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Yes, people have been switching to DDG for years now, yet still google is utterly dominant. Candidly, I'm mystified by the complaints. Google's search works gr

Yes, people have been switching to DDG for years now, yet still google is utterly dominant. Candidly, I'm mystified by the complaints. Google's search works great, and has for years for myself and everyone I know IRL. Any post about any product that isn't brand new on HN is going to get comments along the line of "Company X? Their product is garbage, it used to be great! I've been using <alternative that requires a ton of extra effort to setup> and once I got it going it was amazing!"

snazz 7y ago
I won’t argue about your experience, but DDG isn’t any harder to use than Google aside from the fact that you need to change your default search engine. That’s not a “ton of extra effort to setup”.
- crispinb 7y ago
  When trying DDG again for a while, my use of g! gradually increases as a necessary tactic to surface what I'm looking for. When it gets to over about 80% I go back to using Google again with a sigh.
  - rjf72 7y ago
    Can you give some examples? I think a few years ago this was somewhat reasonable but in my opinion DDG has not only matched but surpassed Google for most searches. As an example (to not make this as if I'm only asking you to do the lifting) a random search that's relevant for me would be 'spacex rocket thrust.' Since Google's results are based on arbitrary tracking and whatever per user magic marketing metrics they decide to apply, it's not repeatable but I imagine you'll probably get at least something similar. We should get identical results for DDG: ----------- Google: - 4 redundant wiki pages (all link to each other) - 2 redundant links to spacex.com site (all link to each other) - 1 irrelevant theverge article on an arbitrary launch - 1 space.com link with some relevant information DDG: - 1 relevant wiki page - 2 redundant links to spacex.com site - 1 tangential article from space.com - 1 space.com link with some relevant information - 1 spaceflight101.com link with extremely relevant information - 1 irrelevant link from teslarati talking about a 'spacex rocket package' for a roadster - 1 cnn article comparing rocket thrusts - 1 redundant wiki page ----------- That was literally the first thing I searched for and I think DDG is clearly better there, though both overall results are quite poor. One big thing is a much better diversity of sources with much less redundancy. But the thing that really pushes this example over the edge is the spaceflight101. It not only provides the most relevant information by a rather wide margin, but is also a critical source for a wide array of related news, specs, and other information. The reason I think both searches are quite poor is because of how much all search engines today lack any notion of context whatsoever. When I search for 'spacex engine thrust' am I searching for technical information, or am I searching for media information relating to recent launches or developments? That's something that ought be able derived from a contextual analysis of my query, yet nonetheless it quite obviously is not! Google took us that big leap from 'Abraham Lincoln' not returning hardcore porn, but it feels like the progress we've made since then has been pretty.. meh. And I feel the last few years have seen an overall decline in search quality, but a relative increase in quality for the formerly secondary players such as DDG. In other words it "feels" as though Google of ~4 years ago > DDG today > Google Today. But of course this is, in some ways, going to come down to the person.
    - crispinb 7y ago
      No I don't have examples to hand. Search isn't something I'm interested in really - it's just a kind of commodity to me that I want to get out of my way. The trend is entirely clear for my search usage though - I just don't find what I'm looking for much of the time with DDG, so end up g!'ing. When that usage reaches a certain subjective redundancy threshhold I switch back to google.

snazz 7y ago

I won’t argue about your experience, but DDG isn’t any harder to use than Google aside from the fact that you need to change your default search engine. That’s not a “ton of extra effort to setup”.

crispinb 7y ago
When trying DDG again for a while, my use of g! gradually increases as a necessary tactic to surface what I'm looking for. When it gets to over about 80% I go back to using Google again with a sigh.
- rjf72 7y ago
  Can you give some examples? I think a few years ago this was somewhat reasonable but in my opinion DDG has not only matched but surpassed Google for most searches. As an example (to not make this as if I'm only asking you to do the lifting) a random search that's relevant for me would be 'spacex rocket thrust.' Since Google's results are based on arbitrary tracking and whatever per user magic marketing metrics they decide to apply, it's not repeatable but I imagine you'll probably get at least something similar. We should get identical results for DDG: ----------- Google: - 4 redundant wiki pages (all link to each other) - 2 redundant links to spacex.com site (all link to each other) - 1 irrelevant theverge article on an arbitrary launch - 1 space.com link with some relevant information DDG: - 1 relevant wiki page - 2 redundant links to spacex.com site - 1 tangential article from space.com - 1 space.com link with some relevant information - 1 spaceflight101.com link with extremely relevant information - 1 irrelevant link from teslarati talking about a 'spacex rocket package' for a roadster - 1 cnn article comparing rocket thrusts - 1 redundant wiki page ----------- That was literally the first thing I searched for and I think DDG is clearly better there, though both overall results are quite poor. One big thing is a much better diversity of sources with much less redundancy. But the thing that really pushes this example over the edge is the spaceflight101. It not only provides the most relevant information by a rather wide margin, but is also a critical source for a wide array of related news, specs, and other information. The reason I think both searches are quite poor is because of how much all search engines today lack any notion of context whatsoever. When I search for 'spacex engine thrust' am I searching for technical information, or am I searching for media information relating to recent launches or developments? That's something that ought be able derived from a contextual analysis of my query, yet nonetheless it quite obviously is not! Google took us that big leap from 'Abraham Lincoln' not returning hardcore porn, but it feels like the progress we've made since then has been pretty.. meh. And I feel the last few years have seen an overall decline in search quality, but a relative increase in quality for the formerly secondary players such as DDG. In other words it "feels" as though Google of ~4 years ago > DDG today > Google Today. But of course this is, in some ways, going to come down to the person.
  - crispinb 7y ago
    No I don't have examples to hand. Search isn't something I'm interested in really - it's just a kind of commodity to me that I want to get out of my way. The trend is entirely clear for my search usage though - I just don't find what I'm looking for much of the time with DDG, so end up g!'ing. When that usage reaches a certain subjective redundancy threshhold I switch back to google.