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How DuckDuckGo Rode a Wave of Post-Snowden Anxiety to Massive Growth

73 points by bootload 11y ago

hardwaresofton 11y ago
Good for them. I'm glad they stepped up to serve the sector of people who wanted increased security when searching the web. Most wouldn't try to build a competing search engine these days. I've been using DDG since I heard about it.
- n0us 11y ago
  I think there's more room for competition. Google is obviously very good at their core product, and arguably very good at delivering most of their other products as well. These attempt's like Microsoft's Bing I feel like are just attempts to copy Google's search but there hasn't been much in the way of innovation in years. I wouldn't mind using a search engine that takes an entirely different approach than the "type in a box and get a list of text results" (and maybe a little box of information also) I liken my feelings about Google to my feelings about McDonalds. Most of it is delicious and satisfying, they have a core product that is the best done, some other products which are pretty good and then some other ones that are off the wall. I generally try to avoid what went into making the burger just like I try to avoid thinking about what Google is doing with the information it collects about me. In spite of any short comings you don't try to copy McDonalds, their supply chain is too massive and well oiled and their brand is cemented in people's minds. Google on the other hand has a supply chain of top tech talent, a ton of servers and stuff, and they have a huge brand. I think there is however room for other types of search even if there is not too much room to take them on directly. We will see the Chipotles and Five Guys of the search industry, things people didn't even know they wanted until they were available.
  - hardwaresofton 11y ago
    Not sure if you're a DDG user, but have you seen their ! shortcuts? For example, you can type stuff like "!newegg laptop" into the search menu (or even easier, the address bar, if you have their browser plugin) and you can search newegg directly. I think the one I end up using the most (at work) is "!java8 something" to search javadoc Not crazy on the innovation scale (as many browsers let you do keyword searches), but definitely awesome, because there's a huge range of keywords already available
    - n0us 11y ago
      I'm an occasional user, I've heard of the domains specific searchs but I was not aware of the ability to do the !java8 thing, that might be really convenient.
      - hardwaresofton 11y ago
        Yeah I use it as a browser plugin so I type that right in the address bar. There are lots of other useful ones (like !hn) Also, if you currently use google, it's only a short "!g" away (and it uses google encrypted search, for what that's worth) -- I am a tiny bit ashamed at how much I use !g :)
gggggggg 11y ago
I have not uses DDG in a while. Do they still get results from Goolge?
- timClicks 11y ago
  AFAIK they've never used Google's index: https://duck.co/help/results/sources https://duck.co/help/results/sources
- GeorgeOrr 11y ago
  The short answer is not all the results. There are many sources. Here's a link with more details. https://duck.co/help/results/sources https://duck.co/help/results/sources
- bestnameever 11y ago
  They used to lean pretty heavily on bing IIRC.
GeorgeOrr 11y ago
Am I the only one who actualy finds DuckDuckGo's search results overall better? The main reason, I believe, is that Google's personalized search seems to get in the way. Add to that the ! commands in DDG, and the fact that they aren't eliminating things from search in the same way google is and I find DDG the better choice for search as well as privacy. YMMV of course, as the word "better" is so subjective, but I'd be interested if others have that experience as well.
- lugg 11y ago
  Its certainly one of those things you have to get used to. I try to pick it up every few months in hopes its better but fall back on google bang too much and revert. I'm disappointed they took the privacy route so hard and disabled / didn't implement bubbling for results. Bubbling is a pain sometimes but overall I think it provides much better results especially for those in certain fields (e.g. IT)
- crdb 11y ago
  I switched due to being frustrated with many Google results being SEO'ed to death. Sometimes one has to dig 3-4 pages to find a decent result. I got the feeling that if what I was searching for was commercialised, I should expect it to be quite hard to find neutral or deep results (kind of how when you're looking up a company, all you'll find in the news are PR releases disguised as industry articles). My subjective and anecdotal experience has been that DDG filters the signal out of the noise much better in 80% of situations. In both personalised searches (e.g. for restaurants, which should be geo-localised, a recent search from Singapore sent me to Connecticut...) and for some specific items where Google has built some custom extra logic, such as movies or "site:", the added keystrokes of !g is not much effort. So I haven't switched back. It does feel like Google is a little smarter on some searches but - and I can't think of an example straight off the cuff - sometimes too smart for its own good and stuck in local optima. DDG offers a less noisy, more generalised view on the world which I prefer most of the time. One nice thing about personalisation is the integration if you use a lot of Google products. For example, when my brother sent me his flight details, the flight was automatically added to my calendar, and Google Now showed me details on the day including the terminal and luggage belt, reminded me to leave on time and estimated the Uber wait time and even the fee (not to mention Maps can send you straight on to the Uber app with the start and end points entered). These things are either incredibly creepy or, if you trust Google and can't afford humans to do the same job, very useful.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
omginternets 11y ago
The problem with DDG, as much as I respect their efforts and their official discourse, is that you really can't be sure they aren't tracking users based on some secret court order. For this reason, I still have a very hard time trusting them in any meaningful sense.
- ThomPete 11y ago
  Compared to what?
- esbonsa 11y ago
  the government needs to be held accountable, soon
- ucho 11y ago
  Exactly: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6040471 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6040471 - American company hosted by another American can't be NSA resistant.
Dramatize 11y ago
I switched to DDG as my default search engine a few months back. Most of the time it's good enough. If not, a simple !g brings up Google's results.
dmfdmf 11y ago
The title as written is a smear against Snowden. "How DDG Rode a Wave of Post-Snowden Security Concerns to Massive Growth"
- SapphireSun 11y ago
  I read it as security concerns related to the NSA. I don't think it's a biased title.
  - dmfdmf 11y ago
    "Anxiety" typically means an irrational or unfounded fear. We have legit reasons to fear the NSA spying after Snowden.
    - SapphireSun 11y ago
      anxiety n. A state of uneasiness and apprehension, as about future uncertainties. n. A cause of anxiety: For some people, air travel is a real anxiety. n. Psychiatry A state of apprehension, uncertainty, and fear resulting from the anticipation of a *realistic* or fantasized threatening event or situation, often impairing physical and psychological functioning. Emphasis mine. That's all I'm going to say.
      - dmfdmf 11y ago
        Does our disagreement make you anxious?
bane 11y ago
Like a few other comments here, I switched to ddg a few months ago and only rarely need to go back to google. In fact, it's kind of nice to have a few places to search now (google, bing, ddg), reminds me of the old internet search engine war days. Unlike the article, I didn't do it for security reasons, I actually gave it a go and found the search results better for most of the things I search for. And if I don't find what I want I can !g and it'll take me right to google's results so I get a direct like-for-like comparison. I also generally like how DDG presents the results better than google. Little details like checkboxes next to places I've already been are super helpful and I miss those little touches in google. There's tons of little touches like that all over DDG. I find about 1:30 searches I hit google for and maybe only half of those do I find anything anyway. About the only think I don't like about DDG is the image search, google is far superior here still. And google sometimes does a better job bringing up maps of places I'm searching for. But I don't see changing back anytime soon and getting better personal security "for free" is a nice side effect. It also brings into question how important google's personalized searches are for relevancy if DDG can provide equivalent results without needing that information.
- rpedroso 11y ago
  Little details like checkboxes next to places I've already been are super helpful and I miss those little touches in google. Google does do this, and in a less subtle way -- it applies the classic, purple styling to visited links. Still, I find your comments compelling enough to give DDG a shot. I found the results inadequate when I last tried a year or so ago -- I found myself using !g more often than not, which led me to abandon DDG altogether.
  - djent 11y ago
    I'm pretty sure that's a browser thing, not a Google-specific feature.
    - jpatokal 11y ago
      Well, it's a CSS thing these days (a:visited), and something that an awful lot of other sites these days sacrifice in favor of looking more shiny and uniform.
quaffapint 11y ago
While it might be just the opposite of the main purposes of DDG - ie privacy, is there a way to have it show local results? Like when I search for general things in google it will show me stuff around my area first, whereas in DDG its just generic and could be anywhere.
- AdamSC1 11y ago
  DDG has two ways you could get local results: 1) Type in your city for example "news new york" "pizza toronto" 2) localization toggle - this sets country specific results It's a bit of change in search style but you can get great local results while still being private
cletus 11y ago
Is it just me or is this another in the series that can be generalized at: "How DDG attached itself to <latest event> to make it look like it's popular" I have nothing for or against DDG but it's like once a month I see what looks like pro-DDG propaganda.
justin_ 11y ago
DDG's !bang searches convinced me to use it as my default search. Being able to search various sites from the address bar is really useful. And if their results are ever poor, I can always get to Google with just a !g. I know you could do that before with keyword searches, but with DDG I don't have to worry about setting it up.
- adventured 11y ago
  In your opinion, how is the bang code system superior to using "site:amazon.com" on Google?
  - Majestic121 11y ago
    Well, instead of typing site:amazon.com you only have to type !a That's a lot less to type
    - adventured 11y ago
      Correct me if I'm wrong, but to use the !bang system you have to memorize the short form for every site or service you want to use it for, is that right? For example, amazon.co.uk is !amazonuk - I don't see the meaningful improvement there. DDG has six thousand of them, most of which don't benefit from a great shortening of the name. To search answers.com it's !answers - that's an extremely small improvement over site:answers.com given the need to memorize a bang for each thing you want to use it against.
      - Majestic121 11y ago
        It's not really hard to memorise a bang, especially if you use it often like !w for wikipedia or !yt for youtube. Maybe most of them don't benefit a great shortening of the name, but the most common do. And for the other, like answers.com, !answers is still 8 characters shorter than site:answers.com You should really try to use bangs for a while, I'm sure you would see the appeal very quickly
      - arsenide 11y ago
graeme 11y ago
How long would duckduckgo have to grow at its current growth rate to reach google's size? https://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html https://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html That's not a reasonable assumption that it would keep growing that fast. But still interesting to know for when people lambast DDG for being a fraction of google's volume.
brerlapn 11y ago
I haven't done a deep dive into how DDG works, but "In Partnership with Yandex" is on the search results. Yandex is a Russian search engine, and while you may find the NSA snooping intrusive and obnoxious, Russia isn't exactly a privacy-respecting libertarian utopia. No one ever seems to mention the Russian connection in discussions about DDG, though. If this is something you've considered and reckoned through to it not being a concern, I would be quite interested in your reasoning.

73 points by bootload 11y ago

Good for them. I'm glad they stepped up to serve the sector of people who wanted increased security when searching the web. Most wouldn't try to build a competing search engine these days. I've been using DDG since I heard about it.

n0us 11y ago
I think there's more room for competition. Google is obviously very good at their core product, and arguably very good at delivering most of their other products as well. These attempt's like Microsoft's Bing I feel like are just attempts to copy Google's search but there hasn't been much in the way of innovation in years. I wouldn't mind using a search engine that takes an entirely different approach than the "type in a box and get a list of text results" (and maybe a little box of information also) I liken my feelings about Google to my feelings about McDonalds. Most of it is delicious and satisfying, they have a core product that is the best done, some other products which are pretty good and then some other ones that are off the wall. I generally try to avoid what went into making the burger just like I try to avoid thinking about what Google is doing with the information it collects about me. In spite of any short comings you don't try to copy McDonalds, their supply chain is too massive and well oiled and their brand is cemented in people's minds. Google on the other hand has a supply chain of top tech talent, a ton of servers and stuff, and they have a huge brand. I think there is however room for other types of search even if there is not too much room to take them on directly. We will see the Chipotles and Five Guys of the search industry, things people didn't even know they wanted until they were available.
- hardwaresofton 11y ago
  Not sure if you're a DDG user, but have you seen their ! shortcuts? For example, you can type stuff like "!newegg laptop" into the search menu (or even easier, the address bar, if you have their browser plugin) and you can search newegg directly. I think the one I end up using the most (at work) is "!java8 something" to search javadoc Not crazy on the innovation scale (as many browsers let you do keyword searches), but definitely awesome, because there's a huge range of keywords already available
  - n0us 11y ago
    I'm an occasional user, I've heard of the domains specific searchs but I was not aware of the ability to do the !java8 thing, that might be really convenient.
    - hardwaresofton 11y ago
      Yeah I use it as a browser plugin so I type that right in the address bar. There are lots of other useful ones (like !hn) Also, if you currently use google, it's only a short "!g" away (and it uses google encrypted search, for what that's worth) -- I am a tiny bit ashamed at how much I use !g :)

gggggggg 11y ago

I have not uses DDG in a while. Do they still get results from Goolge?

timClicks 11y ago
AFAIK they've never used Google's index: https://duck.co/help/results/sources https://duck.co/help/results/sources
GeorgeOrr 11y ago
The short answer is not all the results. There are many sources. Here's a link with more details. https://duck.co/help/results/sources https://duck.co/help/results/sources
bestnameever 11y ago
They used to lean pretty heavily on bing IIRC.

GeorgeOrr 11y ago

Am I the only one who actualy finds DuckDuckGo's search results overall better? The main reason, I believe, is that Google's personalized search seems to get in the way. Add to that the ! commands in DDG, and the fact that they aren't eliminating things from search in the same way google is and I find DDG the better choice for search as well as privacy. YMMV of course, as the word "better" is so subjective, but I'd be interested if others have that experience as well.

lugg 11y ago
Its certainly one of those things you have to get used to. I try to pick it up every few months in hopes its better but fall back on google bang too much and revert. I'm disappointed they took the privacy route so hard and disabled / didn't implement bubbling for results. Bubbling is a pain sometimes but overall I think it provides much better results especially for those in certain fields (e.g. IT)
crdb 11y ago
I switched due to being frustrated with many Google results being SEO'ed to death. Sometimes one has to dig 3-4 pages to find a decent result. I got the feeling that if what I was searching for was commercialised, I should expect it to be quite hard to find neutral or deep results (kind of how when you're looking up a company, all you'll find in the news are PR releases disguised as industry articles). My subjective and anecdotal experience has been that DDG filters the signal out of the noise much better in 80% of situations. In both personalised searches (e.g. for restaurants, which should be geo-localised, a recent search from Singapore sent me to Connecticut...) and for some specific items where Google has built some custom extra logic, such as movies or "site:", the added keystrokes of !g is not much effort. So I haven't switched back. It does feel like Google is a little smarter on some searches but - and I can't think of an example straight off the cuff - sometimes too smart for its own good and stuck in local optima. DDG offers a less noisy, more generalised view on the world which I prefer most of the time. One nice thing about personalisation is the integration if you use a lot of Google products. For example, when my brother sent me his flight details, the flight was automatically added to my calendar, and Google Now showed me details on the day including the terminal and luggage belt, reminded me to leave on time and estimated the Uber wait time and even the fee (not to mention Maps can send you straight on to the Uber app with the start and end points entered). These things are either incredibly creepy or, if you trust Google and can't afford humans to do the same job, very useful.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

omginternets 11y ago

The problem with DDG, as much as I respect their efforts and their official discourse, is that you really can't be sure they aren't tracking users based on some secret court order. For this reason, I still have a very hard time trusting them in any meaningful sense.

ThomPete 11y ago
Compared to what?
esbonsa 11y ago
the government needs to be held accountable, soon
ucho 11y ago
Exactly: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6040471 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6040471 - American company hosted by another American can't be NSA resistant.

Dramatize 11y ago

I switched to DDG as my default search engine a few months back. Most of the time it's good enough. If not, a simple !g brings up Google's results.

dmfdmf 11y ago

The title as written is a smear against Snowden. "How DDG Rode a Wave of Post-Snowden Security Concerns to Massive Growth"

SapphireSun 11y ago
I read it as security concerns related to the NSA. I don't think it's a biased title.
- dmfdmf 11y ago
  "Anxiety" typically means an irrational or unfounded fear. We have legit reasons to fear the NSA spying after Snowden.
  - SapphireSun 11y ago
    anxiety n. A state of uneasiness and apprehension, as about future uncertainties. n. A cause of anxiety: For some people, air travel is a real anxiety. n. Psychiatry A state of apprehension, uncertainty, and fear resulting from the anticipation of a *realistic* or fantasized threatening event or situation, often impairing physical and psychological functioning. Emphasis mine. That's all I'm going to say.
    - dmfdmf 11y ago
      Does our disagreement make you anxious?

bane 11y ago

Like a few other comments here, I switched to ddg a few months ago and only rarely need to go back to google. In fact, it's kind of nice to have a few places to search now (google, bing, ddg), reminds me of the old internet search engine war days. Unlike the article, I didn't do it for security reasons, I actually gave it a go and found the search results better for most of the things I search for. And if I don't find what I want I can !g and it'll take me right to google's results so I get a direct like-for-like comparison. I also generally like how DDG presents the results better than google. Little details like checkboxes next to places I've already been are super helpful and I miss those little touches in google. There's tons of little touches like that all over DDG. I find about 1:30 searches I hit google for and maybe only half of those do I find anything anyway. About the only think I don't like about DDG is the image search, google is far superior here still. And google sometimes does a better job bringing up maps of places I'm searching for. But I don't see changing back anytime soon and getting better personal security "for free" is a nice side effect. It also brings into question how important google's personalized searches are for relevancy if DDG can provide equivalent results without needing that information.

rpedroso 11y ago
Little details like checkboxes next to places I've already been are super helpful and I miss those little touches in google. Google does do this, and in a less subtle way -- it applies the classic, purple styling to visited links. Still, I find your comments compelling enough to give DDG a shot. I found the results inadequate when I last tried a year or so ago -- I found myself using !g more often than not, which led me to abandon DDG altogether.
- djent 11y ago
  I'm pretty sure that's a browser thing, not a Google-specific feature.
  - jpatokal 11y ago
    Well, it's a CSS thing these days (a:visited), and something that an awful lot of other sites these days sacrifice in favor of looking more shiny and uniform.

quaffapint 11y ago

While it might be just the opposite of the main purposes of DDG - ie privacy, is there a way to have it show local results? Like when I search for general things in google it will show me stuff around my area first, whereas in DDG its just generic and could be anywhere.

AdamSC1 11y ago
DDG has two ways you could get local results: 1) Type in your city for example "news new york" "pizza toronto" 2) localization toggle - this sets country specific results It's a bit of change in search style but you can get great local results while still being private

cletus 11y ago

Is it just me or is this another in the series that can be generalized at: "How DDG attached itself to <latest event> to make it look like it's popular" I have nothing for or against DDG but it's like once a month I see what looks like pro-DDG propaganda.

justin_ 11y ago

DDG's !bang searches convinced me to use it as my default search. Being able to search various sites from the address bar is really useful. And if their results are ever poor, I can always get to Google with just a !g. I know you could do that before with keyword searches, but with DDG I don't have to worry about setting it up.

adventured 11y ago
In your opinion, how is the bang code system superior to using "site:amazon.com" on Google?
- Majestic121 11y ago
  Well, instead of typing site:amazon.com you only have to type !a That's a lot less to type
  - adventured 11y ago
    Correct me if I'm wrong, but to use the !bang system you have to memorize the short form for every site or service you want to use it for, is that right? For example, amazon.co.uk is !amazonuk - I don't see the meaningful improvement there. DDG has six thousand of them, most of which don't benefit from a great shortening of the name. To search answers.com it's !answers - that's an extremely small improvement over site:answers.com given the need to memorize a bang for each thing you want to use it against.
    - Majestic121 11y ago
      It's not really hard to memorise a bang, especially if you use it often like !w for wikipedia or !yt for youtube. Maybe most of them don't benefit a great shortening of the name, but the most common do. And for the other, like answers.com, !answers is still 8 characters shorter than site:answers.com You should really try to use bangs for a while, I'm sure you would see the appeal very quickly
    - arsenide 11y ago

graeme 11y ago

How long would duckduckgo have to grow at its current growth rate to reach google's size? https://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html https://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html That's not a reasonable assumption that it would keep growing that fast. But still interesting to know for when people lambast DDG for being a fraction of google's volume.

brerlapn 11y ago

I haven't done a deep dive into how DDG works, but "In Partnership with Yandex" is on the search results. Yandex is a Russian search engine, and while you may find the NSA snooping intrusive and obnoxious, Russia isn't exactly a privacy-respecting libertarian utopia. No one ever seems to mention the Russian connection in discussions about DDG, though. If this is something you've considered and reckoned through to it not being a concern, I would be quite interested in your reasoning.