4 ms·

Every time ddg is mentioned on hn, it receives a lot of praise in the form I use this or that bang - in essence negating its usefulness as a search engine and m

Every time ddg is mentioned on hn, it receives a lot of praise in the form I use this or that bang - in essence negating its usefulness as a search engine and making it a glorified shortcut app.

save_ferris 8y ago
I'd counter that with the fact that DDG returns SO answer cards and various cheatsheets when searched (i.e. "tmux cheatsheet".) I think Google beats DDG in some ways (better news search results, for example.) But DDG is a much better programmer-focused search engine IMO, they just don't market themselves that way. Back to your bang feature point, I really appreciate that DDG makes it easy to search Google instead by simply using !g. Tech companies don't always make it easy to use a competitor, and there's something to be said for DDG not creating barriers to using other search engines.
- dontbenebby 8y ago
  >Back to your bang feature point, I really appreciate that DDG makes it easy to search Google instead by simply using !g. Or you can use !s to use StartPage, which uses Google's results to seed it's own and is more privacy respecting
dontbenebby 8y ago
>Every time ddg is mentioned on hn, it receives a lot of praise in the form I use this or that bang - in essence negating its usefulness as a search engine and making it a glorified shortcut app. A huge chunk of what people do on search engines is essentially using them to query databases. If I know which database my answer is in, why add an extra step? It's actually a point in DDG's favor that they forgo a chance at ad impressions and allow the user to jump directly to what is wanted. (Though to be fair I suspect a big chunk of their income comes from Amazon referrals, which will give them income whether you search on the site or use a bang command)
swsieber 8y ago
I'd now days say google is mostly a shortcut app too. 90%+ of the time I'm really just loozing for data from a well known aggregator (wikipedia, reddit, stack overflow, rotten tomatoes, etc.) Google basically enhances that in three ways: * It takes away the choice/effort behind selecting a source. * It combines multiple sources in an ok way * It gives ok results for things that aren't really just shortcut queries
thirdsun 8y ago
That's what I was thinking as well. I think I prefer to have those features and workflows one universal shortcut away in a launcher like Alfred: https://www.alfredapp.com/ https://www.alfredapp.com/

Every time ddg is mentioned on hn, it receives a lot of praise in the form I use this or that bang - in essence negating its usefulness as a search engine and making it a glorified shortcut app.

save_ferris 8y ago

I'd counter that with the fact that DDG returns SO answer cards and various cheatsheets when searched (i.e. "tmux cheatsheet".) I think Google beats DDG in some ways (better news search results, for example.) But DDG is a much better programmer-focused search engine IMO, they just don't market themselves that way. Back to your bang feature point, I really appreciate that DDG makes it easy to search Google instead by simply using !g. Tech companies don't always make it easy to use a competitor, and there's something to be said for DDG not creating barriers to using other search engines.

dontbenebby 8y ago
>Back to your bang feature point, I really appreciate that DDG makes it easy to search Google instead by simply using !g. Or you can use !s to use StartPage, which uses Google's results to seed it's own and is more privacy respecting

dontbenebby 8y ago

>Every time ddg is mentioned on hn, it receives a lot of praise in the form I use this or that bang - in essence negating its usefulness as a search engine and making it a glorified shortcut app. A huge chunk of what people do on search engines is essentially using them to query databases. If I know which database my answer is in, why add an extra step? It's actually a point in DDG's favor that they forgo a chance at ad impressions and allow the user to jump directly to what is wanted. (Though to be fair I suspect a big chunk of their income comes from Amazon referrals, which will give them income whether you search on the site or use a bang command)

swsieber 8y ago

I'd now days say google is mostly a shortcut app too. 90%+ of the time I'm really just loozing for data from a well known aggregator (wikipedia, reddit, stack overflow, rotten tomatoes, etc.) Google basically enhances that in three ways: * It takes away the choice/effort behind selecting a source. * It combines multiple sources in an ok way * It gives ok results for things that aren't really just shortcut queries

thirdsun 8y ago

That's what I was thinking as well. I think I prefer to have those features and workflows one universal shortcut away in a launcher like Alfred: https://www.alfredapp.com/ https://www.alfredapp.com/