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DuckDuckGo Raises $10M
- mdimec4 8y agoI am using DDG exclusively for over a year now. It works realy fine.
- nine_k 8y agoThe article says that DDG was profitable since 2014. I wonder just how profitable it is, and how soon would it be able to return the investments. A high investment load means that a company strives for an exit. I won't like DDG to be bought by whatever party.
- bobpappas 8y agoI interviewed with DuckDuckGo a few months ago and their founders, investors, and board are not looking for the quick payout. They are more intent at a self sustaining alternative to Google.
- fabricexpert 8y agoHow could you know that from an interview? Of course they would say that
- nine_k 8y agoI can imagine a company where everyone is excited by the perspective of being bought by a major corporation for a huge sum. You join the megacorp (which is not easy to get hired to), and your options suddenly are worth a lot. Win-win!
- confounded 8y agoA Canadian pension fund may be a bit less aggressive for an exit than traditional SV VC firm. I'm not too worried so far.
- newfocogi 8y agoI have been using DDG for about a year now, although I had tried using it years ago. It works fine for simple queries( e.g. search name of company rather than typing out url). But I basically have !g programmed into my fingers for everything more complicated. Many times when I don't find the results I am looking for, I subconsciously assume that google would be able to find them. This is in comparison to when I cannot find something on google, I assume the website owner either sucks at SEO or it doesn't exist. I am rooting for DDG, but it is going to be really hard for them to make up the literal cognitive difference in my mindset. Side note, if they get bought out by a big player, I will feel like my use of them for the last year has been for naught.
- mLuby 8y agoI have the same muscle memory, but I don't think it's a bad thing. Basically I only use !g when normal DDG doesn't give me what I'm looking for, and half the time !g doesn't have it either. The only thing I can't abandon is !gmaps. And I'm just discovering a bunch of other ! commands that make DDG significantly more useful that Google (eg !esen).
- Splines 8y agoI don't think it's a bad thing either. It gives DDG a very clear signal so that they can improve: "you are not giving me the results I want for these queries". For most other search engines people just switch.
- news_to_me 8y agoI've found that "!w", which searches Wikipedia, is extremely useful.
- eikenberry 8y agoAnd !a for amazon and !yt for youtube and !dpkg for packages and !imdb... Definitely my favorite feature of ddg.
- carterage 8y ago
- cabaalis 8y ago> DuckDuckGo appears healthy and quite content with making money off of keyword-based ads alone. This makes perfect sense. Show an ad related to what a person is interested in and looking at. When I did adsense stuff a long, long time ago, I seem to remember that Google would request a copy of the page, and then tailor the ads to the content of the page. There was absolutely no interest at all in "Who" was looking at the page. It seems to me there is still a tremendous amount of money that could be made with only that use case.
- wolco 8y agoThose were the days when people didn't mind ads because they reflected the content of the page. When google changed this it was the beginning of the end.
- S4M 8y ago> There was absolutely no interest at all in "Who" was looking at the page. It seems to me there is still a tremendous amount of money that could be made with only that use case. I hope that is true, but I have my doubts. Google must have given some thoughts to that issue and decided to switch their targeting to the "who" for a reason, if the previous model was more profitable they simply would have stuck with it I suppose.
- sam0x17 8y agoThe one thing I find really painful is when I want a localized search like searching for "[chain resturant name] grubhub" and I get results half way across the country. Other than that it's great.
- mdaniel 8y agoI promise I don't mean this in a snarky way, but: isn't the behavior you're describing almost the exact opposite of not being tracked? Or, put another way: does "[chain name] grubhub [zipcode]" still do what you are describing? Heh, as one might expect, "there's a bang for that" which will save you two characters: https://duckduckgo.com/bang?q=grubhub https://duckduckgo.com/bang?q=grubhub
- jumbopapa 8y agoI'm generally OK with a search engine using my IP Address to provide localized results. I don't think that's really a privacy concern as that is exposed to everyone. Maybe I'm wrong in thinking that though?
- sam0x17 8y agoWhat I mean, though, is I wouldn't mind if duckduckgo did localized searches based on IP geolocation. There are no privacy implications for this as long as the results are not logged anywhere.
- Doctor_Fegg 8y agoTry using it outside the US. Then you get results halfway across the world. :( Example: if I search DDG for "Worcester" (a significant city near my home in south-central England), 28 of the top 30 results are Worcester, Massachusetts. There is a toggle at the top of the page where I can choose "United Kingdom". That fixes it. But the default should be "worldwide" or "localised by IP address", not "US".
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- TheSmoke 8y agoi gave ddg a few tries back then but two months ago i've switched to it for good. on all my browsers it is the default search engine. on android, chrome does not let you set it as default engine so i also switched to firefox on mobile. not being tracked is a good feeling. i also never had a problem with search results, especially for development.
- inciampati 8y agoYou know I had the same experience bring me to Firefox on mobile. I'm not sure that was what Google intended to happen. It isn't like they prevent you from using other search engines. Just DDG! Maybe they identify it as a real competitor.
- m52go 8y agoI tried using DuckDuckGo many times over the past few years, but the results never enticed me to stay. But for the past 3-4 months, it's been my default. Haven't felt the need to use Google Search even once! Big props to Gabriel Weinberg and team!
- profalseidol 8y agoWhat happens to the pension fund if DDG fails?
- vzaliva 8y agoWhen I noticed that DDG is using (among other sources) Yandex.ru (Russian search engine) index I've stopped using it. It is not a question of privacy but rather a question of trust and bias. Of course YMMV.
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- haha99 8y agoI don't believe there are any options here. All tech companies are politically aligned, that includes all search engines.
- goobynight 8y agomuh russia
- anilshanbhag 8y agoDuckDuckGo claims to be all for privacy. What it doesn't tell users is that it is just a wrapper around Bing search results. The $10M they plan to spend is just going to increase search traffic to Bing.
- danielmorozoff 8y agoIs this actually true?
- cpeterso 8y agoWikipedia says DuckDuckGo generates "results from over 400 individual sources, including crowdsourced sites such as Wikipedia, and other search engines like Bing, Yahoo!, and Yandex." Even if it was just a proxy to the Bing Search API, DDG users would be unseen by Bing servers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo
- mdaniel 8y agoThey cite Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex as "sourced from," and they do list DuckDuckBot as its own thing -- although I am pretty sure they don't have the same resources for running their own distributed crawls as the 3 sources they list: https://duck.co/help/results/sources https://duck.co/help/results/sources
- Kiro 8y agoDuckDuckBot only handles results for Instant Answers afaik. No own spiders in the traditional sense (following links between domains).
- jlarocco 8y agoNo, in general it's not. https://duck.co/forum/thread/4350/did-you-know-that-duckduckgo-bing https://duck.co/forum/thread/4350/did-you-know-that-duckduck... IME, inline results from third party sites (like StackOverflow, images, youtube videos, etc.) are pretty easy to notice when they're included and easy to tell where they came from.
- wafflesraccoon 8y agoDDG's bang search is by far my favorite feature, I've been using DDG for about 4 years and being about to just !w or !m for common stuff is a huge win.
- TheJoYo 8y agowhen the alternative is adding the search query to my browser for each and every service, ill take the bang searches.
- wishinghand 8y agoIn 2015 I tried using DDG for programming questions and the results were inferior to my co-worker who used Google Search. Even without the comparison I could tell DDG was inferior due to how few answers I'd find. I recently switched away from Google services to Firefox, Fastmail, and DDG for privacy reasons. I no longer have issues finding answers within the top 4-5 results and if I do, Google almost never has the answer anyway.
- jumbopapa 8y agoWhat made you opt for Fastmail over Protonmail? I'm still on gmail, but I'm interested in switching. Want something that supports calendars too. Only think I'm not sure I can get away from is Android... I really do prefer it to iOS.
- sidstling 8y agoI’ve been using FastMail for a year, it’s an easy switch from gmail. The spam-filter is terrible but the support actually answers you. I chose fastmail over proton or tutanota because they’ve been around longer and charge everyone money. Maybe I’m paranoid but I don’t trust free as in beer very much anywhere. + none of my mails would actually use the encryption.
- computerfriend 8y agoAfter this Proton/Tesonet/Luminati fiasco, I would stay away from ProtonMail.
- protonmail 8y agoThese are actually false accusations being spread by competitors, you can actually find our response here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonVPN/comments/8ww4h2/protonvpn_and_tesonet/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonVPN/comments/8ww4h2/protonvpn...
- wishinghand 8y agoI think I was more aware of Fastmail than Protonmail. I also prefer paying for a product so that I don't become the product, which is a big reason why I left behind those various google services. Which reminds me that I should look for an Open Street Maps app on iOS to replace Google Maps.
- trumped 8y agoMaybe they could buy ddg.com with (part of) this money?
- tristanho 8y agoFun learning from this article: the Ontario Municipal Employee Retirement System does its own venture deals (including this one!) and has invested in a ton of startups: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/omers-ventures#section-investments https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/omers-ventures#secti...
- nfriedly 8y agoI've been using DDG for several years now. I pretty rarely fall back to google for something these days and, when I do, they usually don't have the result I'm looking for either.
- maxhetfeld 8y agoDuckDuckGo is a great search engine, I've been using it for a while. The only thing that stops me from fully moving to DuckDuckGo is eseential DOM load speed. Google search results page loading speed is two times faster. DuckDuckGo needs to hire a Frontend wizard that will address all the issues with load speed and hopefully make it quicker than competitors.
- TheJoYo 8y agohttps://duckduckgo.com/lite https://duckduckgo.com/lite or https://duckduckgo.com/html https://duckduckgo.com/html might be faster for you
- maxhetfeld 8y agoWow, it's loading with the speed of light. Bye, Google.
- kbradero 8y agoi have used duckduckgo for years, they are really good :)
- erpellan 8y agoThe fact DDG can even get to the ballpark, let alone compete against an opponent whose budget is 3 orders of magnitude larger is astounding, and should be applauded.
- keithnz 8y agoyou understand that DDG is a wrapper around bing right?
- whoisjuan 8y agoI don't think a "wrapper" is the right term. They aggregate results from multiple sources including their index which is built by their own spider. Also I don't see how that negates the fact that they are doing a fantastic job against a company that's is much bigger, more powerful, more experienced and with an incredibly larger budget.
- mda 8y agoStill they are a meta search engine mostly depend on bing. Have they ever shared how much of traffic they serve from each "source"? Never.
- swebs 8y agoDuckDuckGo's killer feature to me is that I can always depend on it to be in English. Google annoyingly always changes the language based on the location of the IP address you're connecting from. It's very annoying when traveling.
- 3dGrabber 8y agotry &pws=0 on google.
- hegz 8y agoAlso annoying when you use a VPN or tor
- atticmanatee 8y agoyou can always get www.google.com/ncr
- slig 8y agoIt's been a while since this trick stopped working.
- kdmytro 8y agoI use DuckDuckGo for a similar reason. My Google search settings are set to show result in Ukrainian or English, but Google never follows the settings and returns results in Russian for queries that are clearly written in either Ukrainian or English. DuckDuckGo will give you results in the language you made query in, as you'd expect.
- lakechfoma 8y agoOne day it was returning only German results for me despite my region being set to US and language to English. Every search, didn't matter what the keywords were. I was in my office (my geoIP was still US) where dozens, maybe hundreds, of Germans work. I wonder if that had anything to do with it but I'm not sure how.
- nikanj 8y agoI'm I the only one who's surprised to see how small this round was? The modern SV economy seems to be built around $100M seed rounds and valuations in the low billions, pre-launch.
- Rafuino 8y agoThe modern SV economy to which you refer is built around massive valuations with huge growth expectations ahead of a buyout or (less rare these days) an IPO. I don't see DDG going public anytime soon, and it's unlikely to be sold to a player like Google given ethical differences (or any other similar player given the modern SV economy is also primarily based on privacy violating business models). Thus, a $10M investment isn't small...it's more rational. At least that's my opinion!
- pantheon 8y agoI use DuckDuckGo as default... from time to time I need to use Google but I try to keep it at minimum. It's not about privacy, it's because I like Google less every fucking time that they do update on any of their products. Look at Google News, it was simple and nice before, now looks like it is a part of Yahoo.
- jmah 8y agoDuckDuckGo is fantastic on mobile (iPhone). It feels way faster than Google for me — part of that is not getting the "Can I use your location?" pop-ups which then trigger a re-search. Plus there's no AMP junk in the results! And links are real links — when you copy them you get the URL, not some huge tracking string. Occasionally I've felt like I'm not getting good results so have gone to Google to repeat the search. There hasn't yet been a case where that's helped, so I've stopped doing it.
- jiveturkey 8y agoswitched to google on mobile recently, due to DDG only option of infinite scroll. it makes 'back' useless. now i am back to google on desktop as well. it is markedly better than DDG for the searches I'm doing anyway.
- dhbradshaw 8y agoI hate infinite scroll.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- boomboomsubban 8y ago>switched to google on mobile recently, due to DDG only option of infinite scroll Settings are on the right, other settings, disable auto-load.
- jodrellblank 8y agopart of that is not getting the "Can I use your location?" pop-ups From a buiness IP address - "searching from: small business park, tiny region, city outskirts". "Google would like to know your location: allow/deny". You'd like my permission to know it, while making it perfectly clear you already know. Creeps me out, like a Hollywood film mob intimidation tactic.
- bla2 8y agoWhat's DDG's moat? Its search index is bing so they don't have significant own tech. Is it just the brand?
- bopbop 8y agoI think it's only loyalty of userbase - they're the first mover of privacy conscious search. Any competitor would have to prove credibility in the field, as they'd be trading on ethics. I use DuckDuckGo exclusively - the only two reasons for me to stop I can see would be some kind of ethics scandal, or the quality of the search dropping dramatically. I'm very happy with it currently.
- i1856511 8y agoDDG has the same business plan as major providers(selling keywords), but they do it in a way that is more respectful of your autonomy. Reasons I use DDG exclusively: - I prefer their business plan. Keyword ads still appear on search results page, but I am not psychographically modeled and retargeted after I close the browser session. - It performs fast and I like the visual appearance. - No AMP results. (Google does not give you a way to disable AMP, at all, which surprised me. I do not like AMP because it does not feel right on iOS.) - It integrates Instant Answers and has surprised me with some Stack Overflow/Superuser excerpts. - Mobile search is now geo-aware (again, crucially, in a way that does not build a ad targeting profile on me over time). - The scale of the company is smaller and the CEO seems like a real, reachable person.
- bklyn11201 8y agoSo how does DDG avoid wholesale transfer pricing to their search providers: Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex?
- partisan 8y agoI use DDG on a daily basis. Out of ignorance, I haven’t used the bang switches, but I think I have been satisfied with the quality of the search results to the point where I very rarely go to google anymore. I am happy to have an alternative to google search even if the effect is too small to be measured.
- jaequery 8y agoam i the only one that is just too lazy to type DuckDuckGo.com? i feel i may go there more if it was just ddg.com or something short
- sysashi 8y agoyou can use alias dgg.gg
- jahfer 8y agohttp://ddg.gg http://ddg.gg is a working alternate domain (:
- corbpie 8y agoIn Firefox you can change the default search engine to DDG. Then you just type your search query straight into the address bar.
- wccrawford 8y agoddg.gg and ddg.co are both theirs, apparently.
- crazy_monkey 8y ago"For DuckDuckGo, it represents yet another opportunity to convert users, and now it has a tidy amount of cash from investors to do so." Yes, go become the search engine of conspiracy theorists...
- panoply 8y agoIt’s still such a poor choice of name.
- executesorder66 8y agoThe name google also sounds pretty retarded if you remove all the context from it.
- panoply 8y agoTwo syllable naming conventions will always prove dominant. - Goo-gle - Faceb-book - Twit-ter - Snap-chat - Git-hub The list goes on and on. Duck-Duck-Go is just a poorly thought through name and the fact it's 3 syllable just makes it worse. At least with Instagram you can abbreviate it (ins-ta).
- kaskavalci 8y agoFirefox focus and DDG is the best combination on mobile. Leave no cookies behind.
- csdreamer7 8y agoI find that DDG is good for about 80% of what I want. But the other 20%, especially dev queries, I muscle memory type in !g. Is there a bang for the type of query answer we are looking for? Such as for 'Ruby gems' I can use !dev so the engine knows to ignore sites like Ruby Gemstone and focus on dev only. I know there is !so and !gh, but I am looking for something that dynamically combines them and other dev resources as they fall in and out of search favor.
- pedro_hab 8y agoI'm actually feeling google worse every day, I developed a way of searching by only typing important keywords. eg: "js unique array" Now that's not working well anymore, google is ignoring 2 of 3 keywords to give me a general answer. And even the search tricks, such as using "" don't work as before. I think google is using far too much AI in the search is ruining it for me. I may switch to something else soon.
- mrweasel 8y agoThe ignoring of keywords is annoying. Removing keyword in order to be able to get me a result is almost always the wrong thing to do. I end up clicking through a the first 3 to 4 links and wondering why on earth Google would think those sites was going to be helpful. The indication that a keyword was ignored to give me a result isn't clear enough. Almost always, at least in my cases, removing keywords makes the resultat useless. I would rather have a blank page say "Sorry, no results". While DuckDuckGo searches have clearly improved over time, Googles have become worse. I still think Google is better overall, but they're moving in the wrong direction.
- goobynight 8y agoI don't think I've ever had a keyword removal produce something worthwhile. Perhaps there is a different class of user that this is useful for. If only there was a way to disable it. Some sort of "advanced" mode.
- arthurfm 8y ago
- novaRom 8y agoDDG is getting better with time. I completely switched to DDG about 2 years ago. I tried Google search recently and found its results are less relevant and presented in an awkward form where I cannot copy result's URL (searched for a technical paper). DDG is clear winner.
- Const-me 8y agoHow do you copy the URL? Neither of them shows direct URL to search results, https://duckduckgo.com/l/?.. https://duckduckgo.com/l/?... is no better than https://www.google.com/url?.. https://www.google.com/url?...
- aembleton 8y agoIn Google - do a search for hackernews. This site is the number one result. Right click on it, copy the link location and this is what is in your clipboard: https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjtkqHs55HdAhXsI8AKHXhzAG4QFjAAegQIBBAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com%2F&usg=AOvVaw3F-2xUE22tTvOxNDwVuff- https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web... In DuckDuckGo, you do the same search and also get the same top result, but when you copy the link location for that top result you get this: https://news.ycombinator.com/ https://news.ycombinator.com/
- Const-me 8y ago> when you copy the link location for that top result you get this: https://news.ycombinator.com/ https://news.ycombinator.com/ I’m getting https://duckduckgo.com/l/?kh=-1&uddg=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com%2F https://duckduckgo.com/l/?kh=-1&uddg=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycom... Update: in Firefox I'm indeed getting https://news.ycombinator.com/ https://news.ycombinator.com/ But I use MS Edge as primary browser, and for MS Edge, DDG returns me the above redirection URL.
- wallacoloo 8y agoI’ll bet this has something to do with the Referer header. Iirc DDG used to always use this forwarding method so that you don’t leak your search phrase to the site you’re going to. I wonder if now there’s a way for DDG to instruct Firefox to omit the Referer header (or if DDG detects that you have Firefox configured to not send the header), but that Edge still sends the Referer header?
- isaiahg 8y agoFor a company that aims to do ethical businesses, they have an uphill better. But it helps that they have such a great search engine. I've been using ddc for a few years exclusively and I think I get better results. Some of my old google-fu works, unlike new google, which seems to ignore it now.
- lerie 8y agoI think either Google will awe us again and become stronger or duckduckgo will figure out a way to finally give us better search results.
- Vinnl 8y agoAt Terms of Service; Didn't Read, we were one of a whole host of privacy-focused projects that received a donation from DuckDuckGo: https://spreadprivacy.com/duckduckgo-privacy-challenge-2018 https://spreadprivacy.com/duckduckgo-privacy-challenge-2018 Thus, however successful DDG will be, at least it will have supported quite a few other projects in its wake.
- dalbasal 8y agoWhether or not DDG is "beating" Google, they are successfully competing with Google on G's home turf. That's pretty impressive.
- Gravityloss 8y agoIt's pretty bad for non english content.
- cosmic_ape 8y agoAnother happy DDG user here. But I always wonder - DDG is basically an aggregator, it doesn't have its own general index. Isn't there a danger that Google and Bing will just close the faucet to it one day?
- batat 8y agoRather yes than no. I tested DDG vs Yandex/Google/Bing and I'm pretty sure Yandex acts as "main" (if not "single") search provider for my language (or whatever heuristics DDG uses). For some senseless Ukrainian keywords Yandex shows almost identical to DDG results, while Google/Bing - mostly different. In 2017 Yandex (among some other Russian companies) got ban in Ukraine and access to its services was blocked. Roughly at the same time Ukraine region have disappeared from DDG ("kl=ua-uk" URL parameter is still mentioned on search params page[1], but not working). These events are likely connected. Furthermore, if DDG is just an aggregator, why a year later they can't switch to Google as local search provider and bring regional search for Ukraine back? Google local search results are at least as relevant as Yandex were. Or there are some hidden contractual obligations, partnerships, royalties directly from Yandex etc.? This looks unclear and suspicious to me. [1] https://duckduckgo.com/params https://duckduckgo.com/params
- j0hnml 8y agoI’m probably one of the few who do this, but I use Google Chrome with DDG. I really just have a much easier time on Chrome than I do on Firefox, and I’m optimistic that my Internet history is not being piped to and stored on Google’s servers somewhere.
- bhagone 8y agoI have been using it for more than year. I occasionally switch to google in extreme needs. I hope it improves more in coming days. Good going DuckDuckGo.
- hnruss 8y agoI switched to DDG ~5 years ago for two reasons: 1. Infinite scroll, and 2. Smaller ads (which can be entirely disabled). I stayed with DDG because: 1. !bang is addictive, and 2. Dark mode. Also, early on I had some thoughts on how to improve DDG, so I emailed the owner and he responded thoughtfully. I can't imagine that happening with Google.
- alpaca128 8y agoAgreed. I use !bangs so regularly I don't even notice it except when I sit at another PC and it doesn't work. And I often use the QR feature to quickly send links to my phone.
- Zeebrommer 8y agoQR feature? Nice, I didn't know about that. Though it's kind of disappointing that it directs to a google service...
- mhb 8y agoI've been giving DDG a try for a few weeks. A small thing - the absence of Past Year in the time searches is a surprisingly big annoyance. Adding to the annoyance factor is how easy it would be for that to be added and especially since they are apparently aware of it - P.S. We are working on implementing the past year as well![1] [1] https://duck.co/help/features/dates https://duck.co/help/features/dates
- netman21 8y agoI switched to DDG over a year ago. It works for my purposes. The only problem is they do not use Google maps so I have to switch when looking for directions. For research though I switched to Yippy. Their business model is selling replacements for Google Search Appliance which is at EOL in a couple of months. So they can sustain themselves while providing a free search tool.
- figers 8y agoLove using them, hopefully with this money they will finally implement the date filter to allow for the last year instead of just the last month. Very important when searching for the latest coding implementations of a new version.
- needle0 8y agoI've been lately trying to get myself accustomed to DDG, and while I appreciate the bang feature immensely, I find myself spending more and more time using !g to revert to Google Search. It probably has something to do with the fact that I search a lot in Japanese as well as English; While English search results are somewhat good, DDG's Japanese search results are just plain bad. I suspect the similar is also true with other non-English languages as well. Hope the new money gets spent on improving search results on non-English.
- bugmen0t 8y agoThey seem to be doing well, generally: <https://duckduckgo.com/traffic> https://duckduckgo.com/traffic>
- MistahKoala 8y agoNot bad for general queries, but still not suited to specific, local and timely queries - at least, in the UK, anyway. Even whilst searching with country-specific settings, most results tend to be American. Also, I miss pagination of results pages :(
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Taylor_OD 8y agoI'm a recent DDG convert. However I'm pretty locked into the Google Maps platform. I've used stars and "want to go" for years. Those don't translate over to DDG even on their Google Maps option for maps. Anyone know of a work around?