech world very few have heard of it. Call it Duck, call it Go, call it something simpler and memorable.
[+] [-] skinnyasianboi|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alxmdev|6 years ago|reply
> Once you realize most things you search for online are boring and obvious, you realize you don't really need Google in your life.
Yes! DDG really does work just as well as any other search engine for most day-to-day things, and then there's always the !g prefix. The first page of Google search results are half Amp and YouTube carousels anyway...
[+] [-] EastSmith|6 years ago|reply
On technical topics, recent news and local sites I built a muscle memory to just add !g at the end of the search.
For everything else DDG more or less does the job.
[+] [-] thdrdt|6 years ago|reply
And I believe this is because Google is much more context aware.
A fake example: if you search "lounge new york" DDG might show you lounge seats and things from New York, while Google 'understands' that you are looking for a place to chill in New York.
But while this gives better results for lets say 80% of the time in Google, the other 20% of the time it's very hard to search for things in Google if it uses the wrong context. At those times DDG is way better.
[+] [-] johnpowell|6 years ago|reply
Then I switched to ecosia.org, I know it is a front-end for Bing. But it is clean interface and the search results are more in-line with what Google would return. In months I have had to use Google for search arount ten times in the last month. And that was to find stuff I already searched on Google. But I knew what I was looking for was obvious.
[+] [-] JasonFruit|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheRealPomax|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Wump|6 years ago|reply
Most users, once they experience just a few instances of worse results will just switch back to google.