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I've been using DuckDuckGo for about a year without ill-effects. Although sometimes I have to go to Google, often when the results are disappointing I try !g an

I've been using DuckDuckGo for about a year without ill-effects. Although sometimes I have to go to Google, often when the results are disappointing I try !g and the results with Google are just as disappointing. It's also actually easier to switch to an image search using !gi than it is to click the image search with the mouse at Google's site.

briantakita 10y ago
DuckDuckGo also has keyboard-friendly navigation. No clicking necessary.
- blauditore 10y ago
  This is something that's been annoying me for years now. Keyboard navigation used to work on Google with Firefox, but stopped a while ago. It still works on Chrome, and by now I'm pretty sure they're intentionally not fixing/enabling it on FF - not sure why though. I don't see any reason other than pushing users towards Chrome...
  - qb45 10y ago
    > I don't see any reason other than pushing users towards Chrome... Well, I often get banners nagging to update to the "faster modern whatever Chrome browser" at googe.com. I really hate this bullshit.
  - adrianratnapala 10y ago
    Disclaimer: I'm a Googler. I find google.com is more broken on Chrome than in Firefox. In firefox, it just just annoying moves the search field as you start type. In chrome you are not allowed to use it at all. Instead it forces you to use the location bar. Sometimes the location bar does a Google search. Sometimes it goes to the URL you type in. Sometimes, other things happen. Occasionally the thing that actually happens is the thing you wanted.
    - blauditore 10y ago
      This only seems to apply to Chrome's default start page which looks like google.com, but actually isn't. It seems to work similar as in FF when navigating to google.com first.
      - adrianratnapala 10y ago
        It happens when I navigate explicitly to google.com as well. But I think I have seen other behaviours in the past, so it all probably the exact Chrome version etc.
  - blauditore 10y ago
    Update: I just found out it's related to the "Google Instant" feature, which was somehow disabled in my case - it worked in private mode, but not when I was logged in. Enabling it brought back keyboard shortcuts.
rochellle 10y ago
DuckDuckGo isn't that great, but the !bang options make it easy to diversify, and branch searches to multiple targets, to compare outcomes. Two things become obvious at that point, and the main one is that other search engines don't just customize search results to individuals, they actually spend costly human resources currating and QA'ing results. DuckDuckGo's search results kind of suck, and the reason they're not as good is because the results are not groomed to the same degree, by as many eyes, nor to the same level of quality. The other obvious thing quickly noticed is that DuckDuckGo's !bang operators are so, so, so much more handy than some of the other horrendously mangled, inscrutable query strings you wind up landing on, that would require 5 or 10 clicks, navigating the intended user interfaces of the parent sites that actually host the results. Compare using !googleimages on DuckDuckGo, to what actually happens when you click and type for results at https://images.google.com https://images.google.com? It's kind of silly that you can't just pass a query string to Google, and that DuckDuckGo does their query strings better than Google does for it's own product.
- robin_reala 10y ago
  (!i takes you straight to Google Images)
- oAlbe 10y ago
  > DuckDuckGo isn't that great Do you mind elaborating on this a bit? I've been using DDG for a couple of years now and, although at the beginning I would fallback to Google very often, now that changed. I still fallback to Google from time to time, but it's more to have a confirmation that, as parent says, the results are disappointing than anything else. Now I probably use Google after trying g DDG once in every 10/15 queries. It used to be one in three when I switched. To be honest, I even find DDG to be way way better than Google in certain results. Programming related queries that would produce StackOverflow results are one example. And I'm not even considering the preview feature that DDG has that shows you the accepted answer to the SO question right in the search page. One thing I don't like though, is the way the images and videos preview works (not in the image tab, in the search tab) on DDG. I find that row of videos/images to just be annoying since I would explicitly make an image search if that's what I needed. That said, my experience now is that if DDG results are disappointing, there's a very very high chance that Google results will be disappointing too.
coolsdude2282 10y ago
I switched to DDG for the privacy selling point, but once I learned about !bangs I stayed. It is so much better done than any other site. Even if I had zero concerns about privacy I would still choose it over google or bing simply because of the wealth of query features that are so easy to use! I hate how google does queries and Bing is beyond useless.

briantakita 10y ago

DuckDuckGo also has keyboard-friendly navigation. No clicking necessary.

blauditore 10y ago
This is something that's been annoying me for years now. Keyboard navigation used to work on Google with Firefox, but stopped a while ago. It still works on Chrome, and by now I'm pretty sure they're intentionally not fixing/enabling it on FF - not sure why though. I don't see any reason other than pushing users towards Chrome...
- qb45 10y ago
  > I don't see any reason other than pushing users towards Chrome... Well, I often get banners nagging to update to the "faster modern whatever Chrome browser" at googe.com. I really hate this bullshit.
- adrianratnapala 10y ago
  Disclaimer: I'm a Googler. I find google.com is more broken on Chrome than in Firefox. In firefox, it just just annoying moves the search field as you start type. In chrome you are not allowed to use it at all. Instead it forces you to use the location bar. Sometimes the location bar does a Google search. Sometimes it goes to the URL you type in. Sometimes, other things happen. Occasionally the thing that actually happens is the thing you wanted.
  - blauditore 10y ago
    This only seems to apply to Chrome's default start page which looks like google.com, but actually isn't. It seems to work similar as in FF when navigating to google.com first.
    - adrianratnapala 10y ago
      It happens when I navigate explicitly to google.com as well. But I think I have seen other behaviours in the past, so it all probably the exact Chrome version etc.
- blauditore 10y ago
  Update: I just found out it's related to the "Google Instant" feature, which was somehow disabled in my case - it worked in private mode, but not when I was logged in. Enabling it brought back keyboard shortcuts.

rochellle 10y ago

DuckDuckGo isn't that great, but the !bang options make it easy to diversify, and branch searches to multiple targets, to compare outcomes. Two things become obvious at that point, and the main one is that other search engines don't just customize search results to individuals, they actually spend costly human resources currating and QA'ing results. DuckDuckGo's search results kind of suck, and the reason they're not as good is because the results are not groomed to the same degree, by as many eyes, nor to the same level of quality. The other obvious thing quickly noticed is that DuckDuckGo's !bang operators are so, so, so much more handy than some of the other horrendously mangled, inscrutable query strings you wind up landing on, that would require 5 or 10 clicks, navigating the intended user interfaces of the parent sites that actually host the results. Compare using !googleimages on DuckDuckGo, to what actually happens when you click and type for results at https://images.google.com https://images.google.com? It's kind of silly that you can't just pass a query string to Google, and that DuckDuckGo does their query strings better than Google does for it's own product.

robin_reala 10y ago
(!i takes you straight to Google Images)
oAlbe 10y ago
> DuckDuckGo isn't that great Do you mind elaborating on this a bit? I've been using DDG for a couple of years now and, although at the beginning I would fallback to Google very often, now that changed. I still fallback to Google from time to time, but it's more to have a confirmation that, as parent says, the results are disappointing than anything else. Now I probably use Google after trying g DDG once in every 10/15 queries. It used to be one in three when I switched. To be honest, I even find DDG to be way way better than Google in certain results. Programming related queries that would produce StackOverflow results are one example. And I'm not even considering the preview feature that DDG has that shows you the accepted answer to the SO question right in the search page. One thing I don't like though, is the way the images and videos preview works (not in the image tab, in the search tab) on DDG. I find that row of videos/images to just be annoying since I would explicitly make an image search if that's what I needed. That said, my experience now is that if DDG results are disappointing, there's a very very high chance that Google results will be disappointing too.

coolsdude2282 10y ago

I switched to DDG for the privacy selling point, but once I learned about !bangs I stayed. It is so much better done than any other site. Even if I had zero concerns about privacy I would still choose it over google or bing simply because of the wealth of query features that are so easy to use! I hate how google does queries and Bing is beyond useless.