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Why does google allow !g? They are competitors after all? Edit, ok, I see it redirects the user to Google.com
by gary__ 8y ago
Why does google allow !g? They are competitors after all?
Edit, ok, I see it redirects the user to Google.com
- berbec 8y agoBecause it's traffic they can serve ads to. Why wouldn't they? It's 100% win for them. They're getting someone who is dissatisfied with another search engine to try and win them over
- dorfsmay 8y agoIt's a win, but not a wash, because they cannot serve highly targeted ads, which means they probably can't charge as much and people are less likely to click on. Try to create a separate google account, use browser profiles, and this particular account only for searches in a specialized field (say CS, IT etc...). Than start looking at the ads you're getting. Google can't do that if the request comes from ddg.
- BCM43 8y agoIt doesn't proxy the request to google, it issues a redirect to google and your browser does the request, with all its cookies.
- dorfsmay 8y agoSo what's the point of using ddg instead of google if you do this?
- takeda 8y agoIt's just a quick way for the user to also try Google. I usually do search in DDG (default search) if I don't get good results I append !g to get results. Most often though Google doesn't give me much better results.
- unstuckdev 8y agoLack of certain information is a valuable data point. Privacy-conscious searchers are served by many small but profitable niche industries.
- nebulous1 8y agoWell, it just redirects you to google, so google can serve you ads etc
- kodablah 8y agoA better question is why they allow startpage.com (a.k.a. !s). I think at this point, fighting scrapers is just not worth it. But I predict one day someone is going to write a client-side desktop app that scrapes all this stuff and presents it AOL-style, it'll get popular, and all the sites will freak.
- windexh8er 8y agoThis isn't really any different than StartPage. What I find a good search-flow is that instead of doing a !g [search] I just use !sp [search], instead. That way you don't land on Google for the search at all but you get the entire list of results and StartPage has a better stance on privacy. Regarding DDG on general, I've been using it exclusively as my first search provider and it has ramped in quality searches at a nice clip. I find myself bouncing through to the above search-flow less and less over time and I'm now in the process of deGoogling other things. Keep donating to those privacy focused services where you can! DDG is a prime example of showing how these services can exist without an agenda, other than customer oriented features.
- Vinnl 8y ago> Keep donating to those privacy focused services where you can! As good a moment as any to publicly express gratitude to the donations DDG has provide to us (Terms of Service; Didn't Read) and several other privacy-focused projects, which has been of great help.
- rfeather 8y agoAll of the bang commands are probably a great way for them to get feedback on what they're not giving good results from. Very targeted training data.