6 ms·

When I switched to DDG, I was happier with it than with Google. To me, DDG feels like Google felt ten years ago, before it was infested with "AI." Today, Google

When I switched to DDG, I was happier with it than with Google. To me, DDG feels like Google felt ten years ago, before it was infested with "AI." Today, Google search results look more like the invasive shopping mall ads in Minority Report, tailored to what it thinks I'll click on, rather than relevant results based on my query. I only rarely (~once a month) have to use Google search to find something that DDG just cannot, and usually this is some highly technical topic. (I did it yesterday because I couldn't find information about a strange, fatal regex error in Firefox - seriously, one regex that Firefox can't understand prevents script execution, even when wrapped in exception handlers.) I think Google has hit some sort of inflection point where their further attempts to improve search have made it a less useful experience and are mainly in service of their dual corporate mandate to put al ads in front of all eyeballs and control all access to all information.

arkades 6y ago
I find it depends on how much I know what I'm looking for. If I know exactly what I'm trying to get to, google will usually get me there faster. If I don't, DDG is usually a good place to start, as it's less festooned with SEO'd garbage sites. And, worst case, there's always !g.
- snazz 6y ago
  This is basically exactly my experience. Google's index is much more current and contains more obscure content. When I know exactly what I'm looking for but forgot the exact name or something like that, Google's fancy AI really helps. For more general queries, DDG is sometimes better.
mikkom 6y ago
Duckduckgo results are from bing via bing api so you are essentially saying that you like bing results more than google results.
- cerberusss 6y ago
  Is that really all there is to it? Present results from Bing, and done?
  - Kiro 6y ago
    If you exclude Instant Answers and widgets then pretty much, but the important thing is that they don't send your PII to Bing. Not saying that sarcastically. For me it doesn't matter what the underlying data source is.
- jamespullar 6y ago
  Per https://help.duckduckgo.com/results/sources/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/results/sources/, "...DuckDuckGo gets its results from over four hundred sources. These include hundreds of vertical sources delivering niche Instant Answers, DuckDuckBot (our crawler) and crowd-sourced sites (like Wikipedia, stored in our answer indexes). We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we also source from multiple partners, though most commonly from Bing (and none from Google)." So yes, while they do get results from Bing, it's a bit disingenuous to say that DuckDuckGo is just Bing.
  - bla3 6y ago
    That page basically confirms this. It says: > To do that, we've developed an open source Instant Answer platform called DuckDuckHack, which links to https://duckduckhack.com/ https://duckduckhack.com/ which says "DuckDuckHack is now in Maintenance Mode". And the "four hundred sources" link links to 400 special case replies. They are probably useful, but fire rarely. It's basically Bing, and that page is a bunch of spin.
    - jamespullar 6y ago
      The page I linked above doesn't mention DuckDuckHack. Are you quoting that from a different source? It does mention DuckDuckBot which is their own web crawler. https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/duckduckbot/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/du...
seb314 6y ago
I'd like to prefer DDG... but recently I noticed what seem to be blind spots on many (maybe less popular?) topics. e.g. I can't find how to setup/configure borgbackup on nixos via ddg for any of ~3-5 query variations I tried. For non-logged-in google with uBlock the relevant documentation is the first hit.
- lostlogin 6y ago
  I find this with specific, niche technical questions too.
- blablabla123 6y ago
  I used to try DDG a few years ago but eventually switched back to Google as default. Now I have it again as default since a year. Not sure when or how it happened but since a few months, I almost exclusively use DDG, switching to Google maybe once a week. Indeed that's then usually for niche topics. On the other hand I think my search and surfing behaviour also changed. I'm starting to rely more on Bookmarks again; also I'm actually reading websites again and browse through them instead of just CTRL+F-skimming through them...
lostlogin 6y ago
> When I switched to DDG, I was happier with it than with Google. I regularly do !g, but I think the thing that is reducing that fastest is the declining quality of Google results. If I search for ‘x, y and z’, I then see a load of results with small text underneath saying ‘include z?’. It drives me demented, why wouldn’t I want to include my search terms?
- JTon 6y ago
  > It drives me demented, why wouldn’t I want to include my search terms? Well, I think the answer to your question is Google is trying to be friendly to the layman. It's not hard to think of examples where the user inputs a something into the search box that a CS major knows will not result in the implied wants of the user. Google tries to do a lot of human to machine translation work, and I think you're seeing the result of it. That being said, you can use quotations to explicitly include terms.
  - finiteloops 6y ago
    This works for the masses, but in my experience when machines force a use case, it causes more headache than not cause I'm not like the masses. A barely related side rant: my microwave decided it wants to error out when it thinks you're trying to microwave air. i have a bowl in there. stop telling me to open the door to put something in. Whatever engineer at GE thought they would be smarter than the user, you're one of the many reasons your company is going out of business.
    - TuringTest 6y ago
      I think that it's O.K. when a user interface which issues a warning when it detects a dangerous condition. The problem is when the warning is a "stop" and it doesn't have an override "I know what I'm doing".
    - mywittyname 6y ago
      We have the same microwave. I also hate that "feature".
thesuitonym 6y ago
Even DuckDuckGo is becoming more like Google in it's uselessness. I think the problem stems from the idea that new is always better, so all search platforms become infested with garbage sites that are automatically generated to capitalize on the current search patterns. For instance, I was feeling nostalgic and wanted to look at the Space Jam website last night, but I couldn't remember the URL, so I searched for "space jam". The first page was all garbage results about a potential Space Jam 2. Okay, that's generating a lot of buzz, I get it. So I searched for "space jam website". The results were hundreds of identical culture blogs talking about the website. Nowhere was the link to the actual website, which turned out to be spacejam.com by the way (I thought it was warnerbros.com/archive or something...) Same thing with other search terms. I've been playing a lot of Animal Crossing lately. I remember a time when you could search for a topic about a video game and find a website answering the question, or a forum post with relevant information. Now all you get are blogs posted by people who clearly don't have English as their first language, and likely have not played the game. It's keyword blogs and fandom.com/wikia all the way down,
- Frost1x 6y ago
  >I think the problem stems from the idea that new is always better... This is definitely one of the curses of the tech/software industry and we keep cycling through certain phases, it seems, building nearly unmanagable complexity in the process.

arkades 6y ago

I find it depends on how much I know what I'm looking for. If I know exactly what I'm trying to get to, google will usually get me there faster. If I don't, DDG is usually a good place to start, as it's less festooned with SEO'd garbage sites. And, worst case, there's always !g.

snazz 6y ago
This is basically exactly my experience. Google's index is much more current and contains more obscure content. When I know exactly what I'm looking for but forgot the exact name or something like that, Google's fancy AI really helps. For more general queries, DDG is sometimes better.

mikkom 6y ago

Duckduckgo results are from bing via bing api so you are essentially saying that you like bing results more than google results.

cerberusss 6y ago
Is that really all there is to it? Present results from Bing, and done?
- Kiro 6y ago
  If you exclude Instant Answers and widgets then pretty much, but the important thing is that they don't send your PII to Bing. Not saying that sarcastically. For me it doesn't matter what the underlying data source is.
jamespullar 6y ago
Per https://help.duckduckgo.com/results/sources/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/results/sources/, "...DuckDuckGo gets its results from over four hundred sources. These include hundreds of vertical sources delivering niche Instant Answers, DuckDuckBot (our crawler) and crowd-sourced sites (like Wikipedia, stored in our answer indexes). We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we also source from multiple partners, though most commonly from Bing (and none from Google)." So yes, while they do get results from Bing, it's a bit disingenuous to say that DuckDuckGo is just Bing.
- bla3 6y ago
  That page basically confirms this. It says: > To do that, we've developed an open source Instant Answer platform called DuckDuckHack, which links to https://duckduckhack.com/ https://duckduckhack.com/ which says "DuckDuckHack is now in Maintenance Mode". And the "four hundred sources" link links to 400 special case replies. They are probably useful, but fire rarely. It's basically Bing, and that page is a bunch of spin.
  - jamespullar 6y ago
    The page I linked above doesn't mention DuckDuckHack. Are you quoting that from a different source? It does mention DuckDuckBot which is their own web crawler. https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/duckduckbot/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/du...

seb314 6y ago

I'd like to prefer DDG... but recently I noticed what seem to be blind spots on many (maybe less popular?) topics. e.g. I can't find how to setup/configure borgbackup on nixos via ddg for any of ~3-5 query variations I tried. For non-logged-in google with uBlock the relevant documentation is the first hit.

lostlogin 6y ago
I find this with specific, niche technical questions too.
blablabla123 6y ago
I used to try DDG a few years ago but eventually switched back to Google as default. Now I have it again as default since a year. Not sure when or how it happened but since a few months, I almost exclusively use DDG, switching to Google maybe once a week. Indeed that's then usually for niche topics. On the other hand I think my search and surfing behaviour also changed. I'm starting to rely more on Bookmarks again; also I'm actually reading websites again and browse through them instead of just CTRL+F-skimming through them...

lostlogin 6y ago

> When I switched to DDG, I was happier with it than with Google. I regularly do !g, but I think the thing that is reducing that fastest is the declining quality of Google results. If I search for ‘x, y and z’, I then see a load of results with small text underneath saying ‘include z?’. It drives me demented, why wouldn’t I want to include my search terms?

JTon 6y ago
> It drives me demented, why wouldn’t I want to include my search terms? Well, I think the answer to your question is Google is trying to be friendly to the layman. It's not hard to think of examples where the user inputs a something into the search box that a CS major knows will not result in the implied wants of the user. Google tries to do a lot of human to machine translation work, and I think you're seeing the result of it. That being said, you can use quotations to explicitly include terms.
- finiteloops 6y ago
  This works for the masses, but in my experience when machines force a use case, it causes more headache than not cause I'm not like the masses. A barely related side rant: my microwave decided it wants to error out when it thinks you're trying to microwave air. i have a bowl in there. stop telling me to open the door to put something in. Whatever engineer at GE thought they would be smarter than the user, you're one of the many reasons your company is going out of business.
  - TuringTest 6y ago
    I think that it's O.K. when a user interface which issues a warning when it detects a dangerous condition. The problem is when the warning is a "stop" and it doesn't have an override "I know what I'm doing".
  - mywittyname 6y ago
    We have the same microwave. I also hate that "feature".

thesuitonym 6y ago

Even DuckDuckGo is becoming more like Google in it's uselessness. I think the problem stems from the idea that new is always better, so all search platforms become infested with garbage sites that are automatically generated to capitalize on the current search patterns. For instance, I was feeling nostalgic and wanted to look at the Space Jam website last night, but I couldn't remember the URL, so I searched for "space jam". The first page was all garbage results about a potential Space Jam 2. Okay, that's generating a lot of buzz, I get it. So I searched for "space jam website". The results were hundreds of identical culture blogs talking about the website. Nowhere was the link to the actual website, which turned out to be spacejam.com by the way (I thought it was warnerbros.com/archive or something...) Same thing with other search terms. I've been playing a lot of Animal Crossing lately. I remember a time when you could search for a topic about a video game and find a website answering the question, or a forum post with relevant information. Now all you get are blogs posted by people who clearly don't have English as their first language, and likely have not played the game. It's keyword blogs and fandom.com/wikia all the way down,

Frost1x 6y ago
>I think the problem stems from the idea that new is always better... This is definitely one of the curses of the tech/software industry and we keep cycling through certain phases, it seems, building nearly unmanagable complexity in the process.