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DuckDuckGo Is Now a Default Search Engine Option on Android in the EU

586 points by cheeseyboi 7y ago

Zhyl 7y ago
Duckduckgo has seen some pretty strong growth [0]. Given that this is merely an option (most people won't change from the default, or will pick Google out of familiarity), I'd be interested to see how much of an effect this will have on their numbers. I think a secondary issue Duckduckgo and other competitors have to contend with is the idea that nothing other than Google is worth the time of day. I know every thread on HN has people queuing up to say how DDG results aren't as good as Google results (or to say how they switched a while ago and DDG is good enough for their needs), but from a user perspective we can see a much more level playing field in Google vs DDG et al (2020) as opposed to Google vs Altavista et al (1998). [0] https://duckduckgo.com/traffic https://duckduckgo.com/traffic
- ngold 7y ago
  Duck duck go doesn't roll off the tongue as well as Google but it is my default search engine. The genuis thing they implemented was !g at the end of a search term. Now I can get two sources of search info for problems. Most things ddg is fine, but technical problems, you can't have enough options.
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
    I'm still waiting to hear people argue over the correct pronunciation of DDG as the default way to refer to it. Dee Dee Gee Dudge De-dog
    - kick 7y ago
      I'm hoping that people start saying "duck it!" in place of "google it!" (Not going to capitalize google because it's practically genericized and them losing the trademark would make me happy.)
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
  - lipstone 7y ago
    It seems like a low value proposition if their most enticing feature is the ability to view Google results. Moreover, if Google added a "!d" command to show DuckDuckGo results, I can't imagine anyone would use it. A negligible number of people are willing to sacrifice tangible functionality for intangible feelings of privacy that almost certainly will never impact them in any meaningful way. DuckDuckGo needs to make large improvements to their search results if they want to capture anyone outside of this niche market.
    - leereeves 7y ago
      Bangs offer a lot more than just !g. It's actually easier to use some Google services via DDG than via Google itself. For example, the easiest way to access Google Scholar is to use DDG and add !scholar to your search. Likewise for Google Translate and !translate. Like: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hasta+la+vista+!translate&t=ffab https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hasta+la+vista+!translate&t=ffab Then there are all the non-Google bangs. !a to search Amazon. !hn to search Hacker News. And so on.
      - Fnoord 7y ago
        DDG bangs [1] and Google Dorks (I just use the nickname bangs en dorks for either) are both very powerful. For me, Google complements DDG; not the other way around. I do agree with the desire for a European-hosted search engine though. [1] https://duckduckgo.com/bang https://duckduckgo.com/bang
  - saghm 7y ago
    > Duck duck go doesn't roll off the tongue as well as Google but it is my default search engine I mostly use Duck Duck Go now (with liberal use of !g as needed), but the main issue I've had with making it part of my spoken vocabulary using it as a verb. It's much easier to say I "googled" something than "Duck Duck Go'd it" (duck duck went?) or "searched for it on Duck Duck Go". It's been a pet theory of mine for a while that any attempt at getting people to change the words they use is doomed to fail if the replacement contains more syllables (e.g. "letter carrier" for "mailman"), and now I'm wondering if that's something companies should take into account when naming themselves too.
    - chiefalchemist 7y ago
      I think you have a point. I use DDG. I never say "Duck Duck Go it" But I also avoid saying "Google it" cause I don't want to promote bad behavior. I'm going to try saying/typing "DDG it". It's an acronym driven world. Perhaps that'll work? Im
      - _marlowe_ 7y ago
        Quack it
        smichel17 7y ago
        I like this better than "duck it", for whatever reason. Maybe it feels more specific, whereas "duck" could kind of mean anything?
    - fralewsmi 7y ago
      Just say "I googled it on duck duck go". I do find it interesting how it can feel more awkward to say "I searched it" instead of "I googled it"
      - notduncansmith 7y ago
        A few months ago I made a conscious point to start saying “web search” instead of “Google”. Same number of syllables, and it has grown more familiar and natural over time. Same with “tissue” instead of “Kleenex”. I tell my coworkers to “just do a web search for $phrase” and it comes out fine. Several of them have switched to DDG, so the term “web search” is more inclusive anyways :)
foolrush 7y ago
>"DuckDuckGo will soon be offered as an option for default search engine on Android devices across the EU." "[...] option for default [...]"
- microcolonel 7y ago
  The word "default" is used a bit weirdly in Chrome. The "default search engines" are ones intended to provide search to the omni bar; as opposed to other search engines which Chrome just picks up passively when you browse the web (often these are suggested when you start typing).
priitmaxx 7y ago
Same thing happened to Microsoft with browser selection. This does not really change anything. Google search results are just better.
- StavrosK 7y ago
  It does change something: You can now choose Google, instead of having it foisted upon you as a default.
- deeblering4 7y ago
  Great point, IE is just better /s
  - izacus 7y ago
    Your pointless sarcasm is missing the core of the post: IE was dethroned when Firefox and Chrome came along (a hugely superior browsers), not when EU forced MS to provide a choice. Apple has learned from this it seems - you're banned from running any other browser engine on their platforms so this can't happen again on iOS.
- lucb1e 7y ago
  I'm actually interested in this, do you have any data to back that claim up or is it just your personal impression? It's not that I don't share it, but I am curious if indeed it did "not really change anything". By the way, it's not like a marriage where you bind yourself to one party exclusively. I use DDG as default but fall back (for any queries that do not yield good results and are non-sensitive) to Google when necessary. Still an improvement.
  - pnako 7y ago
    I don't see a difference between DDG and Google for content that is new to me (because I can't possibly know better), but if I'm trying to retrieve one page in particular (i.e. use Google as a smart bookmark), in my experience Google works much better than DDG.
- 7y ago
keyle 7y ago
I switched to ddg a couple of months back. This wasn't my first switch away from google, I've always reverted back at some stage. Now I can happily report that it really is 90% as good as google, if not more. It's fast, it's accurate, it's context sensitive. Most importantly I don't feel like I'm being preyed upon. Brilliant.
Fat_Thor 7y ago
I would like to see Mozilla Firefox be forced to do the same. As of now, they don't even notify the user of their default Google search to the users. So millions of their user url typing history are being recorded and sent to Google even if they don't use the search function specifically. This in someway has to violates the GDPR.
- fghgfhg 7y ago
  >they don't even notify the user of their default Google search to the users. After your start typing it clearly says "Serach in Google"
- ryuukk_ 7y ago
  mozilla doesn't have millions of users, it is in the X00k and they depend on selling data, without that, they get no money, they sell their users to google, and then pretend to care about "privacy", their financial privacy, probably ;)
OrgNet 7y ago
I've been using DDG for about 2 years almost exclusively, but in the last month, quality appears to have degraded a lot? I actually switched back to Google last week, unfortunately.
- AdamSC1 7y ago
  There won't have been any major change in the past few months that would have negatively impacted your search results. If you have any specific examples you can always reach out via the feedback box or to staff directly :)
therealmarv 7y ago
It's somehow funny to see that Bing search results are so successful when packaged with privacy in mind into DuckDuckGo. I don't like bing search results, especially for Europe. They are just bad for many local things. The only other search engine beside Google which is interesting and surprising for me is maybe Yandex. It's also not as good as Google in (most of) Europe but it's interesting to see that many things are not censored away in comparison to Bing and Google (political correctness, copyright, nsfw etc. etc.). I'm happy there is an alternative with different culture and jurisdiction.
- Barrin92 7y ago
  > but it's interesting to see that many things are not censored away in comparison to Bing and Google (political correctness, copyright, nsfw etc. etc.). I am not aware that there is a censorship of things that are deemed 'politically incorrect' by either bing or google, and Yandex does comply with European copyright law and other EU legislation like the right-to-be-forgotten.
  - therealmarv 7y ago
    There are differences in search results for sure. Political correctness is also a very broad field. Depending on topic it is sometimes biased and even filtered (e.g. nsfw content) by Google/Bing or search results in Google are too much SEO hacked in comparison to Yandex on first pages. I've never analysed in deep and don't have numbers but for some searches it is worth to check also Yandex. But to be fair Google is often better... it depends on the topic you search for.
  - lostmsu 7y ago
    It became increasingly hard to find EPUBs with DDG or Google.
    - toyg 7y ago
      Is it really? Looking for Calibre libraries is basically considered meme-level effort in places like /r/opendirectories ...
deeblering4 7y ago
Being a year or two late to the party is better than not showing up at all!
Pxtl 7y ago
Honestly, I've been using ddg daily and I find I'm having to hit !g more than I'd like. Google in particular seems better at finding matches that come related to the ordering of the words, whereas ddg I have to quote them (and risk getting no results because I misremembered one word) when searching for a specific phrase.
- vzidex 7y ago
  Same here, I switched to DDG as my default engine at work and find it returns mediocre results for anything tech related and sufficiently niche. On the plus side, it does work fine for everything else - i.e. the typical searches a normal person might do - so I might switch my personal devices to using it soon.
- fiblye 7y ago
  My experience is that google gives me results assuming all of the words I searched aren’t the words I’m looking for, and it uses tangentially related words in place of everything. Even quotes are useless now. Ddg is useless when I’m searching for local things like restaurants and whatnot, but for general searches, it gives me what I’m actually looking for at least 75% of the time. With google, I’m barely hitting 25% these days unless it’s a very well established phrase/concept that I’m searching. In which case, it’s basically functioning as a Wikipedia search engine.
  - bishalb 7y ago
    Can confirm that Google doesn't honor quotes as it used to for exact match search these days. It's a hit and miss.
    - skinkestek 7y ago
      Can someone who knows about the inside of Google tell us why this happened, and especially why it happens when verbatim mode is used alone or in addition to double quotes? I can kind of see why double quotes could be confusing for people pasting without being aware of the double quotes rule, but ignoring verbatim outright as has been the standard for years now is even more confusing to me.
lucb1e 7y ago
I still feel like Google should participate in the bidding and distribute the resulting money (their own and their competitors') to a charity rather than keeping it as profit. They got a fine for a reason, turning it into a profit scheme is a big middle finger to anyone who cares about monopolies. The question would be how to pick a charity in an unbiased manner, but I guess there are a lot of ways to answer that such as picking the most well-funded charity worldwide, or distributing it over the top ten.
- nashashmi 7y ago
  Distilling the android property as separate from search, and selling off the search bar to the highest bidder is the just way to create competition. Where the eu sticks it to Google is when Google is not allowed to participate in the bidding.
  - lucb1e 7y ago
    If it is truly separate from search, then Google Search should pay Android. Since that benefits the same company, and since all competitors are paying Google Search as part of bidding for a place in Android, it's not a level playing field.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
  From an economic perspective, this makes no sense. The economic benefits google gets from Android largely derive from the control over the default search engine. You're asking that they should donate the proceeds of this benefit. Why would they work on Android at all if they could not benefit from it economically? The purpose of the auction and the choice is to allow competition for that default spot, and ensure google isn't using Android to further its market dominance in search. However, the EU has its head on straight enough to understand that being chosen as the default search engine for a device still has serious value. There's nothing anti-competitive about google charging a fair price for this benefit. And fortunately we know, because of the auction process, that the prices are fair (i.e. the other bidders certainly bid a price less than the benefit they expect to derive from being selected).
meerita 7y ago
DDG is my current default search engine in all my devices. It's been 2 years using it. In so few ocassions i needed to rely on Google, but really, you don't need it that much is if Stack Overflow search all day or do overal tech searches. If you need to review more, then use Google and compare search results. But for daily search use it's way ok.
surround 7y ago
How is Apple getting away with iOS? Unlike Android, you cannot cannot change the default browser, maps, messaging apps or anything.
- dannyw 7y ago
  Apple has much less marketshare.
- akersten 7y ago
  My take is it's a consequence of their vertical integration. Maybe they saw all along, by not even allowing the option to change, there's no way they could be forced to present a rolodex of possible choices - since there's only one choice that works. You always had the choice with Android, it just had a default. That didn't smell good to regulators in the EU, and they saw an easy option out of that. Telling Apple to open up their walled garden is a lot harder, compared to Android where the garden's already much more open. IMO, sad that the better approach is getting hit by the regulation stick. Not that I personally think it's needed in either scenario, but it is frustrating to see Apple skate by.
  - surround 7y ago
    > sad that the better approach is getting hit by the regulation stick. It’s not sad, it just doesn’t make sense. This isn’t logical - Apple should be getting hit worse for being more restrictive
    - drywater 7y ago
      Most devices are that restrictive. It's not like you buy an oven and you get to install Linux on it.
  - neuronic 7y ago
    As a past Android user (still trying the new flagships out at stores every year) I find myself to just not be bothered by many "issues" in iOS proclaimed by Android users. Default browser not Firefox? Meh... it barely even happens that Safari pops open despite me using FF all the time. It's a complete non-issue for me. Others may find it more annoying but the OS is 10x more fluid and better to use. The only Android I have seen come close is Huawei's which I prefer over stock/vanilla (but would never buy due to China). Samsung/LG etc. are a laggy mess out of factory although Samsung has improved with OneUI 2.
sriram_iyengar 7y ago
I use ddg as my default on laptop(Firefox) and mobile(safari), on SE Asia region. The basic search results are quite reasonable. The challenge comes when I need specific information, or second level info. It gets quite hard and I end up hitting a !g on private mode. Partly, stackoverflow helps. I would say 80-85% it is ddg. Having said that, I also feel ddg has come a long way than how it was 3-4years back and I’ll continue to use it.
cavisne 7y ago
"Other options, which differ across the EU, include Info.com, Yandex, Qwant, GMX, PrivacyWall, Givero, and Seznam" Will the EU be liable if/when these illustrious providers have a data breach?
- tapland 7y ago
  One would think they wouldn't tag a search engine as a default without consent.
- Polylactic_acid 7y ago
  Why would they? Its still up to the user to pick one. Just like how right to repair laws allow you to perform a shit repair that breaks something.
- Fnoord 7y ago
  Is the EU liable when you willingly visited a scam site in your vulnerable browser?
sandoooo 7y ago
They need to fix that low-quality duck icon at some point. It's up there with Irfanview's 'roadkill' icon for ugliness when zoomed in, and it is unrecognizable at very small sizes (e.g. as a tab icon). This gets harder and harder as time goes on since there's brand recognition attached.
starpilot 7y ago
DDG for personal devices, Google for work. Don't care if they track my stackoverflow results.
- rlv-dan 7y ago
  DDG is quite good at serving stackoverflow results though
kerkeslager 7y ago
The past tense of DuckDuckGo is DuckDuckWent, as in "I DuckDuckWent my name and discovered my high school yearbook has been digitized."
- puranjay 7y ago
  I'd prefer "I DDGed my name"
- Fnoord 7y ago
  Except it is rather like you exclaim "Duck Duck Go!" to a duck who then executes your command. A past sense would be that you exclaimed "Duck Duck Go!". Turning it into DDGing makes more sense, as already suggested.
- KingMachiavelli 7y ago
  Am I the only one that using 'quack'/'quacked' as my verbs for using DDG?
blululu 7y ago
Something that doesn't sit well with me about DuckDuckGo is their hidden use of affiliate links to Amazon and eBay. Fundamentally search engines are vulnerable to predatory business models. Privacy is one issue. Providing financially motivated information is another. To my knowledge (would love to hear more), Google is pretty up front about what is an ad and what isn't while DuckDuckGo covertly sells you to Amazon when you might want to buy something. While DuckDuckGo seems to be enjoying some halo effect in some communities at the moment (Google once enjoyed a similar glow), I think that general skepticism is probably a healthy orientation toward search engines.
- franga2000 7y ago
  As long as they don't alter the search results to give those links an advantage, I have no problem with them using affiliate links. It makes them money to absolutely no loss to me, right?
  - inertiatic 7y ago
    If for convenience I search for "Amazon product X" on my browser bar instead of directly on Amazon, that means that in order for Amazon to generate a certain amount of profit on that product they also have to pay my search engine now, which means all other things equal, this costs me money. Of course in real life it's not that simple a situation but it's easy to see that everyone behaving like this ends up with the consumer essentially losing money.
    - mrweasel 7y ago
      >they also have to pay my search engine now, which means all other things equal, this costs me money. Most customer focused companies could save a pretty sum of money by not advertising. Of cause it may hurt overall sales to not advertise.
    - franga2000 7y ago
      From what I understand, affiliate links pay out only when you buy something. Traditionally, this was taken from the seller's margin and the price of the product was not increased, as the higher volume of sales made up multiple times for the loss from commissions. But since Amazon gets nothing from the "passive" affiliate links (ones that don't increase volume), DDG might be big enough to make them have to compensate. Would be interesting to see the numbers for this...
hoffs 7y ago
Misleading title, it will be offered among other options but will be at the top of the list
gempir 7y ago
I personally hope DDG is going to namechange soon. I don't hate their name, but if you present the user with a choice of - Google - DuckDuckGo - Yandex Why would he click the "silly" option besides humor. It's a bad brand name IMO
- nfoz 7y ago
  As a very happy DDG user for many years now, I agree. I'm embarrassed to search things when anyone can see my screen, because I usually get weird comments about it.
- rapnie 7y ago
  I think the bigger issue is the use in common language as a verb. People say "Why don't you just google it?" and you go to Google to do so. I sometimes say "You should duckduck the info" (or use a single duck) if I have time to explain what I mean. Though, writing this, I guess people will become familiar with that term too if DDG gains enough traction.
  - mackrevinack 7y ago
    it would be good to move away from using the search provider name as the verb and just use something more generic like "search it" or "look it up". there are so many acceptable search engines around these days anyway and it the most popular is going to change every decade it will be just annoying to have to learn a different verb each time
- neuronic 7y ago
  Yes, whenever I bring it up to friends the response is ridicule.
  - mrweasel 7y ago
    I never meet anyone who cared about the name, either they want to know how the results compare to Google, or that they love the little duck in the logo. It's not even technical people who ask about the quality of results. The name simply never comes up as an issue.
dantondwa 7y ago
I can't recommend DDG to friends in Europe until they fix their quick actions and translate them in other languages. It's not acceptable that to look for the weather in Rome I have to write "weather Rome" because "meteo Roma" doesn't bring the quick action up. Also, the local results are very bad, unfortunately.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- AdamSC1 7y ago
  Thanks for the feedback - I've made sure this is logged internally. It looks like it may have been an edge case around capitalization where "meteo roma" was working and "meteo Roma" wasn't. We can only find cases like this when users report them - so if you run into one again, feel free to use the feedback button on the bottom-right hand side of the screen! :)
nunobrito 7y ago
DuckDuckGo is only private if you trust their word. Over the years they continue to refuse access for a trusted third-party auditor to review their infrastructure and validate (or not) their claims of privacy. The preference of Android to place DDG in Europe (31 out of 31 countries) is strange when considering privacy as argument. Then is placed this "info.com" as second option on all European countries (31 out of 31 countries) which is virtually unheard about, and again a US-based service which again raises eyebrows on privacy. Europe-wide has a search engine that deserves our preference, and that is http://qwant.com http://qwant.com Precisely because it is built and hosted in Europe. Yet, it is displayed as the last option and only as an option for 8 out of 31 european countries. Very strange. Talking from Germany, the preference here would be http://ecosia.com http://ecosia.com
- johnofthesea 7y ago
  as far as I know https://swisscows.com https://swisscows.com is also hosted in Europe
- Accacin 7y ago
  Not doubting you, but do you have any sources for your claims? I will use Qwant in the future but at the minute it's not suitable (IMO) for daily usage. Ecosia seems like a great idea, but these kind of 'Search and earn' sites have always seemed like a scam to me and I can't find any reason to trust Ecosia over DDG.
  - nunobrito 7y ago
    I'm a software auditor in Europe (per times consulting the European commission itself), mostly for open source licenses but also for cybersec and privacy matters. This topic with DDG is recurring since years. You cannot verify the infrastructure, it is not hosted on EU-bounded servers and they have been asked for cooperation. Nothing moved as far I follow. With Ecosia you are right. The point is that Ecosia accountable to European Law in case of scam. You can trust germans to close down the service if ever deemed to be a scam.
    - 7y ago
yilugurlu 7y ago
Why is https://cliqz.com/ https://cliqz.com/ not an option? They do some excellent work toward privacy.
Despacito2019 7y ago
It's been over six month since i switched on all my devices over DDG and i still miss dearly the Google results/layout/metadata etc... How long is the withdraw syndrome needs to go for?
heavenlyhash 7y ago
I find it very interesting that the comments here on HN so far are predominated by discussion of "privacy". The article is about anti-trust regulation. These are different things. Regardless of what you might think about the privacy of any particular option today, the point of this change is to make sure more choice is available and visible to users. In the long run, it's worth remembering that such choice might be a prerequisite for more privacy-oriented services to have a chance to grow. This is the case even if you don't regard any of the current options highly.
- OJFord 7y ago
  But they're both about choice, and the usual reason people make DDG their choice is privacy from Google.
  - heavenlyhash 7y ago
    Sure, but grep the fine original article for the word "privacy". It's not present. HN is discussing HN's tangentially-related feelings more than HN is discussing the article. I'm not surprised, but I'm certainly frustrated: in addition to being navel-gazing, in this situation it's also substantially missing the main reasons this is good: a regulatory agency is actually doing Reasonable Things -- things any privacy advocate should probably be pleased with -- but not just are they doing Reasonable Things, they're them in a relatively subtle, non-prescriptive way that actually keeps the options open for further future improvement. This is great; DDG is an incidental detail.
geek-advised 7y ago
I'm glad this happened, but I would really like to get rid of the bloatware like Chrome, Maps and Gmail.
aberforth123 7y ago
What a shitty website is searchenginejournal, full with spyware: https://webtest.app/?url=https://www.searchenginejournal.com/duckduckgo-is-now-a-default-search-engine-option-on-android-in-the-eu/343073/ https://webtest.app/?url=https://www.searchenginejournal.com...
ykevinator 7y ago
Isn't ddg yahoo search engine?
ryuukk_ 7y ago
FUCK duckduckgo, it is US made, and they refuse audits and it is a misleading title, it is "ONE of the" fuck you twice
Sami_Lehtinen 7y ago
Why is Mojeek forgotten? At least it's a real search engine, and not just a front-end.

586 points by cheeseyboi 7y ago

Zhyl 7y ago

Duckduckgo has seen some pretty strong growth [0]. Given that this is merely an option (most people won't change from the default, or will pick Google out of familiarity), I'd be interested to see how much of an effect this will have on their numbers. I think a secondary issue Duckduckgo and other competitors have to contend with is the idea that nothing other than Google is worth the time of day. I know every thread on HN has people queuing up to say how DDG results aren't as good as Google results (or to say how they switched a while ago and DDG is good enough for their needs), but from a user perspective we can see a much more level playing field in Google vs DDG et al (2020) as opposed to Google vs Altavista et al (1998). [0] https://duckduckgo.com/traffic https://duckduckgo.com/traffic

ngold 7y ago
Duck duck go doesn't roll off the tongue as well as Google but it is my default search engine. The genuis thing they implemented was !g at the end of a search term. Now I can get two sources of search info for problems. Most things ddg is fine, but technical problems, you can't have enough options.
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  I'm still waiting to hear people argue over the correct pronunciation of DDG as the default way to refer to it. Dee Dee Gee Dudge De-dog
  - kick 7y ago
    I'm hoping that people start saying "duck it!" in place of "google it!" (Not going to capitalize google because it's practically genericized and them losing the trademark would make me happy.)
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- lipstone 7y ago
  It seems like a low value proposition if their most enticing feature is the ability to view Google results. Moreover, if Google added a "!d" command to show DuckDuckGo results, I can't imagine anyone would use it. A negligible number of people are willing to sacrifice tangible functionality for intangible feelings of privacy that almost certainly will never impact them in any meaningful way. DuckDuckGo needs to make large improvements to their search results if they want to capture anyone outside of this niche market.
  - leereeves 7y ago
    Bangs offer a lot more than just !g. It's actually easier to use some Google services via DDG than via Google itself. For example, the easiest way to access Google Scholar is to use DDG and add !scholar to your search. Likewise for Google Translate and !translate. Like: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hasta+la+vista+!translate&t=ffab https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hasta+la+vista+!translate&t=ffab Then there are all the non-Google bangs. !a to search Amazon. !hn to search Hacker News. And so on.
    - Fnoord 7y ago
      DDG bangs [1] and Google Dorks (I just use the nickname bangs en dorks for either) are both very powerful. For me, Google complements DDG; not the other way around. I do agree with the desire for a European-hosted search engine though. [1] https://duckduckgo.com/bang https://duckduckgo.com/bang
- saghm 7y ago
  > Duck duck go doesn't roll off the tongue as well as Google but it is my default search engine I mostly use Duck Duck Go now (with liberal use of !g as needed), but the main issue I've had with making it part of my spoken vocabulary using it as a verb. It's much easier to say I "googled" something than "Duck Duck Go'd it" (duck duck went?) or "searched for it on Duck Duck Go". It's been a pet theory of mine for a while that any attempt at getting people to change the words they use is doomed to fail if the replacement contains more syllables (e.g. "letter carrier" for "mailman"), and now I'm wondering if that's something companies should take into account when naming themselves too.
  - chiefalchemist 7y ago
    I think you have a point. I use DDG. I never say "Duck Duck Go it" But I also avoid saying "Google it" cause I don't want to promote bad behavior. I'm going to try saying/typing "DDG it". It's an acronym driven world. Perhaps that'll work? Im
    - _marlowe_ 7y ago
      Quack it
      - smichel17 7y ago
        I like this better than "duck it", for whatever reason. Maybe it feels more specific, whereas "duck" could kind of mean anything?
  - fralewsmi 7y ago
    Just say "I googled it on duck duck go". I do find it interesting how it can feel more awkward to say "I searched it" instead of "I googled it"
    - notduncansmith 7y ago
      A few months ago I made a conscious point to start saying “web search” instead of “Google”. Same number of syllables, and it has grown more familiar and natural over time. Same with “tissue” instead of “Kleenex”. I tell my coworkers to “just do a web search for $phrase” and it comes out fine. Several of them have switched to DDG, so the term “web search” is more inclusive anyways :)

foolrush 7y ago

>"DuckDuckGo will soon be offered as an option for default search engine on Android devices across the EU." "[...] option for default [...]"

microcolonel 7y ago
The word "default" is used a bit weirdly in Chrome. The "default search engines" are ones intended to provide search to the omni bar; as opposed to other search engines which Chrome just picks up passively when you browse the web (often these are suggested when you start typing).

priitmaxx 7y ago

Same thing happened to Microsoft with browser selection. This does not really change anything. Google search results are just better.

StavrosK 7y ago
It does change something: You can now choose Google, instead of having it foisted upon you as a default.
deeblering4 7y ago
Great point, IE is just better /s
- izacus 7y ago
  Your pointless sarcasm is missing the core of the post: IE was dethroned when Firefox and Chrome came along (a hugely superior browsers), not when EU forced MS to provide a choice. Apple has learned from this it seems - you're banned from running any other browser engine on their platforms so this can't happen again on iOS.
lucb1e 7y ago
I'm actually interested in this, do you have any data to back that claim up or is it just your personal impression? It's not that I don't share it, but I am curious if indeed it did "not really change anything". By the way, it's not like a marriage where you bind yourself to one party exclusively. I use DDG as default but fall back (for any queries that do not yield good results and are non-sensitive) to Google when necessary. Still an improvement.
- pnako 7y ago
  I don't see a difference between DDG and Google for content that is new to me (because I can't possibly know better), but if I'm trying to retrieve one page in particular (i.e. use Google as a smart bookmark), in my experience Google works much better than DDG.
7y ago

keyle 7y ago

I switched to ddg a couple of months back. This wasn't my first switch away from google, I've always reverted back at some stage. Now I can happily report that it really is 90% as good as google, if not more. It's fast, it's accurate, it's context sensitive. Most importantly I don't feel like I'm being preyed upon. Brilliant.

Fat_Thor 7y ago

I would like to see Mozilla Firefox be forced to do the same. As of now, they don't even notify the user of their default Google search to the users. So millions of their user url typing history are being recorded and sent to Google even if they don't use the search function specifically. This in someway has to violates the GDPR.

fghgfhg 7y ago
>they don't even notify the user of their default Google search to the users. After your start typing it clearly says "Serach in Google"
ryuukk_ 7y ago
mozilla doesn't have millions of users, it is in the X00k and they depend on selling data, without that, they get no money, they sell their users to google, and then pretend to care about "privacy", their financial privacy, probably ;)

OrgNet 7y ago

I've been using DDG for about 2 years almost exclusively, but in the last month, quality appears to have degraded a lot? I actually switched back to Google last week, unfortunately.

AdamSC1 7y ago
There won't have been any major change in the past few months that would have negatively impacted your search results. If you have any specific examples you can always reach out via the feedback box or to staff directly :)

therealmarv 7y ago

It's somehow funny to see that Bing search results are so successful when packaged with privacy in mind into DuckDuckGo. I don't like bing search results, especially for Europe. They are just bad for many local things. The only other search engine beside Google which is interesting and surprising for me is maybe Yandex. It's also not as good as Google in (most of) Europe but it's interesting to see that many things are not censored away in comparison to Bing and Google (political correctness, copyright, nsfw etc. etc.). I'm happy there is an alternative with different culture and jurisdiction.

Barrin92 7y ago
> but it's interesting to see that many things are not censored away in comparison to Bing and Google (political correctness, copyright, nsfw etc. etc.). I am not aware that there is a censorship of things that are deemed 'politically incorrect' by either bing or google, and Yandex does comply with European copyright law and other EU legislation like the right-to-be-forgotten.
- therealmarv 7y ago
  There are differences in search results for sure. Political correctness is also a very broad field. Depending on topic it is sometimes biased and even filtered (e.g. nsfw content) by Google/Bing or search results in Google are too much SEO hacked in comparison to Yandex on first pages. I've never analysed in deep and don't have numbers but for some searches it is worth to check also Yandex. But to be fair Google is often better... it depends on the topic you search for.
- lostmsu 7y ago
  It became increasingly hard to find EPUBs with DDG or Google.
  - toyg 7y ago
    Is it really? Looking for Calibre libraries is basically considered meme-level effort in places like /r/opendirectories ...

deeblering4 7y ago

Being a year or two late to the party is better than not showing up at all!

Pxtl 7y ago

Honestly, I've been using ddg daily and I find I'm having to hit !g more than I'd like. Google in particular seems better at finding matches that come related to the ordering of the words, whereas ddg I have to quote them (and risk getting no results because I misremembered one word) when searching for a specific phrase.

vzidex 7y ago
Same here, I switched to DDG as my default engine at work and find it returns mediocre results for anything tech related and sufficiently niche. On the plus side, it does work fine for everything else - i.e. the typical searches a normal person might do - so I might switch my personal devices to using it soon.
fiblye 7y ago
My experience is that google gives me results assuming all of the words I searched aren’t the words I’m looking for, and it uses tangentially related words in place of everything. Even quotes are useless now. Ddg is useless when I’m searching for local things like restaurants and whatnot, but for general searches, it gives me what I’m actually looking for at least 75% of the time. With google, I’m barely hitting 25% these days unless it’s a very well established phrase/concept that I’m searching. In which case, it’s basically functioning as a Wikipedia search engine.
- bishalb 7y ago
  Can confirm that Google doesn't honor quotes as it used to for exact match search these days. It's a hit and miss.
  - skinkestek 7y ago
    Can someone who knows about the inside of Google tell us why this happened, and especially why it happens when verbatim mode is used alone or in addition to double quotes? I can kind of see why double quotes could be confusing for people pasting without being aware of the double quotes rule, but ignoring verbatim outright as has been the standard for years now is even more confusing to me.

lucb1e 7y ago

I still feel like Google should participate in the bidding and distribute the resulting money (their own and their competitors') to a charity rather than keeping it as profit. They got a fine for a reason, turning it into a profit scheme is a big middle finger to anyone who cares about monopolies. The question would be how to pick a charity in an unbiased manner, but I guess there are a lot of ways to answer that such as picking the most well-funded charity worldwide, or distributing it over the top ten.

nashashmi 7y ago
Distilling the android property as separate from search, and selling off the search bar to the highest bidder is the just way to create competition. Where the eu sticks it to Google is when Google is not allowed to participate in the bidding.
- lucb1e 7y ago
  If it is truly separate from search, then Google Search should pay Android. Since that benefits the same company, and since all competitors are paying Google Search as part of bidding for a place in Android, it's not a level playing field.
asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
From an economic perspective, this makes no sense. The economic benefits google gets from Android largely derive from the control over the default search engine. You're asking that they should donate the proceeds of this benefit. Why would they work on Android at all if they could not benefit from it economically? The purpose of the auction and the choice is to allow competition for that default spot, and ensure google isn't using Android to further its market dominance in search. However, the EU has its head on straight enough to understand that being chosen as the default search engine for a device still has serious value. There's nothing anti-competitive about google charging a fair price for this benefit. And fortunately we know, because of the auction process, that the prices are fair (i.e. the other bidders certainly bid a price less than the benefit they expect to derive from being selected).

meerita 7y ago

DDG is my current default search engine in all my devices. It's been 2 years using it. In so few ocassions i needed to rely on Google, but really, you don't need it that much is if Stack Overflow search all day or do overal tech searches. If you need to review more, then use Google and compare search results. But for daily search use it's way ok.

surround 7y ago

How is Apple getting away with iOS? Unlike Android, you cannot cannot change the default browser, maps, messaging apps or anything.

dannyw 7y ago
Apple has much less marketshare.
akersten 7y ago
My take is it's a consequence of their vertical integration. Maybe they saw all along, by not even allowing the option to change, there's no way they could be forced to present a rolodex of possible choices - since there's only one choice that works. You always had the choice with Android, it just had a default. That didn't smell good to regulators in the EU, and they saw an easy option out of that. Telling Apple to open up their walled garden is a lot harder, compared to Android where the garden's already much more open. IMO, sad that the better approach is getting hit by the regulation stick. Not that I personally think it's needed in either scenario, but it is frustrating to see Apple skate by.
- surround 7y ago
  > sad that the better approach is getting hit by the regulation stick. It’s not sad, it just doesn’t make sense. This isn’t logical - Apple should be getting hit worse for being more restrictive
  - drywater 7y ago
    Most devices are that restrictive. It's not like you buy an oven and you get to install Linux on it.
- neuronic 7y ago
  As a past Android user (still trying the new flagships out at stores every year) I find myself to just not be bothered by many "issues" in iOS proclaimed by Android users. Default browser not Firefox? Meh... it barely even happens that Safari pops open despite me using FF all the time. It's a complete non-issue for me. Others may find it more annoying but the OS is 10x more fluid and better to use. The only Android I have seen come close is Huawei's which I prefer over stock/vanilla (but would never buy due to China). Samsung/LG etc. are a laggy mess out of factory although Samsung has improved with OneUI 2.

sriram_iyengar 7y ago

I use ddg as my default on laptop(Firefox) and mobile(safari), on SE Asia region. The basic search results are quite reasonable. The challenge comes when I need specific information, or second level info. It gets quite hard and I end up hitting a !g on private mode. Partly, stackoverflow helps. I would say 80-85% it is ddg. Having said that, I also feel ddg has come a long way than how it was 3-4years back and I’ll continue to use it.

cavisne 7y ago

"Other options, which differ across the EU, include Info.com, Yandex, Qwant, GMX, PrivacyWall, Givero, and Seznam" Will the EU be liable if/when these illustrious providers have a data breach?

tapland 7y ago
One would think they wouldn't tag a search engine as a default without consent.
Polylactic_acid 7y ago
Why would they? Its still up to the user to pick one. Just like how right to repair laws allow you to perform a shit repair that breaks something.
Fnoord 7y ago
Is the EU liable when you willingly visited a scam site in your vulnerable browser?

sandoooo 7y ago

They need to fix that low-quality duck icon at some point. It's up there with Irfanview's 'roadkill' icon for ugliness when zoomed in, and it is unrecognizable at very small sizes (e.g. as a tab icon). This gets harder and harder as time goes on since there's brand recognition attached.

starpilot 7y ago

DDG for personal devices, Google for work. Don't care if they track my stackoverflow results.

rlv-dan 7y ago
DDG is quite good at serving stackoverflow results though

kerkeslager 7y ago

The past tense of DuckDuckGo is DuckDuckWent, as in "I DuckDuckWent my name and discovered my high school yearbook has been digitized."

puranjay 7y ago
I'd prefer "I DDGed my name"
Fnoord 7y ago
Except it is rather like you exclaim "Duck Duck Go!" to a duck who then executes your command. A past sense would be that you exclaimed "Duck Duck Go!". Turning it into DDGing makes more sense, as already suggested.
KingMachiavelli 7y ago
Am I the only one that using 'quack'/'quacked' as my verbs for using DDG?

blululu 7y ago

Something that doesn't sit well with me about DuckDuckGo is their hidden use of affiliate links to Amazon and eBay. Fundamentally search engines are vulnerable to predatory business models. Privacy is one issue. Providing financially motivated information is another. To my knowledge (would love to hear more), Google is pretty up front about what is an ad and what isn't while DuckDuckGo covertly sells you to Amazon when you might want to buy something. While DuckDuckGo seems to be enjoying some halo effect in some communities at the moment (Google once enjoyed a similar glow), I think that general skepticism is probably a healthy orientation toward search engines.

franga2000 7y ago
As long as they don't alter the search results to give those links an advantage, I have no problem with them using affiliate links. It makes them money to absolutely no loss to me, right?
- inertiatic 7y ago
  If for convenience I search for "Amazon product X" on my browser bar instead of directly on Amazon, that means that in order for Amazon to generate a certain amount of profit on that product they also have to pay my search engine now, which means all other things equal, this costs me money. Of course in real life it's not that simple a situation but it's easy to see that everyone behaving like this ends up with the consumer essentially losing money.
  - mrweasel 7y ago
    >they also have to pay my search engine now, which means all other things equal, this costs me money. Most customer focused companies could save a pretty sum of money by not advertising. Of cause it may hurt overall sales to not advertise.
  - franga2000 7y ago
    From what I understand, affiliate links pay out only when you buy something. Traditionally, this was taken from the seller's margin and the price of the product was not increased, as the higher volume of sales made up multiple times for the loss from commissions. But since Amazon gets nothing from the "passive" affiliate links (ones that don't increase volume), DDG might be big enough to make them have to compensate. Would be interesting to see the numbers for this...

hoffs 7y ago

Misleading title, it will be offered among other options but will be at the top of the list

gempir 7y ago

I personally hope DDG is going to namechange soon. I don't hate their name, but if you present the user with a choice of - Google - DuckDuckGo - Yandex Why would he click the "silly" option besides humor. It's a bad brand name IMO

nfoz 7y ago
As a very happy DDG user for many years now, I agree. I'm embarrassed to search things when anyone can see my screen, because I usually get weird comments about it.
rapnie 7y ago
I think the bigger issue is the use in common language as a verb. People say "Why don't you just google it?" and you go to Google to do so. I sometimes say "You should duckduck the info" (or use a single duck) if I have time to explain what I mean. Though, writing this, I guess people will become familiar with that term too if DDG gains enough traction.
- mackrevinack 7y ago
  it would be good to move away from using the search provider name as the verb and just use something more generic like "search it" or "look it up". there are so many acceptable search engines around these days anyway and it the most popular is going to change every decade it will be just annoying to have to learn a different verb each time
neuronic 7y ago
Yes, whenever I bring it up to friends the response is ridicule.
- mrweasel 7y ago
  I never meet anyone who cared about the name, either they want to know how the results compare to Google, or that they love the little duck in the logo. It's not even technical people who ask about the quality of results. The name simply never comes up as an issue.

dantondwa 7y ago

I can't recommend DDG to friends in Europe until they fix their quick actions and translate them in other languages. It's not acceptable that to look for the weather in Rome I have to write "weather Rome" because "meteo Roma" doesn't bring the quick action up. Also, the local results are very bad, unfortunately.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
AdamSC1 7y ago
Thanks for the feedback - I've made sure this is logged internally. It looks like it may have been an edge case around capitalization where "meteo roma" was working and "meteo Roma" wasn't. We can only find cases like this when users report them - so if you run into one again, feel free to use the feedback button on the bottom-right hand side of the screen! :)

nunobrito 7y ago

DuckDuckGo is only private if you trust their word. Over the years they continue to refuse access for a trusted third-party auditor to review their infrastructure and validate (or not) their claims of privacy. The preference of Android to place DDG in Europe (31 out of 31 countries) is strange when considering privacy as argument. Then is placed this "info.com" as second option on all European countries (31 out of 31 countries) which is virtually unheard about, and again a US-based service which again raises eyebrows on privacy. Europe-wide has a search engine that deserves our preference, and that is http://qwant.com http://qwant.com Precisely because it is built and hosted in Europe. Yet, it is displayed as the last option and only as an option for 8 out of 31 european countries. Very strange. Talking from Germany, the preference here would be http://ecosia.com http://ecosia.com

johnofthesea 7y ago
as far as I know https://swisscows.com https://swisscows.com is also hosted in Europe
Accacin 7y ago
Not doubting you, but do you have any sources for your claims? I will use Qwant in the future but at the minute it's not suitable (IMO) for daily usage. Ecosia seems like a great idea, but these kind of 'Search and earn' sites have always seemed like a scam to me and I can't find any reason to trust Ecosia over DDG.
- nunobrito 7y ago
  I'm a software auditor in Europe (per times consulting the European commission itself), mostly for open source licenses but also for cybersec and privacy matters. This topic with DDG is recurring since years. You cannot verify the infrastructure, it is not hosted on EU-bounded servers and they have been asked for cooperation. Nothing moved as far I follow. With Ecosia you are right. The point is that Ecosia accountable to European Law in case of scam. You can trust germans to close down the service if ever deemed to be a scam.
  - 7y ago

yilugurlu 7y ago

Why is https://cliqz.com/ https://cliqz.com/ not an option? They do some excellent work toward privacy.

Despacito2019 7y ago

It's been over six month since i switched on all my devices over DDG and i still miss dearly the Google results/layout/metadata etc... How long is the withdraw syndrome needs to go for?

heavenlyhash 7y ago

I find it very interesting that the comments here on HN so far are predominated by discussion of "privacy". The article is about anti-trust regulation. These are different things. Regardless of what you might think about the privacy of any particular option today, the point of this change is to make sure more choice is available and visible to users. In the long run, it's worth remembering that such choice might be a prerequisite for more privacy-oriented services to have a chance to grow. This is the case even if you don't regard any of the current options highly.

OJFord 7y ago
But they're both about choice, and the usual reason people make DDG their choice is privacy from Google.
- heavenlyhash 7y ago
  Sure, but grep the fine original article for the word "privacy". It's not present. HN is discussing HN's tangentially-related feelings more than HN is discussing the article. I'm not surprised, but I'm certainly frustrated: in addition to being navel-gazing, in this situation it's also substantially missing the main reasons this is good: a regulatory agency is actually doing Reasonable Things -- things any privacy advocate should probably be pleased with -- but not just are they doing Reasonable Things, they're them in a relatively subtle, non-prescriptive way that actually keeps the options open for further future improvement. This is great; DDG is an incidental detail.

geek-advised 7y ago

I'm glad this happened, but I would really like to get rid of the bloatware like Chrome, Maps and Gmail.

aberforth123 7y ago

What a shitty website is searchenginejournal, full with spyware: https://webtest.app/?url=https://www.searchenginejournal.com/duckduckgo-is-now-a-default-search-engine-option-on-android-in-the-eu/343073/ https://webtest.app/?url=https://www.searchenginejournal.com...

ykevinator 7y ago

Isn't ddg yahoo search engine?

ryuukk_ 7y ago

FUCK duckduckgo, it is US made, and they refuse audits and it is a misleading title, it is "ONE of the" fuck you twice

Sami_Lehtinen 7y ago

Why is Mojeek forgotten? At least it's a real search engine, and not just a front-end.