6 ms·
Before I bought a robotic vacuum cleaner, I read lots of reviews from people saying it wasn't as good as vacuuming manually. It misses areas, it has a hard time
by ludocode 6y ago
Before I bought a robotic vacuum cleaner, I read lots of reviews from people saying it wasn't as good as vacuuming manually. It misses areas, it has a hard time in corners, it takes forever. I bought it anyway. The simple fact is it doesn't matter how much worse it is than vacuuming, because I'm not vacuuming.
I kind of feel that way about DuckDuckGo. Instead of lazyness, I guess you'd call it ideological purity. I don't care how much worse DuckDuckGo is than Google. It doesn't matter. The simple fact is the privacy implications of Google make it a deal breaker, so I'll use any alternative no matter how much worse it is.
In my mind they're not even competing services. Just like comparing a robotic vacuum to manual vacuuming. It's like saying "What's better, a square or the color yellow?" It doesn't compute.
I'd be lying if I said I never use !g. I do, when I don't find what I'm looking for and feel like I should. Half the time, I don't find what I wanted on Google either. I always hesitate though, thinking "Do I want Google to log this about me?" I rarely hesitate when searching with DuckDuckGo. There's a certain comfort and peace of mind that is worth any drop in the quality of search results.
- Santosh83 6y agoGive this person a cookie, for exhibiting sheer resolve, something that's becoming all too rare in the manipulated, instant-gratification culture we're heading deep into.
- mgkimsal 6y agoGiven their privacy focus, do you think that poster is just going to accept random cookies on the internet? ;)
- Liquix 6y agoHah! I heard Santa dropped 120lb when he found the 'do not accept from third parties' checkbox :)
- murgindrag 6y agoIt's not resolve. It's experience. At a young age, you think through short timelines. Crises don't happen. At an old age, once you've been through a few crises, wars, pandemics, law suits, and whatnot, you start calculating expected outcomes a bit differently. I use DuckDuckGo not out of resolve, but because I used the Internet in the nineties, and saw how data I put out then came back in some cases a decade or two later in counter-intuitive ways.
- fsflover 6y agoI am curious to know more about such experiences.
- murgindrag 6y ago1) Interacting in online forums, pre-search engine, where such discussions where considered more-or-less ephemeral, and only available to a closed group of "Internet users" wasn't super-public. All of that is now archived and indexed. If you search for me, you'll find it. 2) Giving my data to super-credible companies, pre-spam. Wouldn't you know it? A few went out of business, and my data was neatly packaged up and resold to the highest bidder. One was an enterprise database company. 3) Personal web page ended up on archive.org, before anyone really knew others were grabbing/indexing/archiving things. It had more of the feel of your front yard. Yes, someone could take a photo, but it wasn't common. 4) The whole Yahoo thing. My emails become property of some data broker who now mines them for marketing and sales. I obviously won't talk about more personal ones. And no one will talk about litigations. But those sorts of things happen too. The things I worry about now are the really sophisticated fingerprinting mechanisms, where your typing patterns, your vocabulary, your linguistic quirks, etc. become biometric identifiers. I'm not sure how all that data will be archived, integrated, and combined 25 years from now. History suggests Google won't be Google forever, though. Oh, and let's not forget what happened with data, Jewish people, WWII, and Germany. That's beyond my timescale, but these things happen.
- fsflover 6y agoThank you, added to favorites to show to skeptics.
- Spacemolte 6y agoThe comparison for me is more like a bicycle, which is really nice, but when going cross country, a car is required.
- novaleaf 6y agoagree. Mostly I stick with DDG, but, especially for nitche queries, if I don't like the DDG results I give it a try again with !g. And as you say, 1/2 the time it doesn't give better results (but, 1/2 it does)
- adsjhdashkj 6y agoSidenote, i am with you fully - and you may be interested in `!s` - Startpage. I know very little about them, so please - do your own research, but supposedly they straight use Google, so your results are basically Google without giving your info "directly" to Google. Of course the question arises, should you trust them? No idea, please - do your own research, maybe let me know hah. But i basically never touch Google these days, as i use DDG for all my searches and !s for any fallbacks.
- slipheen 6y agoI use Startpage for certain escalated queries as well. Irrespective of Startpage's motives, using them provides a layer of indirection between me and Google associating every search with a Google account.
- fsflover 6y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21371577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21371577 Startpage is now owned by an advertising company (reddit.com) 182 points by rahuldottech 10 months ago | 82 comments
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y agoIf Duck Duck Go is free, doesn't it fundamentally have the same business model as Google. I don't understand how there can be no privacy implications, and search is free. At some point, something has to give for DDG to be profitable-- it is a business, after all. There is no way to measure if they're living up to privacy claims, either.
- fsflover 6y agohttps://www.quora.com/What-is-the-revenue-generation-model-for-DuckDuckGo?share=1 https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-revenue-generation-model-f...
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y agoInsightful. When DDG hits critical mass and investors expect greater returns, or if they ever go public, there will be immense pressure to collect/store user data. It's too valuable to pass up.
- soco 6y agoBut until future happens, we're stuck with the present. And in this present DDG doesn't do weird tricks with your data.
- ric2b 6y agoPrivacy is the reason they're growing at all, it's their competitive advantage. I think even investors are smart enough to not kill the chicken that lays golden eggs.
- ancientworldnow 6y agoWhy are you concerned about search engine privacy but also happy to have a robotic vacuum that likely sells maps of and data about your home (such as Roomba does)? Seems to invalidate your point about convenience over purity a little bit.
- fsflover 6y agoYou don't have to tell your wi-fi password to your robotic vacuum. It will work without it.
- gassis 6y agoThis is something I think as well. But what's stopping manufacturers from putting 4G chips inside of it? I have no clue how trivial this is. But I'd assume it is, in which case you're only really "safe" if you open it up and inspect it yourself I guess.
- ludocode 6y agoI have an older Roomba from before they did mapping and before they had internet connectivity. I would never buy an appliance that required an internet connection.