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I switched to DuckDuckgo a few months ago, and never looked back. The results used to be far inferior to Google's - but they seem to have caught up recently. If

I switched to DuckDuckgo a few months ago, and never looked back. The results used to be far inferior to Google's - but they seem to have caught up recently. If you haven't tried them out within the last couple of months, I strongly recommend that you give them a chance.

Pangia 7y ago
I switched to DuckDuckGo a number of years ago and while yes, their results have become better there are times in my line of work where I've had to use !g search item as Google still seems have to have the best results sometimes. Granted this is maybe once or twice in 3 - 4 months I end up using !g prefix.
- pixelrevision 7y ago
  Another helpful thing that can be done with Firefox is to add google.com to a container. One of the things google does that I really dislike is personalized search. Having a container specified for it lets me use the browser more naturally without having to open a private session.
  - monadic2 7y ago
    You can also configure firefox to never leave private mode—I can’t endorse this enough.
    - brigandish 7y ago
      Do you know if there's a way to get it to work with containers? Often, I'll use a container to remain logged in to a site and white list its cookies. It'd be good if non-container pages were in private mode by default.
- testuser66 7y ago
  Have been using Ecosia and I have to do a `g` search pretty much daily. Though the use Bing underneath, so maybe it's worth giving DuckDuckGo a try
king_magic 7y ago
I switched to DuckDuckGo, made it maybe two weeks, and finally gave up and switched back to Google. Their search results are still vastly inferior to Google.
- aembleton 7y ago
  Can you give an example search that doesn't work for you?
  - king_magic 7y ago
    No? I don't have a list handy, and I’m not the QA department for DDG. The point is - and yes, this is somewhat subjective - I found the quality of the results inferior to Google, and grudgingly switched back after a few weeks of disappointment.
    - dallbee 7y ago
      You're certainly not alone, but I've had such a wildly different experience. I switched to duckduckgo primarily because I preferred the search results. The privacy aspect was just a bonus. The only time I ever find myself using the !g escape hatch is when I'm searching something brand new (e.g. a breaking news story). Duckduckgo has a recency filter but it seems to take them a few days to ingest the content.
    - bestest 7y ago
      Same here. I'm still using duckduckgo on my private devices (phone and home laptop), at work I'm using google. I suppose the reason this works for me is at work I need GOOD results, thus google search there. At home I just need a search now and again, so duckduckgo is good enough for this. So, my private life stays my private life with duckduckgo. And at work — I don't really care what google does to my "js shortest path algorithm"-kind-of results history.
  - Tomte 7y ago
    From earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19043565 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19043565

Pangia 7y ago

I switched to DuckDuckGo a number of years ago and while yes, their results have become better there are times in my line of work where I've had to use !g search item as Google still seems have to have the best results sometimes. Granted this is maybe once or twice in 3 - 4 months I end up using !g prefix.

pixelrevision 7y ago
Another helpful thing that can be done with Firefox is to add google.com to a container. One of the things google does that I really dislike is personalized search. Having a container specified for it lets me use the browser more naturally without having to open a private session.
- monadic2 7y ago
  You can also configure firefox to never leave private mode—I can’t endorse this enough.
  - brigandish 7y ago
    Do you know if there's a way to get it to work with containers? Often, I'll use a container to remain logged in to a site and white list its cookies. It'd be good if non-container pages were in private mode by default.
testuser66 7y ago
Have been using Ecosia and I have to do a `g` search pretty much daily. Though the use Bing underneath, so maybe it's worth giving DuckDuckGo a try

king_magic 7y ago

I switched to DuckDuckGo, made it maybe two weeks, and finally gave up and switched back to Google. Their search results are still vastly inferior to Google.

aembleton 7y ago
Can you give an example search that doesn't work for you?
- king_magic 7y ago
  No? I don't have a list handy, and I’m not the QA department for DDG. The point is - and yes, this is somewhat subjective - I found the quality of the results inferior to Google, and grudgingly switched back after a few weeks of disappointment.
  - dallbee 7y ago
    You're certainly not alone, but I've had such a wildly different experience. I switched to duckduckgo primarily because I preferred the search results. The privacy aspect was just a bonus. The only time I ever find myself using the !g escape hatch is when I'm searching something brand new (e.g. a breaking news story). Duckduckgo has a recency filter but it seems to take them a few days to ingest the content.
  - bestest 7y ago
    Same here. I'm still using duckduckgo on my private devices (phone and home laptop), at work I'm using google. I suppose the reason this works for me is at work I need GOOD results, thus google search there. At home I just need a search now and again, so duckduckgo is good enough for this. So, my private life stays my private life with duckduckgo. And at work — I don't really care what google does to my "js shortest path algorithm"-kind-of results history.
- Tomte 7y ago
  From earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19043565 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19043565