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Preach brother preach! I made this move myself many months ago & never looked back. There is basically nothing I miss about dropping chrome/ google search. My

by 40four 7y ago

Preach brother preach! I made this move myself many months ago & never looked back. There is basically nothing I miss about dropping chrome/ google search. My web experience is indiscernible using Firefox & DDG. One of the only minor things I've had to adjust to is prefixing searches with my local city & state when I'm searching for things in my hometown (Imagine that! My search engine website isn't tracking my physical location!). A small price to pay for a HUGE gain in privacy & peace of mind, knowing I'm no longer being exploited and rolled up into a package, sold to advertisers. I got so sick of seeing targeted ads in EVERY website I visit. Something I searched the day before. Maybe a website I visited a few days ago. Then I have to look at ads for those things for the next week straight!? No thanks. After making two super easy changes, Chrome -> Firefox & Google search -> DDG, I almost NEVER see creepy, annoying targeted ads anymore. It's amazing!

eyeundersand 7y ago
It might be just me but I don't get why people on here tend to be critical about DDG's usability. I made the switch a year and a half back and I seriously don't miss anything. There are some niche cases where it doesn't work, you can just use the bangs in those cases. The trade-off, like you said, is well worth it. (Upon typing this, I realize I'm just echoing your comment. Either way, leaving this up to provide one more voice in support.)
- bluGill 7y ago
  When I first tried DDG - more than 5 years ago - it was worse. I was unable to find the answers I needed and ended up back at google. I tried off and on a few times over the years, and about a year ago I found it good enough to switch. The few times DDG doesn't find what I need I tried google: it too failed to find what I needed. In short, if you last tried DDG a long time ago try again, it is much better.
  - reaperducer 7y ago
    The few times DDG doesn't find what I need I tried google: it too failed to find what I needed. I used to be one of those people who when I couldn't find something on the duck would repeat the search with Google. But more and more, especially in the last six months, if I can't find it on Duck, it's not on Google, either. Duck gives me irrelevant results to those queries. Google gives me irrelevant pop-culture results to those queries.
  - freedomben 7y ago
    > if you last tried DDG a long time ago try again, it is much better. Very much true. Even moreso as of the last 6 months DDG has been even better for some things, especially if they are political in any way. You'll find some crap sites on DDG but you'll also find what you're looking for. Sometimes I want to find crap sites or non-mainstream stuff, and only DDG surfaces that. I do fear a bit tho once DDG gains more popularity, the SEO games may not be kind to DDG.
  - amiga_500 7y ago
    When I use ddg I find more relevant emacs blogs than with Google, which has endless crap in their results
- iudqnolq 7y ago
  DDG is essentially Bing made more private, with a little Yandex. I use it, because I like the privacy, but I don't think they deserve the credit for search result quality.
  - Enginerrrd 7y ago
    Neither does google anymore though. Their search quality has gone hill dramatically in the last 4-5 years. It basically correlates with wikipedia no longer being the first result of most searches; it was largely replaced with commercialized garbage. Getting the highest quality, unbiased information you asked for isn't really their first priority anymore and it shows. I tried DDG when it first came out and found it unacceptable. Currently though, it's totally usable and sometimes better than Google.
    - iudqnolq 7y ago
      Are you saying Google scrapes Yandex and Bing? If not, your response isn't relavant to my comment. Google may have gotten worse, duckduckgo may have gotten better (I use DDG for most searches, so not sure) but the case for duckduckgo doesn't involve them having a great search team, since they don't have their own index.
      - Enginerrrd 7y ago
        Ah, I understand what you were saying now. Your original comment doesn't quite read like that to me so I misinterpreted it.
    - v7p1Qbt1im 7y ago
      The reason Google, or search engines in general, seem to be getting worse in the eyes of some users, is not the result of the functioning of the engine necessarily, but rather of the content of the web itself. The whole web is organized and optimized more and more for clicks and watch time. It would only make sense that the results seem to be correspondingly worse.
      - 7y ago
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > I made the switch a year and a half back and I seriously don't miss anything. This, but more so. Starting a couple of years ago, Google search quality has fallen enough, combined with DDG's search quality rising enough, that I generally get better results from DDG than Google now.
- noirscape 7y ago
  I tried to switch over to DDG 6 months ago but wound up reverting to Google. I sometimes end up browsing fora with poor search tools, and that is commonly when I use a search engine (that or if I'm fact checking stuff, but that's a different usecase). Duck Duck Go always ended up failing to get the results whereas Google managed to get the correct results. I also have had similar negative experiences with DDG for searching stackoverflow. Google isn't ideal, but at least they do always end up getting me what I'm looking for. With DDG I oftentimes get completely unrelated results which just happen to match the keywords I was using. Finally the image search would always invariably return porn on DuckDuckGo instead of things relating to the query I was looking for.
judge2020 7y ago
> I got so sick of seeing targeted ads in EVERY website I visit. Could you say if the number of ads you've clicked changed (went up or down) when not seeing targeted ads compared to when seeing targeted ads?
justzisguyuknow 7y ago
I also switched earlier this year, and my only complaint is that FF's android browser has some weird quirks with how it registers touches, and sometimes doesn't actually click a link when I tap it. However, the value of actual ad-blocking and increased privacy far outweigh the minor frustration of this UI issue.
- nkrisc 7y ago
  > FF's android browser has some weird quirks with how it registers touches It absolutely does, and it drives me up the wall some times. In fact, try visiting this site on Firefox Android and try upvoting something. It's nearly impossible.
  - ce4 7y ago
    Double tap and swipe down to quickly zoom into the button temporarily and then zoom out again. It's fast and doesnt require two hands for a pinch gesture. Also make sure to check "settings => accessibilty => always enable zoom"
MisterOctober 7y ago
Yep, same here -- switched to DDG a couple years ago and back to FF from Chrome [except when required for the job] a few months ago. Results excellent. I understand that a lotta folks are dissatisfied with DDG's search performance, but it's been plum dandy for me. In particular, since most of what I'm searching is development-related, my experience has been that DDG results are usually _better_ that goog, i.e., I find that sites with reasonable content and SO usually rank above ad-sodden or rubbish-quality-SEO-trap site.
- heisenhuegel 7y ago
  I used DDG as the primary search engine in the past and relied a lot on bangs (!s, !g). I'm currently trying the new search from Cliqz (https://beta.cliqz.com https://beta.cliqz.com), which is similar as it also supports some of the bangs, but I find the search results better than DDG, especially for German searches. It is still work in progress though. Spell correction, for example, is not good yet in cliqz.

by 40four 7y ago

eyeundersand 7y ago

It might be just me but I don't get why people on here tend to be critical about DDG's usability. I made the switch a year and a half back and I seriously don't miss anything. There are some niche cases where it doesn't work, you can just use the bangs in those cases. The trade-off, like you said, is well worth it. (Upon typing this, I realize I'm just echoing your comment. Either way, leaving this up to provide one more voice in support.)

bluGill 7y ago
When I first tried DDG - more than 5 years ago - it was worse. I was unable to find the answers I needed and ended up back at google. I tried off and on a few times over the years, and about a year ago I found it good enough to switch. The few times DDG doesn't find what I need I tried google: it too failed to find what I needed. In short, if you last tried DDG a long time ago try again, it is much better.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  The few times DDG doesn't find what I need I tried google: it too failed to find what I needed. I used to be one of those people who when I couldn't find something on the duck would repeat the search with Google. But more and more, especially in the last six months, if I can't find it on Duck, it's not on Google, either. Duck gives me irrelevant results to those queries. Google gives me irrelevant pop-culture results to those queries.
- freedomben 7y ago
  > if you last tried DDG a long time ago try again, it is much better. Very much true. Even moreso as of the last 6 months DDG has been even better for some things, especially if they are political in any way. You'll find some crap sites on DDG but you'll also find what you're looking for. Sometimes I want to find crap sites or non-mainstream stuff, and only DDG surfaces that. I do fear a bit tho once DDG gains more popularity, the SEO games may not be kind to DDG.
- amiga_500 7y ago
  When I use ddg I find more relevant emacs blogs than with Google, which has endless crap in their results
iudqnolq 7y ago
DDG is essentially Bing made more private, with a little Yandex. I use it, because I like the privacy, but I don't think they deserve the credit for search result quality.
- Enginerrrd 7y ago
  Neither does google anymore though. Their search quality has gone hill dramatically in the last 4-5 years. It basically correlates with wikipedia no longer being the first result of most searches; it was largely replaced with commercialized garbage. Getting the highest quality, unbiased information you asked for isn't really their first priority anymore and it shows. I tried DDG when it first came out and found it unacceptable. Currently though, it's totally usable and sometimes better than Google.
  - iudqnolq 7y ago
    Are you saying Google scrapes Yandex and Bing? If not, your response isn't relavant to my comment. Google may have gotten worse, duckduckgo may have gotten better (I use DDG for most searches, so not sure) but the case for duckduckgo doesn't involve them having a great search team, since they don't have their own index.
    - Enginerrrd 7y ago
      Ah, I understand what you were saying now. Your original comment doesn't quite read like that to me so I misinterpreted it.
  - v7p1Qbt1im 7y ago
    The reason Google, or search engines in general, seem to be getting worse in the eyes of some users, is not the result of the functioning of the engine necessarily, but rather of the content of the web itself. The whole web is organized and optimized more and more for clicks and watch time. It would only make sense that the results seem to be correspondingly worse.
    - 7y ago
JohnFen 7y ago
> I made the switch a year and a half back and I seriously don't miss anything. This, but more so. Starting a couple of years ago, Google search quality has fallen enough, combined with DDG's search quality rising enough, that I generally get better results from DDG than Google now.
noirscape 7y ago
I tried to switch over to DDG 6 months ago but wound up reverting to Google. I sometimes end up browsing fora with poor search tools, and that is commonly when I use a search engine (that or if I'm fact checking stuff, but that's a different usecase). Duck Duck Go always ended up failing to get the results whereas Google managed to get the correct results. I also have had similar negative experiences with DDG for searching stackoverflow. Google isn't ideal, but at least they do always end up getting me what I'm looking for. With DDG I oftentimes get completely unrelated results which just happen to match the keywords I was using. Finally the image search would always invariably return porn on DuckDuckGo instead of things relating to the query I was looking for.

judge2020 7y ago

> I got so sick of seeing targeted ads in EVERY website I visit. Could you say if the number of ads you've clicked changed (went up or down) when not seeing targeted ads compared to when seeing targeted ads?

justzisguyuknow 7y ago

I also switched earlier this year, and my only complaint is that FF's android browser has some weird quirks with how it registers touches, and sometimes doesn't actually click a link when I tap it. However, the value of actual ad-blocking and increased privacy far outweigh the minor frustration of this UI issue.

nkrisc 7y ago
> FF's android browser has some weird quirks with how it registers touches It absolutely does, and it drives me up the wall some times. In fact, try visiting this site on Firefox Android and try upvoting something. It's nearly impossible.
- ce4 7y ago
  Double tap and swipe down to quickly zoom into the button temporarily and then zoom out again. It's fast and doesnt require two hands for a pinch gesture. Also make sure to check "settings => accessibilty => always enable zoom"

MisterOctober 7y ago

Yep, same here -- switched to DDG a couple years ago and back to FF from Chrome [except when required for the job] a few months ago. Results excellent. I understand that a lotta folks are dissatisfied with DDG's search performance, but it's been plum dandy for me. In particular, since most of what I'm searching is development-related, my experience has been that DDG results are usually _better_ that goog, i.e., I find that sites with reasonable content and SO usually rank above ad-sodden or rubbish-quality-SEO-trap site.

heisenhuegel 7y ago
I used DDG as the primary search engine in the past and relied a lot on bangs (!s, !g). I'm currently trying the new search from Cliqz (https://beta.cliqz.com https://beta.cliqz.com), which is similar as it also supports some of the bangs, but I find the search results better than DDG, especially for German searches. It is still work in progress though. Spell correction, for example, is not good yet in cliqz.