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"...Google, Bing, Blekko and other big players access..." Wait, since when was Blekko big? Also, why has every article about search engines recently ended up t

"...Google, Bing, Blekko and other big players access..." Wait, since when was Blekko big? Also, why has every article about search engines recently ended up talking about DDG? :p

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
hitonagashi 16y ago
http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
lukeschlather 16y ago
I would expect an article about search engines to mention all the credibly useful search engines. Though I usually use Google, if we remove that as an option my next choice is DDG.
rudiger 16y ago
Blekko have around 800 servers in their data center, each with 64 GB RAM and eight SATA drives. http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2010/12/the-secrets-behind-blekkos-search-technology.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2010/12/the-secrets-behind-... That's pretty big in my book.
- mayank 16y ago
  I think he meant in terms of traffic and popularity. If you're measuring hardware, "large" is so very relative. Someone's going to beat you with a bigger stick, unless you're the NSA.
redthrowaway 16y ago
>why has every article about search engines recently ended up talking about DDG? Because they're the new darling, and tech types like them. It's always nice to see someone come in as a substantial underdog and make a real effort to succeed. Also, their results seem to be at least as good as Google's which is pretty impressive.
- nostrademons 16y ago
  "Also, their results seem to be at least as good as Google's which is pretty impressive." They're Bing with some twiddles on top. DDG uses Yahoo! BOSS, which is Yahoo's API to its search service, which is now powered by Bing. Your DDG results all originally come from Bing's index, they just get filtered and possibly re-ranked by some custom code Gabriel's written.
  - epi0Bauqu 16y ago
    Actually, that's not true and it really isn't hard to verify so I'm not sure why you keep saying that.
    - coderdude 16y ago
      Where are you getting your results?
      - epi0Bauqu 16y ago
        From the FAQ: How do you get your results? From over 30 sources, including DuckDuckBot (our own crawler), crowd-sourced sites, Yahoo! BOSS, embed.ly, WolframAlpha, EntireWeb, Bing & Blekko. Just do some searches and compare to Bing, etc., e.g. http://duckduckgo.com/?q=hacker+news http://duckduckgo.com/?q=hacker+news vs http://www.bing.com/search?q=hacker%20news http://www.bing.com/search?q=hacker%20news vs http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=hacker%20news http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=hacker%20news
        coderdude 16y ago
        Alright. I think the spirit of what our ancestor poster was saying is that it's mostly just powered by an API (by which most of the "work" is being done). In a previous discussion I asked if you were going to do full-scale Web crawls, and you said: >We never stopped crawling; we just scaled it back for specific purposes, mainly now for spam detection and zero-click info So if you've scaled back the crawling and are mostly using it just for spam detection and zero-click info (forgive my ignorance, but I'm not sure what zero-click info is) then does that mean that you are getting the majority of your result data from outside APIs like BOSS? Edit: And does that mean that you store those pages in your database and use your own ranking algorithm, or are you using their ranked results for a query and then rearranging them on the fly?
jasonkester 16y ago
That's how news works. This story is a story because DDG made it one: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html Your job as a startup is to sit around all day coming up with seemingly important news stories that just happen to revolve around your company. Get some press contacts to feed those stories to, and you're sorted for marketing. Bonus points for attacking the Big Competitor in a public way, thus forcing major news outlets to cover the "story" and ask Big Competitor for a quote about you.
- epi0Bauqu 16y ago
  I didn't make this story. I replied to a comment on twitter that was @replied to me and then Pete came to me for a quote.

"...Google, Bing, Blekko and other big players access..." Wait, since when was Blekko big? Also, why has every article about search engines recently ended up talking about DDG? :p

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

hitonagashi 16y ago

http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

lukeschlather 16y ago

I would expect an article about search engines to mention all the credibly useful search engines. Though I usually use Google, if we remove that as an option my next choice is DDG.

rudiger 16y ago

Blekko have around 800 servers in their data center, each with 64 GB RAM and eight SATA drives. http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2010/12/the-secrets-behind-blekkos-search-technology.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2010/12/the-secrets-behind-... That's pretty big in my book.

mayank 16y ago
I think he meant in terms of traffic and popularity. If you're measuring hardware, "large" is so very relative. Someone's going to beat you with a bigger stick, unless you're the NSA.

redthrowaway 16y ago

>why has every article about search engines recently ended up talking about DDG? Because they're the new darling, and tech types like them. It's always nice to see someone come in as a substantial underdog and make a real effort to succeed. Also, their results seem to be at least as good as Google's which is pretty impressive.

nostrademons 16y ago
"Also, their results seem to be at least as good as Google's which is pretty impressive." They're Bing with some twiddles on top. DDG uses Yahoo! BOSS, which is Yahoo's API to its search service, which is now powered by Bing. Your DDG results all originally come from Bing's index, they just get filtered and possibly re-ranked by some custom code Gabriel's written.
- epi0Bauqu 16y ago
  Actually, that's not true and it really isn't hard to verify so I'm not sure why you keep saying that.
  - coderdude 16y ago
    Where are you getting your results?
    - epi0Bauqu 16y ago
      From the FAQ: How do you get your results? From over 30 sources, including DuckDuckBot (our own crawler), crowd-sourced sites, Yahoo! BOSS, embed.ly, WolframAlpha, EntireWeb, Bing & Blekko. Just do some searches and compare to Bing, etc., e.g. http://duckduckgo.com/?q=hacker+news http://duckduckgo.com/?q=hacker+news vs http://www.bing.com/search?q=hacker%20news http://www.bing.com/search?q=hacker%20news vs http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=hacker%20news http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=hacker%20news
      - coderdude 16y ago
        Alright. I think the spirit of what our ancestor poster was saying is that it's mostly just powered by an API (by which most of the "work" is being done). In a previous discussion I asked if you were going to do full-scale Web crawls, and you said: >We never stopped crawling; we just scaled it back for specific purposes, mainly now for spam detection and zero-click info So if you've scaled back the crawling and are mostly using it just for spam detection and zero-click info (forgive my ignorance, but I'm not sure what zero-click info is) then does that mean that you are getting the majority of your result data from outside APIs like BOSS? Edit: And does that mean that you store those pages in your database and use your own ranking algorithm, or are you using their ranked results for a query and then rearranging them on the fly?

jasonkester 16y ago

That's how news works. This story is a story because DDG made it one: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html Your job as a startup is to sit around all day coming up with seemingly important news stories that just happen to revolve around your company. Get some press contacts to feed those stories to, and you're sorted for marketing. Bonus points for attacking the Big Competitor in a public way, thus forcing major news outlets to cover the "story" and ask Big Competitor for a quote about you.

epi0Bauqu 16y ago
I didn't make this story. I replied to a comment on twitter that was @replied to me and then Pete came to me for a quote.