21 ms·

Nothing Can Stop Google. DuckDuckGo Is Trying Anyway

388 points by kjhughes 8y ago

GeekyBear 8y ago
For some us, cutting ties with companies that have surveillance capitalism as their business model has already occurred. Ad supported services are fine, targeted ads that require ever more invasive spying on your users on behalf of your advertising customers are not.
JeremyBanks 8y ago
:s/DuckDuckGo/Bing
- godshatter 8y ago
  They do have their own web crawler. I don't have any idea what percentage of their results come from it, but presumably as they grow their own search results will take an ever-increasing slice of the pie.
  - JeremyBanks 8y ago
    There doesn't seem to be any evidence that it's used for indexing at all; it seems more like it's just used to scrape additional info from sites that they index via real search engines like Bing, Yandex, and Yahoo. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4851680 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4851680
  - Kiro 8y ago
    Their own crawler is not used for any organic search results, only widget stuff like Instant Answers (and spam detection apparently as per sibling comment).
SpikeDad 8y ago
Why must everything be a "company" killer? There's room in markets for choices. I think DDG is providing a good choice for folks. And having Apple data behind them isn't just potatoes.
- MarsAscendant 8y ago
  > Why must everything be a "company" killer? I wonder if it's the fact that... 1. ...the current idea of superiority is absolute domination on the market (see: monopoly), 2. ...the age we live in promotes being only the BEST and the most AWESOME, without ever giving chance to the average and the mildly-good, which may not shine as brightly but does its job well, 3. ...there's unduly competition on the market – not just your healthy capitalist "We sell better 'cause we make better products, so step aside", but something more antagonistic on a more... personal? level, or all of it, to some degree. I could be biased on number three, given that I'm quite sensitive to antagonism in general. It does seem to me that, while there's no malvertisement (no one's saying "My competitors are shit, we're light-years ahead"), everyone seems to try and trump others in spirit. Nah, probably not.
- verelo 8y ago
  I recently switched my homepage to be ddg. Most of the time it’s pure annoyance, returning unrelated results and never giving nice top of page summaries. I really didn’t want it to be this way, but most of the time (I’m pretty sure 2/3 at least) i have to revert back to google.
  - larrik 8y ago
    Funny, I switched and barely noticed the difference. The biggest issue I had was the lack of a quick button to jump into google maps.
  - thejohnconway 8y ago
    I've been using DDG for a couple of years now, and have a different experience. Usually when I'm frustrated by the the result in DDG, I try the same search in Google, and find that the results are no better! Google image search and and local results are still better, but DDGs ! system makes it easy to switch search engines when you need to.
    - jvzr 8y ago
      To further your point (I have switched a couple years ago, if not more; don't remember), I also found that the new Google layout (with this sort of bubbly cards) is really distracting and I cannot scan the results as fast as before, or as fast as DDG's. UX definitely took a beating with this iteration of Google's results UI.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
debacle 8y ago
DDG is my default search. It's good for 85% of my searches. Its video and maps search clearly lag behind Google (mostly from a UI standpoint). It needs to find a better balance between shepherding privacy and UX. Most local search is weak, even if I enter in my city/state.
- tyfon 8y ago
  Once place they are long ahead on UI is the image search. You can actually "view file" and not "view site" as google had to do after that lawsuit from getty [1] But having said that, it is very annoying that they put a large nagging notification on the top right of the screen asking to switch to it as it's default. If I want to do that I will do it myself thank you. I never figured out why webpages do this kind of thing (i.e. pop up a newsletter subscription form blocking the whole article). It just pisses off the users. It's actually the main reason DDG is not my default search engine. [1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/02/internet-rages-after-google-removes-view-image-button-bowing-to-getty/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/02/internet-rages-after...
harveywi 8y ago
DuckDuckGo is a heel.
- viivaux 8y ago
  I'd just like to encourage people to think a little longer about what you might be saying, before reactively downvoting.
  - isostatic 8y ago
    It's hardly a common idiom, does he mean ddg is close behind google, does he mean it's run down? Does he mean it's keeping people down?
the_other_guy 8y ago
here comes the daily DDG shill post, Weinberg should tell his boys to slow down a bit, this is too much
tombert 8y ago
I started using DDG as my default search engine about 6 months ago, and for 95% of the searches I do it's totally fine. I don't know why people think that DDG needs to "stop" Google; did people think that Lycos and Infoseek and Yahoo couldn't coexist back in the 90's? I think it's good that both companies have some competition from each other.
- todd3834 8y ago
  history has mostly shown a zero-sum game when it comes to search. Didn’t all of those other search engines you listed die off? Even Bing has been mostly irrelevant in comparison to Google. Also a lot of DDG users came over because they were unhappy with some of Google’s practices. Therefore it’s natural for them to want to justify their decision as a good choice by hoping the rest of the world comes to the same conclusion. I tried DDG, it worked good but Google is better. I can’t afford to spend cycles wondering what Google would have returned when I’m trying to research something while I code.
  - brylie 8y ago
    You can get anonymized Google results on DDG by prefixing the search with "!g" https://duckduckgo.com/bang https://duckduckgo.com/bang
    - robmccoll 8y ago
      I don't think those results are anonymized. You're just being redirected to Google.
      - nielsbot 8y ago
        It used to redirect to encrypted.google.com, which DDG said Google didn’t track, but that changed/went away.
    - Svip 8y ago
      I think the choice is "!s" which redirects you to startpage.com, which is anonymised Google.
fareesh 8y ago
I use DDG by default. If I am not satisifed I simply prepend !g to my query. The bangs feature is really useful to me personally since it supports so many sites. https://duckduckgo.com/bang https://duckduckgo.com/bang My only complaint is that it's noticeably slower than Google
- thinkingemote 8y ago
  id imagine speed isn't a current priority for Google as Gmail, calendar and maps have shown. It's probably a hold over from before, I'd give it a year before they roll out some improvement that allows it down.
  - pnloyd 8y ago
    This couldn't be farther from the truth. More speed means more page views means more ads seen means more revenue. Walmart Amazon plus others have done studies showing faster load times translates directly into increased revenue in there retail.
    - darkpuma 8y ago
      Yet gmail and maps are slower than warm asphalt.
      - yzb 8y ago
        You can't escape Gmail because you'd lose your address, and you can't escape Maps because the alternatives suck. On the other hand if I don't like Supermarket-X, I can go to Supermarket-Y
        the_duke 8y ago
        Or your were lucky enough to start using Gmail with your own domain, when Google Apps was still free for up to 10 users, and can still use it for free.
bstar77 8y ago
As long as DDG is not traded publicly it will do just fine. Investors would inevitably be screaming for more growth and ultimately force them to comprise their current values.
- onesmalluser 8y ago
  They're still beholden by their VC's, who most likely forced them to purge a lot of their !bangs not too long ago.
  - albertgoeswoof 8y ago
    Why? The !bang is a referral, if you get enough traffic you can charge the site you’re sending traffic to
  - KingMachiavelli 8y ago
    Is that why there is no longer a !libgen bang? I swear there used to be one.
russley 8y ago
Reminder that DDG actually has an extension (FF & Chrome) and their own Android browser available on Google Play Store and F-Droid!
- dwighttk 8y ago
  and iOS browser in the App Store
the_other_guy 8y ago
again, Weinberg, the founder of DDG, has been exploiting HN and all major internet communities to promote his product. Most of what you see as unplanned posts and discussions about DDG really aren't
- sctb 8y ago
  Please don't repost flagged comments. You've been breaking the guidelines way too much, so if this doesn't change we'll ban the account. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - the_other_guy 8y ago
    I haven't reposted anything, I am being flagged for merely saying my opinion
tpaschalis 8y ago
Quick question, if you Google 'ddg' in incognito mode, do you get any results regarding DuckDuckGo? In the first 10 pages of Google Search I only get two 'relevant' results; one in the bottom of the first page, and a second one of an article mentioning DuckDuckGo in page 8 or something. (Not trying to start a war here, just asking).
- zrobotics 8y ago
  Android smartphone, Chrome isn't my default browser but I used Chrome (it's set to Google default, mostly for local search & YouTube). "ddg" doesn't return duckduckgo until page 4, but typing "duck" returns duckduckgo as suggested result 4, and searching "duck" returns duckduckgo on the first page.
- averagehuman 8y ago
  I get a link to DuckDuckGo on page 3, and a mention of it on page 8. On page 2 there is a link to "Duck Duck Geese" which is a local restaurant apparently. Google's official reason for forcing local search results was that 1 in 5 users were searching for local results. So in this case they are returning results that are sub-optimal to 4 out of 5 users.
- godshatter 8y ago
  I was curious so I tried "!g ddg" and duckduckgo.com was the second result on page 2, whether I was in private mode (in Pale Moon) or not.
Zecar 8y ago
Google is at it's core an ad company, not a search company. So they have backed off crawling the entire internet and only crawl what has a business return for them. Combine that with carefully curating the results they publish, it can barely even be called a search engine at this point. I get more relevant results from DDG at this point.
- natex 8y ago
  > So they have backed off crawling the entire internet and only crawl what has a business return for them. What's the difference between Google's web crawler and DuckDuckGo's web crawler? > Combine that with carefully curating the results they publish, Google carefully curates? I thought that Google's search results is based on the users behavior? Are they carefully manipulating everyone's results?
  - Zecar 8y ago
    > Are they carefully manipulating everyone's results? 100%
- WilliamEdward 8y ago
  Unless you want to start paying for every search, i don't see how a "search company" that isn't fueled by adverts could ever exist.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
tonyjstark 8y ago
Google doesn't need to be stopped, a lot of innovation is happening there. It just has to be more profitable to care about the users of the services than about the business-clients of Google. If privacy of end users would be a core business instead of selling data there would be no problem. Sadly I don't have any glimpse of an idea how that could be happening. The world is complicated and every little piece that makes interacting with the world more convenient is welcome. Google is convenient, so nobody[1] gives a damn about their data. I use DDG for 90% of my searches, no complaints from my side. [1] some do, but since many people Diabetes 2 can't be convinced for a more healthy life style, what do you really expect from others if consequences of habits are not even directly visible...
phaedryx 8y ago
I use DDG primarily now. I've noticed that I often get better results for my programming queries than from Google and there's always `!g` if I don't find what I'm looking for. On a side note: anyone else think Apple will eventually buy DDG?
- Kiro 8y ago
  Previous "Will Apple buy DDG?" discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18816748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18816748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18913336 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18913336
- dwighttk 8y ago
  please no and I'm an Apple user
vxNsr 8y ago
I really wanted to use DDG but I found for most searches I ended up just using the !g bang anyway, so finally I just took out the middleman.
enraged_camel 8y ago
No company lives forever. Google will have its comeuppance one day too. It may not look like that right now, but back in the day Sears, too, had everything, and look at them today.
- simias 8y ago
  Not a very good comparison I'm afraid, Sears didn't lose to an other company who was offering the same service, they lost to a series of companies that offered the same utility but in a very different way. DDG is mostly just offering the same service as Google (really, only a fraction of the service because Google is a lot more than Search these days). As such I expect that at this point if a Google-killer appears it's also be a DDG killer as collateral damage.
  - em-bee 8y ago
    is he making that comparison? i read it as, ddg may not bring down google, but something eventually will, which seems exactly what you are saying too...
porpoisely 8y ago
It's clickbait hyperbole to say nothing can stop google. Google will fall once something usurps their dominant platform advantage ( chrome/search/android ). People said the same thing about Microsoft/IE when microsoft leveraged their dominant OS position to take over the browser market. But once google search became just as important or even more important than the Windows itself, they leveraged their search platform to take over the browser market with chrome. For now, google is cleverly leveraging it's search/android/chrome platforms to block competition and maintain it's dominant position. But eventually, another product/platform will arise that will knock google off its pedestal. Maybe even anti-trust lawsuits will help like it did with ending the Windows-IE monopoly.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 8y ago
  Please tell me how to use a smartphone without being locked in the Apple platform or Google's. I'm well aware of LineageOS (and other ROM) and of F-Droid (and Yalp and others) but in reality, it's impossible not to supply Google with vast amount of personal data. So for now, it's true that "nothing can stop google". Unless we change the situation (e.g legal/political actions), this won't change. But of course, if we collectively admit nothing can stop Google now, then we'll do something that makes it possible to stop Google and have some real competitors.
- WilliamEdward 8y ago
  I'm going to focus mostly on their SE. Google's success is hugely based off their years and years of data collection, meaning no company starting now will ever catch up. I understand that history has shown how unlikely it is for a company to truly be unmatched, but when huge sample sizes of data that can only be accrued with time and no other means comes into play, the situation is different. This issue of time is made even worse knowing that Google's engine would be a pain to try and recreate, given their decades of optimization. If you're someone who A) wants to match google's data and B) catch up to the competency of their search engine, you're looking at 20+ years of work all while google continues to improve their current search engine. Many PhD's have gone into ensuring Google's SE is perfect down to every last decimal point. It would actually be impossible to make an exact copy without direct theft. "Google will fall once something usurps their dominant platform advantage ( chrome/search/android )." I question whether this is a matter of "when" or whether it's actually a big "if". People will be able to provide alternatives to google but i don't think there will ever be another google.
glenrivard 8y ago
Bing loss 25% of their market share in just the last couple of months. http://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share http://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share Search Market Share - StatCounter Global ... Now with the story of https://www.geekwire.com/2019/investigation-reveals-microsoft-bing-surfaces-recommends-child-pornography/ https://www.geekwire.com/2019/investigation-reveals-microsof... Investigation reveals that Microsoft Bing surfaces and recommends ... Going to get worse. Sounds like DDG is taking from Bing and not Google.
ouid 8y ago
As has been mentioned probably millions of times in the last decade, "to google" is synonymous with, "to search the internet for". As long as this remains true, and google search remains free, their monopoly position cannot be challenged. they have the trademark on the shortest sequence of syllables which means "to search the internet for" which means that in the vast majority of cases, when people describe searching the internet for something, they will do so with the word "google".
- anomie31 8y ago
  Isn't "Kodak moment" a counterexample?
  - Rooster61 8y ago
    "Hey, let's take a Kodak moment of this event" Hmm, doesn't quite roll of the tongue, does it? Not the same thing.
  - ouid 8y ago
    No, because Kodak is not a free service. Xerox or Kleenex are closer, obviously, but neither of them is free to use, so there's always room to come along with something cheaper, moreover, Xerox and Kleenex at least have unbranded, one word synonyms for the commodity they produce, photocopy and tissue respectively. Google has "search the internet for", which you will never convince the average person to say, so dethroning google in "search" is at least as difficult as getting the word for "to google" changed. Furthermore, no one can compete with Google on price, since it's free, and it's very unlikely that anyone will be able to compete on quality, unless they start disallowing adblock somehow. The best you can hope for as a competitor is to carve out a niche of conscientious objectors, and google doesn't really care about those people either, because they are intrinsically difficult to monetize.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > Furthermore, no one can compete with Google on price, since it's free Google is free because they are deriving revenue from ads. Another service monetizing with ads or by some other method not directly from users could share revenue with users, thus competing favorably on price with Google's free service.
syphilis2 8y ago
(Are there/what are some) objective metrics used to measure search engine quality?
Gitnumb 8y ago
DDG can win by becoming the king of porn searches. Bing and pornhub are the competition, not Google. Porn brings massive traffic, then they'll use the site for other things.
- mda 8y ago
  DDG = Bing anyways.
- glenrivard 8y ago
  Bing appears to own. https://www.geekwire.com/2019/investigation-reveals-microsoft-bing-surfaces-recommends-child-pornography/ https://www.geekwire.com/2019/investigation-reveals-microsof... Investigation reveals that Microsoft Bing surfaces and recommends ...
Theizestooke 8y ago
There's an unusual amount of pro-DDG articles on Hacker News, half of them are PR fluff, and I don't understand why they keep getting upvoted.
- walkingolof 8y ago
  People like underdogs ?
  - macintux 8y ago
    And privacy.
  - LUmBULtERA 8y ago
    Underducks, in this case.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 8y ago
  And all the pro-Google articles are what?
  - yzb 8y ago
    They are nothing because they don't exist. When was the last time you saw a pro-Google/Alphabet article?
    - jlarocco 8y ago
      When was the last time Google did something that was worth promoting that wasn't just an attempt to acquire and exploit more personal data?
      - zavi 8y ago
        Are you okay?
        8y ago
nsomaru 8y ago
If anyone from DDG is reading this please make the site faster from South Africa. Thanks.
DigiMortal 8y ago
I use DDG as my main search engine. Though sometimes frustrated with the results that it pulls, then I go to Google. I'm sure DDG can only improve, I will continue to use them.
- WilliamEdward 8y ago
  Google's search engine provides good results for precisely the reason DDG will never be able to: They sacrifice privacy to collect data that improves search results.
jackfoxy 8y ago
Bing gives me points I can cash in for Amazon gift cards. I rarely fall back to G, and when I do it seems like the sponsored search results are much more intrusive than even those on Bing. What I'd really like is a meta-search engine incorporating Bing, G, and DDG...but I have never gotten around to doing this myself and don't know of any OSS project that does this. What's most disappointing about Bing is the lack of good search results from Microsoft tech documentation.
zubspace 8y ago
I'm glad DDG exists and it's my main search engine. But I'm using g! in about 50% of my queries. For very technical queries I somehow already know that google gives me better results at the top. DDG results feel more like a dice roll. Two things I also miss are "site:url" filters (dont know if ddg provides this) and date ranges, for example results within the last 3 years. Well, maybe it's possible but I have other things to do than to browse around ddg or learn a bunch of bangs. In my opinion this is the main barrier to entry. Provide me all the possibilities on a single screen or behind a menu and don't expect user to dig around the docs. There's a lot of potential which will never be uncovered by alot of users, so they stick to google.
- isostatic 8y ago
  > Two things I also miss are "site:url" filters (dont know if ddg provides this) How can you miss it when you haven't tried it? Yes, ddg supports it [0] It also supports limited date ranges, like last week, last month etc [1] [0] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+duckduckgo&t=ffab&atb=v109-1&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+duckdu... [1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=php+json+site%3Astackoverflow.com&atb=v109-1&df=w&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=php+json+site%3Astackoverflow.com&...
  - zubspace 8y ago
    Well stupid me. Thanks. site: doesn't work in my browser url bar at the start so I got used to prepend !g... I know, a terrible workaround.. Could not find a way to search within specific years which is very useful for overloaded terms. It says, they are working on it..
    - mpranjic 8y ago
      You can start your searches with a space :)
losvedir 8y ago
I use and like DDG but I can't believe this article didn't mention Bing, which powers DDG's organic results. Like, yes DDG is a small company based "just east of nowhere" in PA because Microsoft has spent literally billions of dollars on Bing. To the extent we have a choice in search provider at all, it's entirely due to Microsoft's huge investment, and I feel like it's remiss not to consider those implications. If Microsoft eventually throws in the towel and shuts off Bing, then DDG will cease to exist. It's not like this plucky little underdog of a company that people are rooting for has any chance on its own. The market dynamics of running a successful search crawler and engine are important to consider here and totally brushed under the table in this article.
- otachack 8y ago
  MS also invested a ton into Windows Mobile, I imagine, but market share only went down according to Wikipedia. If DDG is simply a skin for MS Bing along with anonymous/little tracking, maybe that's what the people want?
  - zapzupnz 8y ago
    I don't understand how this comment relates to GP. Whether people just want a DDG skin for Bing doesn't really address GP's points that (A) the article failed to mention this, and (B) failed to consider its implications.
- AznHisoka 8y ago
  If DDG is not using some of that money to build their own crawler, they should give that money back to investors. It sounds extremely hard building yourself crawlers, but it's been done in various degrees by Archive.org, various SEO tools, and Common Crawl. The best time to have built the infrastructure was 5 years ago. The second best time is now. I think the guys in DDG know this, but if they don't.. they're a bad business decision from Microsoft away from nonexistence.
  - aembleton 8y ago
    They have their own crawler, DuckDuckBot: https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckbot https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckbot
T3RMINATED 8y ago
Boytcott duck they use Apple Maps and Apple tracks your every move.
mangoman 8y ago
Back in the day, before I just defaulted to using Google, I remember checking multiple search engines to find the thing I was looking for. You'd check Yahoo/Google/Lycos, try a couple of different phrasings, and then if that didn't work try searching on a few other search engines. Somewhere along the way, Google had won me over, because I almost always found my answer. I had stopped even considering other search engines. Now that I'm on DDG, I find that I'm following a similar pattern of searching DDG, then searching google, and I'm finding that most of my searches work great on DDG. What's surprising to me is that when I move on to using Google, I'm considering widening my search even beyond DDG and Google. It feels like, by considering different search options, I'm going back to how I used to explore the internet, rather than defaulting to taking Google's results as truth. And now, seeing a variety of options from DDG, I am surprised at how irrelevant some of the links are on Google some times. It feels like when I search on Google, Google is telling me 'No no, you don't care about JsonAPI parsing performance, you care about parsing json, because we know best'. I'm glad that DDG is alive and doing well. I love using it and I don't notice any difference for most queries, and falling back to google hasn't really been as painful as I thought it would be.
- the_duke 8y ago
  I think it's very much search topic related: * DDG is atrocious for anything other than English * Programing/IT searches often yield garbage on DDG while on Google a good result is within the first 3. I have it as my default now too, but "!g" is a constant companion. === Regarding Google and Amazon being unstoppable... it seemed the same once for Microsoft. Once they get too big/powerful (which they arguably already are), they could be broken up or severely hamstrung by legislation. They can also start to stagnate and be out-done by new competition based on new technologies. All of those seem unlikely right now, but 10 years can change a lot. Of course both Google and Amazon both enjoy large network effects and are pretty capital intensive. Which is typical for mono/oligopolies.
  - megous 8y ago
    I wish I could tell ddg that I only care about postgresql. It seems heavily skewed to oracle/ms server when searching anything sql related. Perhaps because it's powered by Bing?
dec0dedab0de 8y ago
You know what can stop google? a search engine that assumes I want every word in my query, or even better a search engine that honors a string in quotes to mean these words in this order. When did google stop doing this? edit: This wouldn't stop google, it would just make that part of my life as easy as it was 10 years ago.
- the_duke 8y ago
  I'm also annoyed by this. Google tries to out-smart the user and often yields garbage or generic popular crap even when looking for something very specific. I want my quotes back too! An even bigger issue: Due to SEO and ranking benefits for popular sites, it's basically impossible to discover quality content by smaller sites/blogs via Google. Unless you go to like page 10+, where you also get a lot of irrelevant stuff.
  - est31 8y ago
    This hit me very recently when I was doing a crypto project [1] and ASN.1 DER came up. I'm german and "der" means "this" in German so google just treats "der someword" as search for "someword". So when I want to know e.g. how strings are being DER encoded, I google "DER string" and am getting results for G-string underwear and some duden.de website but nothing about ASN.1 DER strings on the first page :/. At least when you google for "DER integer" a post about ASN.1 values is the fourth result. [1]: https://github.com/est31/rcgen https://github.com/est31/rcgen
  - frankc 8y ago
    With regards to your last point, ive had some good luck with millionshort.com, which lets you remove some portion of top sites from your results.
- fixermark 8y ago
  Documentation suggests Google never stopped doing this. https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?hl=en https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?hl=en suggests "phrase inside quotes" is still exact match. And if you put a single word in "quotes", that indicates to Google the word must be included in the results (I determined this by searching for something where some words were omitted, then clicking the small "Must include:" link under a result and noting how the search changed). Documentation around this isn't as good as it could be, and it's rough that the search codeset changed when G+ came around so that +word no longer meant "Must include."
birksherty 8y ago
Lot of people here are using DuckDuckGO. I tried that and some others that respect privacy. I like them but there is only one reason why I still use google. Convenience. I do lots of movie, tv show, sports and Famous People search. Almost always I find what I am looking for directly on the google result page. If I have to open those links, I will have to go through all that js tracking and bloated sites. Google is fast. I keep track of sports scores and schedule through google search. Bing also does all of these.
cpeterso 8y ago
Given the size and increasingly walled gardens of the web, is it even possible for a new search engine to launch in 2019 and compete with Google? Consider how much time and money Microsoft sunk into Bing. If Microsoft turned off its Bing API, could DDG spin up its own crawlers?
ignoramous 8y ago
It's not just duckduckgo that's privacy focused. https://startpage.com https://startpage.com is rad [0]. I've moved to using it from duckduckgo and haven't felt I've missed Google, at all. They pay Google to proxy their non-personalized search results, and let you view webpages "anonymously" [1], as well. [0] https://www.startpage.com/en/search/download-startpage-plugin.html https://www.startpage.com/en/search/download-startpage-plugi... [1] https://www.startpage.com/en/search/proxy-help.html https://www.startpage.com/en/search/proxy-help.html
- zavi 8y ago
  And more importantly startpage.com is a European service while DDG is an American service. It's extremely important for us in HN community to keep promoting European services regardless of product considerations because anything American is by definition toxic and should not exist.
misiti3780 8y ago
I switch my default search from Google to DDG a few months ago (In the chrome address bar). I like DDG but two things i have noticed 1. DDG image search is far far inferior to Google's 2. DDG response time is slower than Google's Other than that, I love it and all of the little tools they add for developers (color wheel etc)
lioeters 8y ago
Nothing can stop DuckDuckGo. At least I hope so, I've been using it regularly for some years now and I love the Google-free experience.
darepublic 8y ago
I've had more success finding TV shows on ddg. Google still a bit better for coding questions
ryekg 8y ago
I have always used DuckDuckGo instead of Google and to be fair, they both perform the same way except DuckDuckGo provides more privacy which is something that is important to people anyways.
cabaalis 8y ago
Google seems to have a strong hold on up-to-date news sources. I find myself going to !g when trying to find information on a current event.
gator-io 8y ago
For what it's worth, DuckDuckGo has .25% global market share on desktops: https://netmarketshare.com/search-engine-market-share.aspx https://netmarketshare.com/search-engine-market-share.aspx In the US, it's .66%.
hackermeows 8y ago
I stopped using Google due to intrusive ads, if you have someone in your family that have a chronic disease and you've ever googled it, get ready to be blasted with ads reminding of that every-time you watch youtube/browse the web. There are just some things I don't want to be reminded of Google !
taf2 8y ago
Isn't DDG just bing with a different interface? Or do they actually build their own index now or am I just completely confused and totally wrong about my assumptions?
siproprio 8y ago
It is not even trying, considering how slow DuckDuckGo is to load compared to Google and Bing. At least it is slow in my country anyway.
valarauca1 8y ago
I've switched to DDG and I've hardly looked back. Google's search has been seriously declined in quality. Most search operators [1] are no longer supported. Even those directly in the "tools" menu don't work. For example if you search "Nothing Can Stop Google. DuckDuckGo Is Trying Anyways site:medium.com", and set a custom date range to sometime last year. You'll see results which state this blog post was posted in 2018-October-31 for example, or which every date you prefer because I assume they just fuzzily fit the post date -into- that range. You can make google tell you this blog post is 2+ years old. The Google.com I found useful in the early 00's even had document qualifiers so I could search for strings, but filter to just PDF's, or HTML, or JPG's. Now I have to pay for these features via a Google App-Engine private search instance. It just feels like having somebody spit in your face. When features were free, but they quietly became pay-to-play without zero warning. [1] https://bynd.com/news-ideas/google-advanced-search-comprehensive-list-google-search-operators https://bynd.com/news-ideas/google-advanced-search-comprehen...
- vatueil 8y ago
  Searching by filetype seems to still work fine, e.g.: https://www.google.com/search?q=linux+filetype:pdf https://www.google.com/search?q=linux+filetype:pdf
  - r3bl 8y ago
    I find it to be an awesome way of finding a document that's actually a few page long list of random document titles, one of which happen to be the one you're searching for.
RileyJames 8y ago
I use DDG now, and have been for about a year. I still !g a lot, but I’m alright with that. I wish it were a shortcut to add !g to a query. One of the key things I’ve realised in the switching is that I actually LIKE a lot of the changes google has made from initial “just show the 10 results” like DDG does today. I like the news carousel, when I’m searching for a news related article. I like all the local info on a cafe / store, when I’m searching for it. The google implementation is WAY better than Yelp listings (constantly nagging me to install an app, Yelp seems to satisfy no one, it’s a middle man resource no one needs) But overall I’m happy using DDG for a first crack, knowing my privacy is valued, and moving onto google when I need to. It feels like I’m supporting a more private future, now, without hindering myself severely in the process. I’m happy with that compromise. Hopefully one day google will not be necessary. Again, my one wish. Give me the !g tag in one click, one swipe, what ever. Don’t make me type it into the query box and search again!
rixrax 8y ago
I wish they got domain like ddg.io|ai|... [that appear to be available too]. It would be so much easier to quickly type that in when DDG doesn't happen to be a default search engine somewhere. Instead of typoing it in a hurry to demo it to someone.
- m-ou-se 8y ago
  They have duck.com and ddg.gg. Both Firefox and Chromium make <ctrl-enter> wrap the url in 'www.' and '.com', so 'duck<ctrl-enter>' works.
  - rixrax 8y ago
    Thanks for this! I wasn't aware of either.
thrifter 8y ago
For anyone interested in useful, tested !bangs, I made a dedicated website of my favorites: https://duckgobang.com/ https://duckgobang.com/
jeromebaek 8y ago
Why are people worrying about Bing shutting down? Bing brings in billions, and it's bigger than Twitter. Not to mention that Microsoft needs a search stack for the rest of the company.
alientida 8y ago
So if I wanted to slowly start moving away from Google, what would you recommend for an email provider?
agumonkey 8y ago
I stopped using chrome lately, memory usage of firefox is 4x less, sometimes 8x.. I also have ddg as homepage for ages. For most quick queries it's useful. For google worthy queries you have bangs.
xj9 8y ago
stop google? why? i don't even care about google. they are 100% irrelevant to me. i'm sure some of the email i send touches their servers, but i self host all of my services including search. i do some of my own indexing, but metasearch works well for me right now. https://null.media https://null.media
luis8 8y ago
I wonder how feasible it will be for duckduckgo to release a desktop program that will store all our searches and do some machine learning "magic" locally. We would get custom made searches and privacy as well.
piyush_soni 8y ago
I don't think a lot of us here realize DDG is Bing. And also that it's heavy on marketing.

388 points by kjhughes 8y ago

For some us, cutting ties with companies that have surveillance capitalism as their business model has already occurred. Ad supported services are fine, targeted ads that require ever more invasive spying on your users on behalf of your advertising customers are not.

JeremyBanks 8y ago

:s/DuckDuckGo/Bing

godshatter 8y ago
They do have their own web crawler. I don't have any idea what percentage of their results come from it, but presumably as they grow their own search results will take an ever-increasing slice of the pie.
- JeremyBanks 8y ago
  There doesn't seem to be any evidence that it's used for indexing at all; it seems more like it's just used to scrape additional info from sites that they index via real search engines like Bing, Yandex, and Yahoo. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4851680 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4851680
- Kiro 8y ago
  Their own crawler is not used for any organic search results, only widget stuff like Instant Answers (and spam detection apparently as per sibling comment).

SpikeDad 8y ago

Why must everything be a "company" killer? There's room in markets for choices. I think DDG is providing a good choice for folks. And having Apple data behind them isn't just potatoes.

MarsAscendant 8y ago
> Why must everything be a "company" killer? I wonder if it's the fact that... 1. ...the current idea of superiority is absolute domination on the market (see: monopoly), 2. ...the age we live in promotes being only the BEST and the most AWESOME, without ever giving chance to the average and the mildly-good, which may not shine as brightly but does its job well, 3. ...there's unduly competition on the market – not just your healthy capitalist "We sell better 'cause we make better products, so step aside", but something more antagonistic on a more... personal? level, or all of it, to some degree. I could be biased on number three, given that I'm quite sensitive to antagonism in general. It does seem to me that, while there's no malvertisement (no one's saying "My competitors are shit, we're light-years ahead"), everyone seems to try and trump others in spirit. Nah, probably not.
verelo 8y ago
I recently switched my homepage to be ddg. Most of the time it’s pure annoyance, returning unrelated results and never giving nice top of page summaries. I really didn’t want it to be this way, but most of the time (I’m pretty sure 2/3 at least) i have to revert back to google.
- larrik 8y ago
  Funny, I switched and barely noticed the difference. The biggest issue I had was the lack of a quick button to jump into google maps.
- thejohnconway 8y ago
  I've been using DDG for a couple of years now, and have a different experience. Usually when I'm frustrated by the the result in DDG, I try the same search in Google, and find that the results are no better! Google image search and and local results are still better, but DDGs ! system makes it easy to switch search engines when you need to.
  - jvzr 8y ago
    To further your point (I have switched a couple years ago, if not more; don't remember), I also found that the new Google layout (with this sort of bubbly cards) is really distracting and I cannot scan the results as fast as before, or as fast as DDG's. UX definitely took a beating with this iteration of Google's results UI.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

debacle 8y ago

DDG is my default search. It's good for 85% of my searches. Its video and maps search clearly lag behind Google (mostly from a UI standpoint). It needs to find a better balance between shepherding privacy and UX. Most local search is weak, even if I enter in my city/state.

tyfon 8y ago
Once place they are long ahead on UI is the image search. You can actually "view file" and not "view site" as google had to do after that lawsuit from getty [1] But having said that, it is very annoying that they put a large nagging notification on the top right of the screen asking to switch to it as it's default. If I want to do that I will do it myself thank you. I never figured out why webpages do this kind of thing (i.e. pop up a newsletter subscription form blocking the whole article). It just pisses off the users. It's actually the main reason DDG is not my default search engine. [1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/02/internet-rages-after-google-removes-view-image-button-bowing-to-getty/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/02/internet-rages-after...

harveywi 8y ago

DuckDuckGo is a heel.

viivaux 8y ago
I'd just like to encourage people to think a little longer about what you might be saying, before reactively downvoting.
- isostatic 8y ago
  It's hardly a common idiom, does he mean ddg is close behind google, does he mean it's run down? Does he mean it's keeping people down?

the_other_guy 8y ago

here comes the daily DDG shill post, Weinberg should tell his boys to slow down a bit, this is too much

tombert 8y ago

I started using DDG as my default search engine about 6 months ago, and for 95% of the searches I do it's totally fine. I don't know why people think that DDG needs to "stop" Google; did people think that Lycos and Infoseek and Yahoo couldn't coexist back in the 90's? I think it's good that both companies have some competition from each other.

todd3834 8y ago
history has mostly shown a zero-sum game when it comes to search. Didn’t all of those other search engines you listed die off? Even Bing has been mostly irrelevant in comparison to Google. Also a lot of DDG users came over because they were unhappy with some of Google’s practices. Therefore it’s natural for them to want to justify their decision as a good choice by hoping the rest of the world comes to the same conclusion. I tried DDG, it worked good but Google is better. I can’t afford to spend cycles wondering what Google would have returned when I’m trying to research something while I code.
- brylie 8y ago
  You can get anonymized Google results on DDG by prefixing the search with "!g" https://duckduckgo.com/bang https://duckduckgo.com/bang
  - robmccoll 8y ago
    I don't think those results are anonymized. You're just being redirected to Google.
    - nielsbot 8y ago
      It used to redirect to encrypted.google.com, which DDG said Google didn’t track, but that changed/went away.
  - Svip 8y ago
    I think the choice is "!s" which redirects you to startpage.com, which is anonymised Google.

fareesh 8y ago

I use DDG by default. If I am not satisifed I simply prepend !g to my query. The bangs feature is really useful to me personally since it supports so many sites. https://duckduckgo.com/bang https://duckduckgo.com/bang My only complaint is that it's noticeably slower than Google

thinkingemote 8y ago
id imagine speed isn't a current priority for Google as Gmail, calendar and maps have shown. It's probably a hold over from before, I'd give it a year before they roll out some improvement that allows it down.
- pnloyd 8y ago
  This couldn't be farther from the truth. More speed means more page views means more ads seen means more revenue. Walmart Amazon plus others have done studies showing faster load times translates directly into increased revenue in there retail.
  - darkpuma 8y ago
    Yet gmail and maps are slower than warm asphalt.
    - yzb 8y ago
      You can't escape Gmail because you'd lose your address, and you can't escape Maps because the alternatives suck. On the other hand if I don't like Supermarket-X, I can go to Supermarket-Y
      - the_duke 8y ago
        Or your were lucky enough to start using Gmail with your own domain, when Google Apps was still free for up to 10 users, and can still use it for free.

bstar77 8y ago

As long as DDG is not traded publicly it will do just fine. Investors would inevitably be screaming for more growth and ultimately force them to comprise their current values.

onesmalluser 8y ago
They're still beholden by their VC's, who most likely forced them to purge a lot of their !bangs not too long ago.
- albertgoeswoof 8y ago
  Why? The !bang is a referral, if you get enough traffic you can charge the site you’re sending traffic to
- KingMachiavelli 8y ago
  Is that why there is no longer a !libgen bang? I swear there used to be one.

russley 8y ago

Reminder that DDG actually has an extension (FF & Chrome) and their own Android browser available on Google Play Store and F-Droid!

dwighttk 8y ago
and iOS browser in the App Store

the_other_guy 8y ago

again, Weinberg, the founder of DDG, has been exploiting HN and all major internet communities to promote his product. Most of what you see as unplanned posts and discussions about DDG really aren't

sctb 8y ago
Please don't repost flagged comments. You've been breaking the guidelines way too much, so if this doesn't change we'll ban the account. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- the_other_guy 8y ago
  I haven't reposted anything, I am being flagged for merely saying my opinion

tpaschalis 8y ago

Quick question, if you Google 'ddg' in incognito mode, do you get any results regarding DuckDuckGo? In the first 10 pages of Google Search I only get two 'relevant' results; one in the bottom of the first page, and a second one of an article mentioning DuckDuckGo in page 8 or something. (Not trying to start a war here, just asking).

zrobotics 8y ago
Android smartphone, Chrome isn't my default browser but I used Chrome (it's set to Google default, mostly for local search & YouTube). "ddg" doesn't return duckduckgo until page 4, but typing "duck" returns duckduckgo as suggested result 4, and searching "duck" returns duckduckgo on the first page.
averagehuman 8y ago
I get a link to DuckDuckGo on page 3, and a mention of it on page 8. On page 2 there is a link to "Duck Duck Geese" which is a local restaurant apparently. Google's official reason for forcing local search results was that 1 in 5 users were searching for local results. So in this case they are returning results that are sub-optimal to 4 out of 5 users.
godshatter 8y ago
I was curious so I tried "!g ddg" and duckduckgo.com was the second result on page 2, whether I was in private mode (in Pale Moon) or not.

Zecar 8y ago

Google is at it's core an ad company, not a search company. So they have backed off crawling the entire internet and only crawl what has a business return for them. Combine that with carefully curating the results they publish, it can barely even be called a search engine at this point. I get more relevant results from DDG at this point.

natex 8y ago
> So they have backed off crawling the entire internet and only crawl what has a business return for them. What's the difference between Google's web crawler and DuckDuckGo's web crawler? > Combine that with carefully curating the results they publish, Google carefully curates? I thought that Google's search results is based on the users behavior? Are they carefully manipulating everyone's results?
- Zecar 8y ago
  > Are they carefully manipulating everyone's results? 100%
WilliamEdward 8y ago
Unless you want to start paying for every search, i don't see how a "search company" that isn't fueled by adverts could ever exist.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

tonyjstark 8y ago

Google doesn't need to be stopped, a lot of innovation is happening there. It just has to be more profitable to care about the users of the services than about the business-clients of Google. If privacy of end users would be a core business instead of selling data there would be no problem. Sadly I don't have any glimpse of an idea how that could be happening. The world is complicated and every little piece that makes interacting with the world more convenient is welcome. Google is convenient, so nobody[1] gives a damn about their data. I use DDG for 90% of my searches, no complaints from my side. [1] some do, but since many people Diabetes 2 can't be convinced for a more healthy life style, what do you really expect from others if consequences of habits are not even directly visible...

phaedryx 8y ago

I use DDG primarily now. I've noticed that I often get better results for my programming queries than from Google and there's always `!g` if I don't find what I'm looking for. On a side note: anyone else think Apple will eventually buy DDG?

Kiro 8y ago
Previous "Will Apple buy DDG?" discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18816748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18816748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18913336 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18913336
dwighttk 8y ago
please no and I'm an Apple user

vxNsr 8y ago

I really wanted to use DDG but I found for most searches I ended up just using the !g bang anyway, so finally I just took out the middleman.

enraged_camel 8y ago

No company lives forever. Google will have its comeuppance one day too. It may not look like that right now, but back in the day Sears, too, had everything, and look at them today.

simias 8y ago
Not a very good comparison I'm afraid, Sears didn't lose to an other company who was offering the same service, they lost to a series of companies that offered the same utility but in a very different way. DDG is mostly just offering the same service as Google (really, only a fraction of the service because Google is a lot more than Search these days). As such I expect that at this point if a Google-killer appears it's also be a DDG killer as collateral damage.
- em-bee 8y ago
  is he making that comparison? i read it as, ddg may not bring down google, but something eventually will, which seems exactly what you are saying too...

porpoisely 8y ago

It's clickbait hyperbole to say nothing can stop google. Google will fall once something usurps their dominant platform advantage ( chrome/search/android ). People said the same thing about Microsoft/IE when microsoft leveraged their dominant OS position to take over the browser market. But once google search became just as important or even more important than the Windows itself, they leveraged their search platform to take over the browser market with chrome. For now, google is cleverly leveraging it's search/android/chrome platforms to block competition and maintain it's dominant position. But eventually, another product/platform will arise that will knock google off its pedestal. Maybe even anti-trust lawsuits will help like it did with ending the Windows-IE monopoly.

rcMgD2BwE72F 8y ago
Please tell me how to use a smartphone without being locked in the Apple platform or Google's. I'm well aware of LineageOS (and other ROM) and of F-Droid (and Yalp and others) but in reality, it's impossible not to supply Google with vast amount of personal data. So for now, it's true that "nothing can stop google". Unless we change the situation (e.g legal/political actions), this won't change. But of course, if we collectively admit nothing can stop Google now, then we'll do something that makes it possible to stop Google and have some real competitors.
WilliamEdward 8y ago
I'm going to focus mostly on their SE. Google's success is hugely based off their years and years of data collection, meaning no company starting now will ever catch up. I understand that history has shown how unlikely it is for a company to truly be unmatched, but when huge sample sizes of data that can only be accrued with time and no other means comes into play, the situation is different. This issue of time is made even worse knowing that Google's engine would be a pain to try and recreate, given their decades of optimization. If you're someone who A) wants to match google's data and B) catch up to the competency of their search engine, you're looking at 20+ years of work all while google continues to improve their current search engine. Many PhD's have gone into ensuring Google's SE is perfect down to every last decimal point. It would actually be impossible to make an exact copy without direct theft. "Google will fall once something usurps their dominant platform advantage ( chrome/search/android )." I question whether this is a matter of "when" or whether it's actually a big "if". People will be able to provide alternatives to google but i don't think there will ever be another google.

glenrivard 8y ago

Bing loss 25% of their market share in just the last couple of months. http://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share http://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share Search Market Share - StatCounter Global ... Now with the story of https://www.geekwire.com/2019/investigation-reveals-microsoft-bing-surfaces-recommends-child-pornography/ https://www.geekwire.com/2019/investigation-reveals-microsof... Investigation reveals that Microsoft Bing surfaces and recommends ... Going to get worse. Sounds like DDG is taking from Bing and not Google.

ouid 8y ago

As has been mentioned probably millions of times in the last decade, "to google" is synonymous with, "to search the internet for". As long as this remains true, and google search remains free, their monopoly position cannot be challenged. they have the trademark on the shortest sequence of syllables which means "to search the internet for" which means that in the vast majority of cases, when people describe searching the internet for something, they will do so with the word "google".

anomie31 8y ago
Isn't "Kodak moment" a counterexample?
- Rooster61 8y ago
  "Hey, let's take a Kodak moment of this event" Hmm, doesn't quite roll of the tongue, does it? Not the same thing.
- ouid 8y ago
  No, because Kodak is not a free service. Xerox or Kleenex are closer, obviously, but neither of them is free to use, so there's always room to come along with something cheaper, moreover, Xerox and Kleenex at least have unbranded, one word synonyms for the commodity they produce, photocopy and tissue respectively. Google has "search the internet for", which you will never convince the average person to say, so dethroning google in "search" is at least as difficult as getting the word for "to google" changed. Furthermore, no one can compete with Google on price, since it's free, and it's very unlikely that anyone will be able to compete on quality, unless they start disallowing adblock somehow. The best you can hope for as a competitor is to carve out a niche of conscientious objectors, and google doesn't really care about those people either, because they are intrinsically difficult to monetize.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > Furthermore, no one can compete with Google on price, since it's free Google is free because they are deriving revenue from ads. Another service monetizing with ads or by some other method not directly from users could share revenue with users, thus competing favorably on price with Google's free service.

syphilis2 8y ago

(Are there/what are some) objective metrics used to measure search engine quality?

Gitnumb 8y ago

DDG can win by becoming the king of porn searches. Bing and pornhub are the competition, not Google. Porn brings massive traffic, then they'll use the site for other things.

mda 8y ago
DDG = Bing anyways.
glenrivard 8y ago
Bing appears to own. https://www.geekwire.com/2019/investigation-reveals-microsoft-bing-surfaces-recommends-child-pornography/ https://www.geekwire.com/2019/investigation-reveals-microsof... Investigation reveals that Microsoft Bing surfaces and recommends ...

Theizestooke 8y ago

There's an unusual amount of pro-DDG articles on Hacker News, half of them are PR fluff, and I don't understand why they keep getting upvoted.

walkingolof 8y ago
People like underdogs ?
- macintux 8y ago
  And privacy.
- LUmBULtERA 8y ago
  Underducks, in this case.
rcMgD2BwE72F 8y ago
And all the pro-Google articles are what?
- yzb 8y ago
  They are nothing because they don't exist. When was the last time you saw a pro-Google/Alphabet article?
  - jlarocco 8y ago
    When was the last time Google did something that was worth promoting that wasn't just an attempt to acquire and exploit more personal data?
    - zavi 8y ago
      Are you okay?
      - 8y ago

nsomaru 8y ago

If anyone from DDG is reading this please make the site faster from South Africa. Thanks.

DigiMortal 8y ago

I use DDG as my main search engine. Though sometimes frustrated with the results that it pulls, then I go to Google. I'm sure DDG can only improve, I will continue to use them.

WilliamEdward 8y ago
Google's search engine provides good results for precisely the reason DDG will never be able to: They sacrifice privacy to collect data that improves search results.

jackfoxy 8y ago

Bing gives me points I can cash in for Amazon gift cards. I rarely fall back to G, and when I do it seems like the sponsored search results are much more intrusive than even those on Bing. What I'd really like is a meta-search engine incorporating Bing, G, and DDG...but I have never gotten around to doing this myself and don't know of any OSS project that does this. What's most disappointing about Bing is the lack of good search results from Microsoft tech documentation.

zubspace 8y ago

I'm glad DDG exists and it's my main search engine. But I'm using g! in about 50% of my queries. For very technical queries I somehow already know that google gives me better results at the top. DDG results feel more like a dice roll. Two things I also miss are "site:url" filters (dont know if ddg provides this) and date ranges, for example results within the last 3 years. Well, maybe it's possible but I have other things to do than to browse around ddg or learn a bunch of bangs. In my opinion this is the main barrier to entry. Provide me all the possibilities on a single screen or behind a menu and don't expect user to dig around the docs. There's a lot of potential which will never be uncovered by alot of users, so they stick to google.

isostatic 8y ago
> Two things I also miss are "site:url" filters (dont know if ddg provides this) How can you miss it when you haven't tried it? Yes, ddg supports it [0] It also supports limited date ranges, like last week, last month etc [1] [0] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+duckduckgo&t=ffab&atb=v109-1&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+duckdu... [1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=php+json+site%3Astackoverflow.com&atb=v109-1&df=w&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=php+json+site%3Astackoverflow.com&...
- zubspace 8y ago
  Well stupid me. Thanks. site: doesn't work in my browser url bar at the start so I got used to prepend !g... I know, a terrible workaround.. Could not find a way to search within specific years which is very useful for overloaded terms. It says, they are working on it..
  - mpranjic 8y ago
    You can start your searches with a space :)

losvedir 8y ago

I use and like DDG but I can't believe this article didn't mention Bing, which powers DDG's organic results. Like, yes DDG is a small company based "just east of nowhere" in PA because Microsoft has spent literally billions of dollars on Bing. To the extent we have a choice in search provider at all, it's entirely due to Microsoft's huge investment, and I feel like it's remiss not to consider those implications. If Microsoft eventually throws in the towel and shuts off Bing, then DDG will cease to exist. It's not like this plucky little underdog of a company that people are rooting for has any chance on its own. The market dynamics of running a successful search crawler and engine are important to consider here and totally brushed under the table in this article.

otachack 8y ago
MS also invested a ton into Windows Mobile, I imagine, but market share only went down according to Wikipedia. If DDG is simply a skin for MS Bing along with anonymous/little tracking, maybe that's what the people want?
- zapzupnz 8y ago
  I don't understand how this comment relates to GP. Whether people just want a DDG skin for Bing doesn't really address GP's points that (A) the article failed to mention this, and (B) failed to consider its implications.
AznHisoka 8y ago
If DDG is not using some of that money to build their own crawler, they should give that money back to investors. It sounds extremely hard building yourself crawlers, but it's been done in various degrees by Archive.org, various SEO tools, and Common Crawl. The best time to have built the infrastructure was 5 years ago. The second best time is now. I think the guys in DDG know this, but if they don't.. they're a bad business decision from Microsoft away from nonexistence.
- aembleton 8y ago
  They have their own crawler, DuckDuckBot: https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckbot https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckbot

T3RMINATED 8y ago

Boytcott duck they use Apple Maps and Apple tracks your every move.

mangoman 8y ago

Back in the day, before I just defaulted to using Google, I remember checking multiple search engines to find the thing I was looking for. You'd check Yahoo/Google/Lycos, try a couple of different phrasings, and then if that didn't work try searching on a few other search engines. Somewhere along the way, Google had won me over, because I almost always found my answer. I had stopped even considering other search engines. Now that I'm on DDG, I find that I'm following a similar pattern of searching DDG, then searching google, and I'm finding that most of my searches work great on DDG. What's surprising to me is that when I move on to using Google, I'm considering widening my search even beyond DDG and Google. It feels like, by considering different search options, I'm going back to how I used to explore the internet, rather than defaulting to taking Google's results as truth. And now, seeing a variety of options from DDG, I am surprised at how irrelevant some of the links are on Google some times. It feels like when I search on Google, Google is telling me 'No no, you don't care about JsonAPI parsing performance, you care about parsing json, because we know best'. I'm glad that DDG is alive and doing well. I love using it and I don't notice any difference for most queries, and falling back to google hasn't really been as painful as I thought it would be.

the_duke 8y ago
I think it's very much search topic related: * DDG is atrocious for anything other than English * Programing/IT searches often yield garbage on DDG while on Google a good result is within the first 3. I have it as my default now too, but "!g" is a constant companion. === Regarding Google and Amazon being unstoppable... it seemed the same once for Microsoft. Once they get too big/powerful (which they arguably already are), they could be broken up or severely hamstrung by legislation. They can also start to stagnate and be out-done by new competition based on new technologies. All of those seem unlikely right now, but 10 years can change a lot. Of course both Google and Amazon both enjoy large network effects and are pretty capital intensive. Which is typical for mono/oligopolies.
- megous 8y ago
  I wish I could tell ddg that I only care about postgresql. It seems heavily skewed to oracle/ms server when searching anything sql related. Perhaps because it's powered by Bing?

dec0dedab0de 8y ago

You know what can stop google? a search engine that assumes I want every word in my query, or even better a search engine that honors a string in quotes to mean these words in this order. When did google stop doing this? edit: This wouldn't stop google, it would just make that part of my life as easy as it was 10 years ago.

the_duke 8y ago
I'm also annoyed by this. Google tries to out-smart the user and often yields garbage or generic popular crap even when looking for something very specific. I want my quotes back too! An even bigger issue: Due to SEO and ranking benefits for popular sites, it's basically impossible to discover quality content by smaller sites/blogs via Google. Unless you go to like page 10+, where you also get a lot of irrelevant stuff.
- est31 8y ago
  This hit me very recently when I was doing a crypto project [1] and ASN.1 DER came up. I'm german and "der" means "this" in German so google just treats "der someword" as search for "someword". So when I want to know e.g. how strings are being DER encoded, I google "DER string" and am getting results for G-string underwear and some duden.de website but nothing about ASN.1 DER strings on the first page :/. At least when you google for "DER integer" a post about ASN.1 values is the fourth result. [1]: https://github.com/est31/rcgen https://github.com/est31/rcgen
- frankc 8y ago
  With regards to your last point, ive had some good luck with millionshort.com, which lets you remove some portion of top sites from your results.
fixermark 8y ago
Documentation suggests Google never stopped doing this. https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?hl=en https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?hl=en suggests "phrase inside quotes" is still exact match. And if you put a single word in "quotes", that indicates to Google the word must be included in the results (I determined this by searching for something where some words were omitted, then clicking the small "Must include:" link under a result and noting how the search changed). Documentation around this isn't as good as it could be, and it's rough that the search codeset changed when G+ came around so that +word no longer meant "Must include."

birksherty 8y ago

Lot of people here are using DuckDuckGO. I tried that and some others that respect privacy. I like them but there is only one reason why I still use google. Convenience. I do lots of movie, tv show, sports and Famous People search. Almost always I find what I am looking for directly on the google result page. If I have to open those links, I will have to go through all that js tracking and bloated sites. Google is fast. I keep track of sports scores and schedule through google search. Bing also does all of these.

cpeterso 8y ago

Given the size and increasingly walled gardens of the web, is it even possible for a new search engine to launch in 2019 and compete with Google? Consider how much time and money Microsoft sunk into Bing. If Microsoft turned off its Bing API, could DDG spin up its own crawlers?

ignoramous 8y ago

It's not just duckduckgo that's privacy focused. https://startpage.com https://startpage.com is rad [0]. I've moved to using it from duckduckgo and haven't felt I've missed Google, at all. They pay Google to proxy their non-personalized search results, and let you view webpages "anonymously" [1], as well. [0] https://www.startpage.com/en/search/download-startpage-plugin.html https://www.startpage.com/en/search/download-startpage-plugi... [1] https://www.startpage.com/en/search/proxy-help.html https://www.startpage.com/en/search/proxy-help.html

zavi 8y ago
And more importantly startpage.com is a European service while DDG is an American service. It's extremely important for us in HN community to keep promoting European services regardless of product considerations because anything American is by definition toxic and should not exist.

misiti3780 8y ago

I switch my default search from Google to DDG a few months ago (In the chrome address bar). I like DDG but two things i have noticed 1. DDG image search is far far inferior to Google's 2. DDG response time is slower than Google's Other than that, I love it and all of the little tools they add for developers (color wheel etc)

lioeters 8y ago

Nothing can stop DuckDuckGo. At least I hope so, I've been using it regularly for some years now and I love the Google-free experience.

darepublic 8y ago

I've had more success finding TV shows on ddg. Google still a bit better for coding questions

ryekg 8y ago

I have always used DuckDuckGo instead of Google and to be fair, they both perform the same way except DuckDuckGo provides more privacy which is something that is important to people anyways.

cabaalis 8y ago

Google seems to have a strong hold on up-to-date news sources. I find myself going to !g when trying to find information on a current event.

gator-io 8y ago

For what it's worth, DuckDuckGo has .25% global market share on desktops: https://netmarketshare.com/search-engine-market-share.aspx https://netmarketshare.com/search-engine-market-share.aspx In the US, it's .66%.

hackermeows 8y ago

I stopped using Google due to intrusive ads, if you have someone in your family that have a chronic disease and you've ever googled it, get ready to be blasted with ads reminding of that every-time you watch youtube/browse the web. There are just some things I don't want to be reminded of Google !

taf2 8y ago

Isn't DDG just bing with a different interface? Or do they actually build their own index now or am I just completely confused and totally wrong about my assumptions?

siproprio 8y ago

It is not even trying, considering how slow DuckDuckGo is to load compared to Google and Bing. At least it is slow in my country anyway.

valarauca1 8y ago

I've switched to DDG and I've hardly looked back. Google's search has been seriously declined in quality. Most search operators [1] are no longer supported. Even those directly in the "tools" menu don't work. For example if you search "Nothing Can Stop Google. DuckDuckGo Is Trying Anyways site:medium.com", and set a custom date range to sometime last year. You'll see results which state this blog post was posted in 2018-October-31 for example, or which every date you prefer because I assume they just fuzzily fit the post date -into- that range. You can make google tell you this blog post is 2+ years old. The Google.com I found useful in the early 00's even had document qualifiers so I could search for strings, but filter to just PDF's, or HTML, or JPG's. Now I have to pay for these features via a Google App-Engine private search instance. It just feels like having somebody spit in your face. When features were free, but they quietly became pay-to-play without zero warning. [1] https://bynd.com/news-ideas/google-advanced-search-comprehensive-list-google-search-operators https://bynd.com/news-ideas/google-advanced-search-comprehen...

vatueil 8y ago
Searching by filetype seems to still work fine, e.g.: https://www.google.com/search?q=linux+filetype:pdf https://www.google.com/search?q=linux+filetype:pdf
- r3bl 8y ago
  I find it to be an awesome way of finding a document that's actually a few page long list of random document titles, one of which happen to be the one you're searching for.

RileyJames 8y ago

I use DDG now, and have been for about a year. I still !g a lot, but I’m alright with that. I wish it were a shortcut to add !g to a query. One of the key things I’ve realised in the switching is that I actually LIKE a lot of the changes google has made from initial “just show the 10 results” like DDG does today. I like the news carousel, when I’m searching for a news related article. I like all the local info on a cafe / store, when I’m searching for it. The google implementation is WAY better than Yelp listings (constantly nagging me to install an app, Yelp seems to satisfy no one, it’s a middle man resource no one needs) But overall I’m happy using DDG for a first crack, knowing my privacy is valued, and moving onto google when I need to. It feels like I’m supporting a more private future, now, without hindering myself severely in the process. I’m happy with that compromise. Hopefully one day google will not be necessary. Again, my one wish. Give me the !g tag in one click, one swipe, what ever. Don’t make me type it into the query box and search again!

rixrax 8y ago

I wish they got domain like ddg.io|ai|... [that appear to be available too]. It would be so much easier to quickly type that in when DDG doesn't happen to be a default search engine somewhere. Instead of typoing it in a hurry to demo it to someone.

m-ou-se 8y ago
They have duck.com and ddg.gg. Both Firefox and Chromium make <ctrl-enter> wrap the url in 'www.' and '.com', so 'duck<ctrl-enter>' works.
- rixrax 8y ago
  Thanks for this! I wasn't aware of either.

thrifter 8y ago

For anyone interested in useful, tested !bangs, I made a dedicated website of my favorites: https://duckgobang.com/ https://duckgobang.com/

jeromebaek 8y ago

Why are people worrying about Bing shutting down? Bing brings in billions, and it's bigger than Twitter. Not to mention that Microsoft needs a search stack for the rest of the company.

alientida 8y ago

So if I wanted to slowly start moving away from Google, what would you recommend for an email provider?

agumonkey 8y ago

I stopped using chrome lately, memory usage of firefox is 4x less, sometimes 8x.. I also have ddg as homepage for ages. For most quick queries it's useful. For google worthy queries you have bangs.

xj9 8y ago

stop google? why? i don't even care about google. they are 100% irrelevant to me. i'm sure some of the email i send touches their servers, but i self host all of my services including search. i do some of my own indexing, but metasearch works well for me right now. https://null.media https://null.media

luis8 8y ago

I wonder how feasible it will be for duckduckgo to release a desktop program that will store all our searches and do some machine learning "magic" locally. We would get custom made searches and privacy as well.

piyush_soni 8y ago

I don't think a lot of us here realize DDG is Bing. And also that it's heavy on marketing.