18 ms·

Previous related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26328758 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26328758 If things go as planned, this may beco

by zzyzxd 5y ago

Previous related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26328758 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26328758 If things go as planned, this may become a paid, ad-free, zero-tracking search engine. I can't express how exciting this is to me. Over the past few years, I have made several attempts to replace Google Search with DuckDuckGo. But they have all failed and I always ended up changing the default search engine back to Google. I mean, DDG worked fine for 95% of time, but the remaining 5% failure often led to some extreme frustration that I just couldn't stand. I would imagine Brave Search to have similar issues, at least in the beginning, but they did something smart to make it less painful: > Brave Search beta is based on an independent index, the first of its kind. However, for some queries, Brave can anonymously check our search results against third-party results, and mix them on the results page. So, if I am not satisfied with Brave's result, Google's result is on the same page, or just one click away.

mrpf1ster 5y ago
DuckDuckGo allows you to do a Google search by prepending "!g" to any query. So usually I do that for the last 5% of queries that DDG fails on.
- zzyzxd 5y ago
  The frustration I am talking about is: Check query result -> realize the result is bad -> scroll back to the search bar -> place cursor at the beginning of the query -> enter "!g" -> redirect to Google.com It is not too bad on desktop, but doing it once on a smartphone is more than enough to push me to switch back to Google.
  - the-pigeon 5y ago
    Personally I find it pretty predictable which queries duck duck go will fail on. Basically very niche ones. So I just prepend based on what I'm searching for to begin with instead of after a failure. But I've also been using duckduckgo as my default for over a decade so I've gotten used to it.
  - amoshi 5y ago
    The !g can be almost anywhere in the query, it just can't be followed by non-whitespace or prefixed by special signs.
    - freedomben 5y ago
      This is what I wanted to say. It's a life saver on mobile especially. Just append !g to the query (or !gi for google images, !gm for maps, etc)
  - gnull 5y ago
    If you use Tridactyl, you can quickly jump to the search bar with “gi”. That's what I do.
    - tonyspiff 5y ago
      you can easily create a command for it (and bind to key(s)): command ddgGoogleBang composite js (new URLSearchParams(window.location.search)).get('q') + ' !g' | urlmodify_js -q q | open
  - fictorial 5y ago
    / <c-e> !g <enter>
  - smithza 5y ago
    most browsers support <c-l> to hop the cursor to the url bar for searches or url entries
  - windowojji 5y ago
    I'm amazed that DDG/Brave don't understand that typing something immediately after a "!" on a smartphone is annoying and difficult. DDG only supports "!" after the character for a small subset of bangs. Thankfully "g!" is one of them, but it's immensely easier to type on smartphone.
- jonathansampson 5y ago
  You can use !g on Brave Search too, or turn on Fallback Mixing in Brave Search Settings, which will anonymously call out to Google and pull in results as needed. This helps to train the nascent engine more rapidly. I hope this helps!
  - JeremyBanks 5y ago
    Is that legal?
    - ocdtrekkie 5y ago
      Why wouldn't it be? Google scrapes the web to populate it's results, why wouldn't other search engines scrape the web as well? Google is a website.
      - xpe 5y ago
        This is naive. Web sites have various terms of service.
        therein 5y ago
        Violating a website's ToS is hardly illegal, though.
        xpe 5y ago
        > Violating a website's ToS is hardly illegal, though. Can you be more specific as to your claim? Not illegal in what sense(s)? And what is your basis for the claim? I'm not a lawyer, but saying "violating a website's ToS is hardly illegal" is fraught advice. While individuals may get some leeway when it comes to ToS violations (see [1] and [2]), I would expect companies scraping and/or extracting content would be treated differently. [1]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/07/court-violating-terms-service-not-crime-bypassing https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/07/court-violating-terms-... [2]: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/court-violating-a-sites-terms-of-service-isnt-criminal-hacking/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/court-violating-... [3]: https://www.octoparse.com/blog/10-myths-about-web-scraping https://www.octoparse.com/blog/10-myths-about-web-scraping [4]: https://www.law.com/newyorklawjournal/almID/1202610687621/?slreturn=20210523014130 https://www.law.com/newyorklawjournal/almID/1202610687621/?s...
- aazaa 5y ago
  It redirects to Google. So the effect (including tracking) is identical to just doing a Google search.
  - jonathansampson 5y ago
    This is incorrect. Fallback-Mixing, if you have enabled it (which requires Brave), issues an anonymous query to Google, lacking any cookies or other persistent state for that domain. These results are then presented along with Brave Search's own results. There's no tracking involved. If you perform a direct Google search, you're passing along your cookies as well.
    - Semaphor 5y ago
      The user was replying to using DDG with !g In an indirect way, it’s possible by doing !sp on DDG, which redirects the search to startpage, which shows untracked google results.
      - jonathansampson 5y ago
        Ah, my apologies for any confusion. For what it's worth, the !sp bang is supported on Brave Search as well :)
- unicornporn 5y ago
  Or you could just use https://startpage.com/ https://startpage.com/ and get Google quality results 100% of the time.
  - mackrevinack 5y ago
    that's also 100% reliant on google though. what would happen if that became a lot more popular than it is now? would google try to sabotage it in any way? i would rather support and spread the word about search engines that don't rely solely on google
    - unicornporn 5y ago
      > that's also 100% reliant on google though. what would happen if that became a lot more popular than it is now? would google try to sabotage it in any way? Yes, same applies to DDG/Bing though.
- mastazi 5y ago
  As I said in my other comment[1], you might be interested in using !sp which gives you the same results without Google tracking [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27598042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27598042
  - Dah00n 5y ago
    Startpage is owned by an adtech company now.
    - mastazi 5y ago
      that doesn't change the fact that there are no trackers and the fact that it uses Google results
      - Dah00n 5y ago
        No, but it does mean that you are likely to use it without knowing when they do start tracking you. Because of course an adtech company will (and of course they will deny until the day they change it).
        mastazi 5y ago
        > Because of course an adtech company will then it seems they're being quite slow, since the acquisition happened almost 2 years ago.
  - JohnWhigham 5y ago
    This is silly. 95% of what one can track on the front end can be done on the back end. If you hit Google's servers, you're being tracked. Period.
tomjen3 5y ago
You can't have something be zero tracking and paid since they need to know if you have paid and so need to be able to track you. I use DDG for my main search, but there is the !g (i think) that you can prefix a search with to get it sent to google through DDG.
- jonathansampson 5y ago
  Tracking isn't a necessary component of a subscription service. You can have a model with premium features and/or offerings which doesn't harvest user data, such as searches and more.
  - tomjen3 5y ago
    I guess you could, but then I would have to depend on the service to hold up their promise not to track me. I don't want that.
smoldesu 5y ago
DuckDuckGo does the exact same thing with shebangs. Brave's implementation is just less granular.
- jonathansampson 5y ago
  Brave Search supports the Fallback Mixing option, as well as shebangs (e.g. !g, !a, !b, !d, !e, !yt).
  - xpe 5y ago
    They are called bangs, not shebangs. A shebang is #! > In computing, a shebang is the character sequence consisting of the characters number sign and exclamation mark (#!) at the beginning of a script. It is also called sha-bang,[1][2] hashbang,[3][4] pound-bang,[5][6] or hash-pling.[7] - Wikipedia > Bangs are shortcuts that quickly take you to search results on other sites. For example, when you know you want to search on another site like Wikipedia or Amazon, our bangs get you there fastest. A search for !w filter bubble will take you directly to Wikipedia. -DDG
    - jonathansampson 5y ago
      Thank you for the correction. I used to call them hash-bangs (not sure where I picked up that habit in my ~25 years of industry experience), until I started seeing more people refer to them as shebangs. Oddly enough, while reading them out I would always say "bang, <identifier>". I'll try to refer to them simply as bangs (or perhaps something like search/filter bangs) from now on
      - BenjiWiebe 5y ago
        Because '#!' is a hash followed by a bang.
        jonathansampson 5y ago
        Quite obvious, but naming things is funny in the web-development world. We still call any asynchronous retrieval of data "AJAX," even though it rarely, if ever, involves XML :-)
lopatin 5y ago
Just curious, why are you opposed to search ads? They are already targeted by your search query, so don't fundamentally rely on tracking data.
- toddmorey 5y ago
  Honestly, ads clearly marked as ads and contained just to the results page would be fine. But in the race for better ad performance, they introduced tracking & retargeting & profile building while at the same time both minimizing the visual difference between ads & organic as well as nearly pushing organic of the first page.
- travoc 5y ago
  Search ads have become visually almost indistinguishable from legitimate search results on most search engines, including DuckDuckGo. That's why I try to avoid them whenever possible. DuckDuckGo allows you to turn them off completely.
- zzyzxd 5y ago
  IMHO search ads are bad search results, and in 99% of time they are not something I would want to click. So they are doing nothing useful but only adding friction to my search experience. I am not against privacy friendly ads in free services, but if there's an option to pay to get rid of ads, I will pay.
  - AussieWog93 5y ago
    I'm in eCommerce, run ads (on eBay, not Google) and would have to agree 100%. The only products we put paid promotion on are common and overpriced, and the demographic of the customers is very different to what we'd find through our products sold through organic search. Based solely on anecdata through the messages we receive and the addresses we ship to, the people who click on ads are somewhat more likely to be lower-socio, much more likely to have low literacy skills, and a couple of orders of magnitude more likely (not an exaggeration) to live in a remote Aboriginal community. It feels somewhat dirty/exploitative, but it's what the customer wants. They have the choice of saving $50+ by scrolling past the first 3-4 results, but they choose not to. I just don't understand.
55555 5y ago
They will definitely implement ads. They're an advertising company.
- fossislife 5y ago
  "options for ad-free paid search and ad-supported search" https://brave.com/brave-search-beta/ https://brave.com/brave-search-beta/
  - deadite 5y ago
    Future post: "We have listened to our users, and we are removing ad-free paid search due to a lack of demand and [some excuses about how it's technically difficult to maintain it]." We'll see which comes first. That post, or "Our Great Journey."
  - ElijahLynn 5y ago
    Nice, I would pay for it. Would make it a lot easier if the backend was #opensource though. Not saying I won't but it would make it a no-brainer.
axaxs 5y ago
Same excitement here. I'd love to see anyone(Brave or others) chip away at my Google dependencies, even if they charge me for them. I already love Brave as a browser, so here's hoping search pans out. I don't mind a company profiling me. A lot of Google's cross interacting products work great(Gmail to Calendar and Maps, for example). I just don't want them advertising to me, or selling my data. A guy can dream...
- smoldesu 5y ago
  > I don't mind a company profiling me Not everyone has that luxury. > I just don't want them advertising to me, or selling my data Then your data is worthless to them. Nobody wants companies to abuse their personal data, that's why it's such a lucrative business. Companies like Apple and Brave get away with it by edging out competition and instating their own standards (see: Brave's Ad "replacement"). It's all so ridiculously asinine that it makes me want to uninstall every piece of software from my computer and use it exclusively as a space heater for the rest of my life.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - axaxs 5y ago
    > Then your data is worthless to them This is precisely the point. It should be worse than worthless, it should cost them money. And they should charge that to me, plus some nominal fee. I guess that's what I'm asking for.
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      The issue is that you're not describing a sustainable business model. Sure, it would be a much better situation than we have now, but you can't cover hosting fees with data bills.
      - squiggleblaz 5y ago
        That's a strange argument. "If we pay you for the product you give us, we'll never be able to pay our service providers. Instead, we'll give sell it to someone else."
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
slver 5y ago
> I have made several attempts to replace Google Search with DuckDuckGo. But they have all failed and I always ended up changing the default search engine back to Google. Hmm... > Brave Search beta is based on an independent index, the first of its kind. However, for some queries, Brave can anonymously check our search results against third-party results, and mix them on the results page. That's also what DDG does. If you don't like DDG, odds you'll like some even smaller effort are quite to zero.
truth_ 5y ago
> Over the past few years, I have made several attempts to replace Google Search with DuckDuckGo I have been using Startpage for a while. It's results are same as Google, but with zero tracking. But it puts (non-personalized) ads in results.
chiefalchemist 5y ago
Fyi. In Firefox you prefix your search with the engine you want to use. That is, DDG can be your start and you can conveniently use Google as needed.
unicornporn 5y ago
> I mean, DDG worked fine for 95% of time, but the remaining 5% failure often led to some extreme frustration that I just couldn't stand. So, just use https://startpage.com/ https://startpage.com/ and get proxied Google results. Searx is another alternative.
lowkeyokay 5y ago
> I mean, DDG worked fine for 95% of time, but the remaining 5% failure often led to some extreme frustration that I just couldn't stand. Is 95% really not acceptable?My experience is quite different though. When I don’t get the results I hoped I just use !g. Easy. But the result are rarely any better
- mbauman 5y ago
  > When I don’t get the results I hoped I just use !g. Easy. But the result are rarely any better This is exactly my experience. I have a "failed" search probably about a quarter of the time. Changing around the keywords can sometimes fix those failures... maybe about a quarter again are still stuck. So, yeah, ~5% failure rate. I inevitably try !g and am inevitably disappointed with effectively the same results (or lack thereof). Google successfully recovers a failed search maybe 10% of the time.
- tobr 5y ago
  I used to do this, but at some point I just stopped. Google is not better than DDG. More SEO spam and much more hostile UX. Brave has a culture of user-hostile UX too so I don’t have any big hopes for this. I like the idea of paying for a search engine, though. I would seriously consider that if DDG offered it.
  - burn 5y ago
    Why not try Neeva? They are going the route of a paid search engine.
    - eitland 5y ago
      Upvoted, but here is the reason why I don't use it, some people haven't yet fully realized that Internet doesn't have borders: > We will be in touch when we are ready to release Neeva in your country. Thank you for being part of the Neeva team, we are so excited to build the future of search with you.
    - kmonsen 5y ago
smsm42 5y ago
If DDG works in 95% cases, just use it and use !google command on it when it misses the mark.
- mastazi 5y ago
  or even better you can use !sp https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27598042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27598042
  - rataata_jr 5y ago
    Startpage got sold
    - mastazi 5y ago
      I'm aware, that was almost 2 years ago and startpage still has no trackers (as of today, according to EFF Privacy Badger), so I consider it safe.
Dah00n 5y ago
> Brave Search beta is based on an independent index, the first of its kind. That's... an interesting way to put it. I can't really twist and turn it into the truth though. Smells like it was put through a lot of PR. >However, for some queries, Brave can anonymously check our search results against third-party results, and mix them on the results page. This is something almost all of the search engines outside Google and Bing does. DDG does this with Bing for example. As far as I can tell the only "new" in this will be that the same thing is done again by another company.
howolduis 5y ago
so you're saying it would be better then DDG just because u r paying money for it?
tills13 5y ago
> Brave can anonymously check our search results against third-party results Why are we OK with these free services literally stealing Google results? Could you imagine the backlash if it was discovered that Google was doing the same for its results by stealing from DDG or another, smaller player?
- jonathansampson 5y ago
  Google is a Search Engine. Further, it displays content from sites directly in its results. This includes recipes, show times, sporting event details, and more. It has been argued that Google is stealing this data from smaller sites. Brave is (optionally, if you enable the feature) merely using Google (a more mature apparatus) as a means of learning to deliver better results to the user. The only way somebody is going to "build a better Google" is by training their data on what makes Google so popular to begin with. Brave is able to do this is a secure and private manner.
  - tills13 5y ago
    So Google taking data from sites and putting it on theirs is "stealing" but Brave doing that is different and Brave taking results from Google is considered "learning" or "training"? Hmm... I'm beginning to think people just hate Google because it's "cool" to have a negative opinion about it here.
    - CRConrad 5y ago
      There is a difference: Google is taking page content from sites and putting it on their own search result page; Brave is taking search-result links from Google and putting them on their own search result page.
eloisius 5y ago
I've stuck with DDG for about the past year and a half and I have to agree. I want it to be good, but when debugging some obscure problem (like trying to learn SwiftUI lately) Google is able to dig up more result. Of course the "there were not results for <your error message> so displaying results for 'computer programming instead'" is frustrating so I preemtively add quotes around every term more frequently. Lately I've noticed a weird problem with DDG where it will load a blank page of results. The page header with logo and search bar is there, but the white part of the page that has results never loads. Even after refreshing multiple times it's the same, but trying a different query fixes it. If Brave can manage to produce higher quality results while weeding out SEO spam I will definitely subscribe.
- firexcy 5y ago
  > a weird problem with DDG where it will load a blank page of results I've noticed the same problem too. My guess is that DDG pulls search results from 3rd-party engines such as Bing and for some technical issues it may fail from time to time.
Naracion 5y ago
For the other 5% of the time, use the !s bang for Startpage. Anonymized Google search results, with an option to visit the websites on the results page anonymously.
kristopolous 5y ago
DDG almost fails in the same way as goog. The only advantage I have seen in results is Google has removed nonsense and conspiracy garbage from their results. It's the general rush towards infantilism. I want to see the kind of nonsense that has assuaged so many people into effective insanity and apparently Google has decided that I'm not enough of an adult to view it. It's like their Android dictionary. It lacks lots of words that I have to go and check manually because they've decided that someone using a nuanced word is only done in error Or with their search where they remove all the important stuff from the query and return the results that I was specifically trying to avoid with those important modifiers "there's not many results with x" - Yes! That's the point. All over the place they're just on some endless campaign to patronize the userbase. From the address bar that simply just refuses to do http: to a painfully dumb search in Gmail, it's really a company wide systemic problem they need to address. At least back in the say AOL days, which were renown for this kind of mentality, they kept things at a stable sophistication for the lifetime of the product. It wasn't in some unending rush to become ever more stupid and childish with every subsequent release
1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
"If things go as planned, this may become a paid, ad-free, zero-tracking search engine." In 1998 when Google's founders announced their search engine they claimed it would be less commercial, more academic, more transparent and they would avoid the influence of advertising. Did things "go as planned." Not even close. What is the lesson here. Meanwhile, every search submitted during the "beta" period is subject to none of those limitations. "So, if I am not satisfied with Brave's result, Google's result is on the same page, or just one click away." Brave is not the first to do that. Check out Gigablast, for example. If I am not mistaken, they also claim to use an "independent index". At least, they provide the source to a crawler and server.^1 That is what people should be excited about. Not Gigablast per se but the idea of an open source search engine that anyone can run. searx is another project worth looking at.^2 How many ways are results promoted and demoted; what are the factors used. Are these search engines that comenters are recommending in this thread transparent. (Making promises on a blog is not "transparency" IMO.) Where is the source code. What are the various server settings that alternatives like Google, DDG, Brave, Startpage, etc. never provide to users. This stuff should matter, yet the discussion of search engines always seems to devolve into personal usage anecdotes and "search shortcuts". Every user has different needs and preferences. There are many knobs in web search that advertising-supporting tech companies providing "search engine" websites will never let users twiddle. The source code for those servers is not public. 1. To get an idea of type of settings users of popular search engines are not being allowed to control: (Scroll down to "SEARCH CONTROLS") https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gigablast/open-source-search-engine/master/Parms.cpp https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gigablast/open-source-sear... 2. https://github.com/searx/searx https://github.com/searx/searx For a current list of searx public instances curl https://searx.space/data/instances.json|grep -Eo '(A\+", .[^"]*.{4}[^"]*)'|cut -d/ -f5|uniq|sed 's>.*>https://&>'
- yewenjie 5y ago
  > searx I just gave the docker image a try. It works out of the box but the search time feels slightly more than that of Google - which is one of the reasons I gave up on DDG. Also, I am curious - if I am hosting it on my own server and using Google as one of the engines - does that not mean my search ultimately goes to Google and they can still profile me?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
octatrack 5y ago
I switched to using StartPage after DDG failed me. I ended up adding !g to almost all of the searches. StartPage shows Google results through a proxy for improved privacy. I am quite happy with it.
- kaba0 5y ago
  Just a note that StartPage was bought by a not-too-privacy friendly company.
  - beebeepka 5y ago
    Startpage was turned into shit over the last few months. Requiring JS for search and absolutely freakish amount of ads dominating the first scroll of results. Been with them for about a decade but this is too much
    - karinakarina 5y ago
      Hi - I'm a person from Startpage. I'll share your feedback with the team, but here I can respond to some of these things. JS: Startpage does use Javascript, but only to enhance user interaction with our site and improve the search results we provide. ADs: Startpage displays at most 3 ads. Like other private search engines, Startpage's revenue model is based on contextual ads. Let me know if you have questions or suggestions.
  - karinakarina 5y ago
    Startpage person here. In 2019, Startpage announced an investment by System1 through Privacy One Group, a wholly-owned subsidiary of System1. It's 2021 and our privacy policy hasn't changed. What has happened with this investment, we've hired additional engineers and added new features. And, System1 doesn't receive any user personal data because we don't collect it and never will. Why did System1 invest? "System1 is interested in Startpage's ad revenue, not its data" Source: https://www.computing.co.uk/news/4017337/privacy-focused-search-engine-startpage-details-system1-investment https://www.computing.co.uk/news/4017337/privacy-focused-sea...
devenvdev 5y ago
I wish they would add a feature that would let you add your own tags to counterweight the lack of tracking. Right now google knows a lot about you and uses it to refine the search results, if you remove tracking - quality drops. But if you at least let the user tell the engine that "I'm a programmer, gamer, geek, whatever" it might just do the trick to counterweight that.
- pythux 5y ago
  Hey, we are planning on implementing something very similar to what you describe. You can read more about our proposal here: https://brave.com/goggles https://brave.com/goggles In a nutshell, community-curated lists of rules to deeply change the way our core ranking algorithm surface content and influence the results you see for a given query.
mattlondon 5y ago
Do they anonymously check Google though? Maybe they'll just use bing like all the others
hnlmorg 5y ago
DDG already includes Google (amongst others) in its results. It's not just a front end to Bing, like many assume (though I can't find DDG's article on the subject to directly cite). The thing with people who switch to DDG is, they do so consciously for privacy reasons but then forget that the reason G's results are so good is because they add little bits of context in through their profiling. But that doesn't mean that DDG's results can't be as good as G's, it just means you need to add that context yourself. Like if you search for a coding problem, add your computer language name to the search query. Or if you're search for a restaurant, add in your home town too. I've found DDG's results to be comparable to Google's and in fact in the last ~3 years of exclusively using DDG, I can count on one hand the number of times I've tried searching for something in Google after a failed search in DDG. Image searching is a little more hit and miss though. G's image search is better -- generally speaking. However DDG doesn't include Pinterest spam. So if you're after something specific using image searching, Google is better. But if you're after a general list of usable images, then DDG is better.
- mackrevinack 5y ago
  DDG also makes it very to download images, unlike Google that now makes you go though to whatever site and have to scroll around in the page to find the image
  - extropy 5y ago
    Google was forced to do that because sites where screaming google is stealing their traffic by linking directly to images. Once DDG is big enough, they will be forced to do the same.
  - losvedir 5y ago
    Or as people like to say about Uber, DDG is doing "legal arbitrage" since they're still small and Google can't do that anymore.
- paraknight 5y ago
  > but then forget that the reason G's results are so good is because they add little bits of context in through their profiling I disagree. I've tried to switch to DDG several times too, and always go back to StartPage, which is a proxy for Google, and the results were always better even without profiling. There is a case to be made for Google having better results globally from aggregate user behaviour though.

by zzyzxd 5y ago

mrpf1ster 5y ago

DuckDuckGo allows you to do a Google search by prepending "!g" to any query. So usually I do that for the last 5% of queries that DDG fails on.

zzyzxd 5y ago
The frustration I am talking about is: Check query result -> realize the result is bad -> scroll back to the search bar -> place cursor at the beginning of the query -> enter "!g" -> redirect to Google.com It is not too bad on desktop, but doing it once on a smartphone is more than enough to push me to switch back to Google.
- the-pigeon 5y ago
  Personally I find it pretty predictable which queries duck duck go will fail on. Basically very niche ones. So I just prepend based on what I'm searching for to begin with instead of after a failure. But I've also been using duckduckgo as my default for over a decade so I've gotten used to it.
- amoshi 5y ago
  The !g can be almost anywhere in the query, it just can't be followed by non-whitespace or prefixed by special signs.
  - freedomben 5y ago
    This is what I wanted to say. It's a life saver on mobile especially. Just append !g to the query (or !gi for google images, !gm for maps, etc)
- gnull 5y ago
  If you use Tridactyl, you can quickly jump to the search bar with “gi”. That's what I do.
  - tonyspiff 5y ago
    you can easily create a command for it (and bind to key(s)): command ddgGoogleBang composite js (new URLSearchParams(window.location.search)).get('q') + ' !g' | urlmodify_js -q q | open
- fictorial 5y ago
  / <c-e> !g <enter>
- smithza 5y ago
  most browsers support <c-l> to hop the cursor to the url bar for searches or url entries
- windowojji 5y ago
  I'm amazed that DDG/Brave don't understand that typing something immediately after a "!" on a smartphone is annoying and difficult. DDG only supports "!" after the character for a small subset of bangs. Thankfully "g!" is one of them, but it's immensely easier to type on smartphone.
jonathansampson 5y ago
You can use !g on Brave Search too, or turn on Fallback Mixing in Brave Search Settings, which will anonymously call out to Google and pull in results as needed. This helps to train the nascent engine more rapidly. I hope this helps!
- JeremyBanks 5y ago
  Is that legal?
  - ocdtrekkie 5y ago
    Why wouldn't it be? Google scrapes the web to populate it's results, why wouldn't other search engines scrape the web as well? Google is a website.
    - xpe 5y ago
      This is naive. Web sites have various terms of service.
      - therein 5y ago
        Violating a website's ToS is hardly illegal, though.
        xpe 5y ago
        > Violating a website's ToS is hardly illegal, though. Can you be more specific as to your claim? Not illegal in what sense(s)? And what is your basis for the claim? I'm not a lawyer, but saying "violating a website's ToS is hardly illegal" is fraught advice. While individuals may get some leeway when it comes to ToS violations (see [1] and [2]), I would expect companies scraping and/or extracting content would be treated differently. [1]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/07/court-violating-terms-service-not-crime-bypassing https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/07/court-violating-terms-... [2]: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/court-violating-a-sites-terms-of-service-isnt-criminal-hacking/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/court-violating-... [3]: https://www.octoparse.com/blog/10-myths-about-web-scraping https://www.octoparse.com/blog/10-myths-about-web-scraping [4]: https://www.law.com/newyorklawjournal/almID/1202610687621/?slreturn=20210523014130 https://www.law.com/newyorklawjournal/almID/1202610687621/?s...
aazaa 5y ago
It redirects to Google. So the effect (including tracking) is identical to just doing a Google search.
- jonathansampson 5y ago
  This is incorrect. Fallback-Mixing, if you have enabled it (which requires Brave), issues an anonymous query to Google, lacking any cookies or other persistent state for that domain. These results are then presented along with Brave Search's own results. There's no tracking involved. If you perform a direct Google search, you're passing along your cookies as well.
  - Semaphor 5y ago
    The user was replying to using DDG with !g In an indirect way, it’s possible by doing !sp on DDG, which redirects the search to startpage, which shows untracked google results.
    - jonathansampson 5y ago
      Ah, my apologies for any confusion. For what it's worth, the !sp bang is supported on Brave Search as well :)
unicornporn 5y ago
Or you could just use https://startpage.com/ https://startpage.com/ and get Google quality results 100% of the time.
- mackrevinack 5y ago
  that's also 100% reliant on google though. what would happen if that became a lot more popular than it is now? would google try to sabotage it in any way? i would rather support and spread the word about search engines that don't rely solely on google
  - unicornporn 5y ago
    > that's also 100% reliant on google though. what would happen if that became a lot more popular than it is now? would google try to sabotage it in any way? Yes, same applies to DDG/Bing though.
mastazi 5y ago
As I said in my other comment[1], you might be interested in using !sp which gives you the same results without Google tracking [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27598042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27598042
- Dah00n 5y ago
  Startpage is owned by an adtech company now.
  - mastazi 5y ago
    that doesn't change the fact that there are no trackers and the fact that it uses Google results
    - Dah00n 5y ago
      No, but it does mean that you are likely to use it without knowing when they do start tracking you. Because of course an adtech company will (and of course they will deny until the day they change it).
      - mastazi 5y ago
        > Because of course an adtech company will then it seems they're being quite slow, since the acquisition happened almost 2 years ago.
- JohnWhigham 5y ago
  This is silly. 95% of what one can track on the front end can be done on the back end. If you hit Google's servers, you're being tracked. Period.

tomjen3 5y ago

You can't have something be zero tracking and paid since they need to know if you have paid and so need to be able to track you. I use DDG for my main search, but there is the !g (i think) that you can prefix a search with to get it sent to google through DDG.

jonathansampson 5y ago
Tracking isn't a necessary component of a subscription service. You can have a model with premium features and/or offerings which doesn't harvest user data, such as searches and more.
- tomjen3 5y ago
  I guess you could, but then I would have to depend on the service to hold up their promise not to track me. I don't want that.

smoldesu 5y ago

DuckDuckGo does the exact same thing with shebangs. Brave's implementation is just less granular.

jonathansampson 5y ago
Brave Search supports the Fallback Mixing option, as well as shebangs (e.g. !g, !a, !b, !d, !e, !yt).
- xpe 5y ago
  They are called bangs, not shebangs. A shebang is #! > In computing, a shebang is the character sequence consisting of the characters number sign and exclamation mark (#!) at the beginning of a script. It is also called sha-bang,[1][2] hashbang,[3][4] pound-bang,[5][6] or hash-pling.[7] - Wikipedia > Bangs are shortcuts that quickly take you to search results on other sites. For example, when you know you want to search on another site like Wikipedia or Amazon, our bangs get you there fastest. A search for !w filter bubble will take you directly to Wikipedia. -DDG
  - jonathansampson 5y ago
    Thank you for the correction. I used to call them hash-bangs (not sure where I picked up that habit in my ~25 years of industry experience), until I started seeing more people refer to them as shebangs. Oddly enough, while reading them out I would always say "bang, <identifier>". I'll try to refer to them simply as bangs (or perhaps something like search/filter bangs) from now on
    - BenjiWiebe 5y ago
      Because '#!' is a hash followed by a bang.
      - jonathansampson 5y ago
        Quite obvious, but naming things is funny in the web-development world. We still call any asynchronous retrieval of data "AJAX," even though it rarely, if ever, involves XML :-)

lopatin 5y ago

Just curious, why are you opposed to search ads? They are already targeted by your search query, so don't fundamentally rely on tracking data.

toddmorey 5y ago
Honestly, ads clearly marked as ads and contained just to the results page would be fine. But in the race for better ad performance, they introduced tracking & retargeting & profile building while at the same time both minimizing the visual difference between ads & organic as well as nearly pushing organic of the first page.
travoc 5y ago
Search ads have become visually almost indistinguishable from legitimate search results on most search engines, including DuckDuckGo. That's why I try to avoid them whenever possible. DuckDuckGo allows you to turn them off completely.
zzyzxd 5y ago
IMHO search ads are bad search results, and in 99% of time they are not something I would want to click. So they are doing nothing useful but only adding friction to my search experience. I am not against privacy friendly ads in free services, but if there's an option to pay to get rid of ads, I will pay.
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  I'm in eCommerce, run ads (on eBay, not Google) and would have to agree 100%. The only products we put paid promotion on are common and overpriced, and the demographic of the customers is very different to what we'd find through our products sold through organic search. Based solely on anecdata through the messages we receive and the addresses we ship to, the people who click on ads are somewhat more likely to be lower-socio, much more likely to have low literacy skills, and a couple of orders of magnitude more likely (not an exaggeration) to live in a remote Aboriginal community. It feels somewhat dirty/exploitative, but it's what the customer wants. They have the choice of saving $50+ by scrolling past the first 3-4 results, but they choose not to. I just don't understand.

55555 5y ago

They will definitely implement ads. They're an advertising company.

fossislife 5y ago
"options for ad-free paid search and ad-supported search" https://brave.com/brave-search-beta/ https://brave.com/brave-search-beta/
- deadite 5y ago
  Future post: "We have listened to our users, and we are removing ad-free paid search due to a lack of demand and [some excuses about how it's technically difficult to maintain it]." We'll see which comes first. That post, or "Our Great Journey."
- ElijahLynn 5y ago
  Nice, I would pay for it. Would make it a lot easier if the backend was #opensource though. Not saying I won't but it would make it a no-brainer.

axaxs 5y ago

Same excitement here. I'd love to see anyone(Brave or others) chip away at my Google dependencies, even if they charge me for them. I already love Brave as a browser, so here's hoping search pans out. I don't mind a company profiling me. A lot of Google's cross interacting products work great(Gmail to Calendar and Maps, for example). I just don't want them advertising to me, or selling my data. A guy can dream...

smoldesu 5y ago
> I don't mind a company profiling me Not everyone has that luxury. > I just don't want them advertising to me, or selling my data Then your data is worthless to them. Nobody wants companies to abuse their personal data, that's why it's such a lucrative business. Companies like Apple and Brave get away with it by edging out competition and instating their own standards (see: Brave's Ad "replacement"). It's all so ridiculously asinine that it makes me want to uninstall every piece of software from my computer and use it exclusively as a space heater for the rest of my life.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- axaxs 5y ago
  > Then your data is worthless to them This is precisely the point. It should be worse than worthless, it should cost them money. And they should charge that to me, plus some nominal fee. I guess that's what I'm asking for.
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    The issue is that you're not describing a sustainable business model. Sure, it would be a much better situation than we have now, but you can't cover hosting fees with data bills.
    - squiggleblaz 5y ago
      That's a strange argument. "If we pay you for the product you give us, we'll never be able to pay our service providers. Instead, we'll give sell it to someone else."

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

slver 5y ago

> I have made several attempts to replace Google Search with DuckDuckGo. But they have all failed and I always ended up changing the default search engine back to Google. Hmm... > Brave Search beta is based on an independent index, the first of its kind. However, for some queries, Brave can anonymously check our search results against third-party results, and mix them on the results page. That's also what DDG does. If you don't like DDG, odds you'll like some even smaller effort are quite to zero.

truth_ 5y ago

> Over the past few years, I have made several attempts to replace Google Search with DuckDuckGo I have been using Startpage for a while. It's results are same as Google, but with zero tracking. But it puts (non-personalized) ads in results.

chiefalchemist 5y ago

Fyi. In Firefox you prefix your search with the engine you want to use. That is, DDG can be your start and you can conveniently use Google as needed.

unicornporn 5y ago

> I mean, DDG worked fine for 95% of time, but the remaining 5% failure often led to some extreme frustration that I just couldn't stand. So, just use https://startpage.com/ https://startpage.com/ and get proxied Google results. Searx is another alternative.

lowkeyokay 5y ago

> I mean, DDG worked fine for 95% of time, but the remaining 5% failure often led to some extreme frustration that I just couldn't stand. Is 95% really not acceptable?My experience is quite different though. When I don’t get the results I hoped I just use !g. Easy. But the result are rarely any better

mbauman 5y ago
> When I don’t get the results I hoped I just use !g. Easy. But the result are rarely any better This is exactly my experience. I have a "failed" search probably about a quarter of the time. Changing around the keywords can sometimes fix those failures... maybe about a quarter again are still stuck. So, yeah, ~5% failure rate. I inevitably try !g and am inevitably disappointed with effectively the same results (or lack thereof). Google successfully recovers a failed search maybe 10% of the time.
tobr 5y ago
I used to do this, but at some point I just stopped. Google is not better than DDG. More SEO spam and much more hostile UX. Brave has a culture of user-hostile UX too so I don’t have any big hopes for this. I like the idea of paying for a search engine, though. I would seriously consider that if DDG offered it.
- burn 5y ago
  Why not try Neeva? They are going the route of a paid search engine.
  - eitland 5y ago
    Upvoted, but here is the reason why I don't use it, some people haven't yet fully realized that Internet doesn't have borders: > We will be in touch when we are ready to release Neeva in your country. Thank you for being part of the Neeva team, we are so excited to build the future of search with you.
  - kmonsen 5y ago

smsm42 5y ago

If DDG works in 95% cases, just use it and use !google command on it when it misses the mark.

mastazi 5y ago
or even better you can use !sp https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27598042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27598042
- rataata_jr 5y ago
  Startpage got sold
  - mastazi 5y ago
    I'm aware, that was almost 2 years ago and startpage still has no trackers (as of today, according to EFF Privacy Badger), so I consider it safe.

Dah00n 5y ago

> Brave Search beta is based on an independent index, the first of its kind. That's... an interesting way to put it. I can't really twist and turn it into the truth though. Smells like it was put through a lot of PR. >However, for some queries, Brave can anonymously check our search results against third-party results, and mix them on the results page. This is something almost all of the search engines outside Google and Bing does. DDG does this with Bing for example. As far as I can tell the only "new" in this will be that the same thing is done again by another company.

howolduis 5y ago

so you're saying it would be better then DDG just because u r paying money for it?

tills13 5y ago

> Brave can anonymously check our search results against third-party results Why are we OK with these free services literally stealing Google results? Could you imagine the backlash if it was discovered that Google was doing the same for its results by stealing from DDG or another, smaller player?

jonathansampson 5y ago
Google is a Search Engine. Further, it displays content from sites directly in its results. This includes recipes, show times, sporting event details, and more. It has been argued that Google is stealing this data from smaller sites. Brave is (optionally, if you enable the feature) merely using Google (a more mature apparatus) as a means of learning to deliver better results to the user. The only way somebody is going to "build a better Google" is by training their data on what makes Google so popular to begin with. Brave is able to do this is a secure and private manner.
- tills13 5y ago
  So Google taking data from sites and putting it on theirs is "stealing" but Brave doing that is different and Brave taking results from Google is considered "learning" or "training"? Hmm... I'm beginning to think people just hate Google because it's "cool" to have a negative opinion about it here.
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    There is a difference: Google is taking page content from sites and putting it on their own search result page; Brave is taking search-result links from Google and putting them on their own search result page.

eloisius 5y ago

I've stuck with DDG for about the past year and a half and I have to agree. I want it to be good, but when debugging some obscure problem (like trying to learn SwiftUI lately) Google is able to dig up more result. Of course the "there were not results for <your error message> so displaying results for 'computer programming instead'" is frustrating so I preemtively add quotes around every term more frequently. Lately I've noticed a weird problem with DDG where it will load a blank page of results. The page header with logo and search bar is there, but the white part of the page that has results never loads. Even after refreshing multiple times it's the same, but trying a different query fixes it. If Brave can manage to produce higher quality results while weeding out SEO spam I will definitely subscribe.

firexcy 5y ago
> a weird problem with DDG where it will load a blank page of results I've noticed the same problem too. My guess is that DDG pulls search results from 3rd-party engines such as Bing and for some technical issues it may fail from time to time.

Naracion 5y ago

For the other 5% of the time, use the !s bang for Startpage. Anonymized Google search results, with an option to visit the websites on the results page anonymously.

kristopolous 5y ago

DDG almost fails in the same way as goog. The only advantage I have seen in results is Google has removed nonsense and conspiracy garbage from their results. It's the general rush towards infantilism. I want to see the kind of nonsense that has assuaged so many people into effective insanity and apparently Google has decided that I'm not enough of an adult to view it. It's like their Android dictionary. It lacks lots of words that I have to go and check manually because they've decided that someone using a nuanced word is only done in error Or with their search where they remove all the important stuff from the query and return the results that I was specifically trying to avoid with those important modifiers "there's not many results with x" - Yes! That's the point. All over the place they're just on some endless campaign to patronize the userbase. From the address bar that simply just refuses to do http: to a painfully dumb search in Gmail, it's really a company wide systemic problem they need to address. At least back in the say AOL days, which were renown for this kind of mentality, they kept things at a stable sophistication for the lifetime of the product. It wasn't in some unending rush to become ever more stupid and childish with every subsequent release

1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago

"If things go as planned, this may become a paid, ad-free, zero-tracking search engine." In 1998 when Google's founders announced their search engine they claimed it would be less commercial, more academic, more transparent and they would avoid the influence of advertising. Did things "go as planned." Not even close. What is the lesson here. Meanwhile, every search submitted during the "beta" period is subject to none of those limitations. "So, if I am not satisfied with Brave's result, Google's result is on the same page, or just one click away." Brave is not the first to do that. Check out Gigablast, for example. If I am not mistaken, they also claim to use an "independent index". At least, they provide the source to a crawler and server.^1 That is what people should be excited about. Not Gigablast per se but the idea of an open source search engine that anyone can run. searx is another project worth looking at.^2 How many ways are results promoted and demoted; what are the factors used. Are these search engines that comenters are recommending in this thread transparent. (Making promises on a blog is not "transparency" IMO.) Where is the source code. What are the various server settings that alternatives like Google, DDG, Brave, Startpage, etc. never provide to users. This stuff should matter, yet the discussion of search engines always seems to devolve into personal usage anecdotes and "search shortcuts". Every user has different needs and preferences. There are many knobs in web search that advertising-supporting tech companies providing "search engine" websites will never let users twiddle. The source code for those servers is not public. 1. To get an idea of type of settings users of popular search engines are not being allowed to control: (Scroll down to "SEARCH CONTROLS") https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gigablast/open-source-search-engine/master/Parms.cpp https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gigablast/open-source-sear... 2. https://github.com/searx/searx https://github.com/searx/searx For a current list of searx public instances curl https://searx.space/data/instances.json|grep -Eo '(A\+", .[^"]*.{4}[^"]*)'|cut -d/ -f5|uniq|sed 's>.*>https://&>'

yewenjie 5y ago
> searx I just gave the docker image a try. It works out of the box but the search time feels slightly more than that of Google - which is one of the reasons I gave up on DDG. Also, I am curious - if I am hosting it on my own server and using Google as one of the engines - does that not mean my search ultimately goes to Google and they can still profile me?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

octatrack 5y ago

I switched to using StartPage after DDG failed me. I ended up adding !g to almost all of the searches. StartPage shows Google results through a proxy for improved privacy. I am quite happy with it.

kaba0 5y ago
Just a note that StartPage was bought by a not-too-privacy friendly company.
- beebeepka 5y ago
  Startpage was turned into shit over the last few months. Requiring JS for search and absolutely freakish amount of ads dominating the first scroll of results. Been with them for about a decade but this is too much
  - karinakarina 5y ago
    Hi - I'm a person from Startpage. I'll share your feedback with the team, but here I can respond to some of these things. JS: Startpage does use Javascript, but only to enhance user interaction with our site and improve the search results we provide. ADs: Startpage displays at most 3 ads. Like other private search engines, Startpage's revenue model is based on contextual ads. Let me know if you have questions or suggestions.
- karinakarina 5y ago
  Startpage person here. In 2019, Startpage announced an investment by System1 through Privacy One Group, a wholly-owned subsidiary of System1. It's 2021 and our privacy policy hasn't changed. What has happened with this investment, we've hired additional engineers and added new features. And, System1 doesn't receive any user personal data because we don't collect it and never will. Why did System1 invest? "System1 is interested in Startpage's ad revenue, not its data" Source: https://www.computing.co.uk/news/4017337/privacy-focused-search-engine-startpage-details-system1-investment https://www.computing.co.uk/news/4017337/privacy-focused-sea...

devenvdev 5y ago

I wish they would add a feature that would let you add your own tags to counterweight the lack of tracking. Right now google knows a lot about you and uses it to refine the search results, if you remove tracking - quality drops. But if you at least let the user tell the engine that "I'm a programmer, gamer, geek, whatever" it might just do the trick to counterweight that.

pythux 5y ago
Hey, we are planning on implementing something very similar to what you describe. You can read more about our proposal here: https://brave.com/goggles https://brave.com/goggles In a nutshell, community-curated lists of rules to deeply change the way our core ranking algorithm surface content and influence the results you see for a given query.

mattlondon 5y ago

Do they anonymously check Google though? Maybe they'll just use bing like all the others

hnlmorg 5y ago

DDG already includes Google (amongst others) in its results. It's not just a front end to Bing, like many assume (though I can't find DDG's article on the subject to directly cite). The thing with people who switch to DDG is, they do so consciously for privacy reasons but then forget that the reason G's results are so good is because they add little bits of context in through their profiling. But that doesn't mean that DDG's results can't be as good as G's, it just means you need to add that context yourself. Like if you search for a coding problem, add your computer language name to the search query. Or if you're search for a restaurant, add in your home town too. I've found DDG's results to be comparable to Google's and in fact in the last ~3 years of exclusively using DDG, I can count on one hand the number of times I've tried searching for something in Google after a failed search in DDG. Image searching is a little more hit and miss though. G's image search is better -- generally speaking. However DDG doesn't include Pinterest spam. So if you're after something specific using image searching, Google is better. But if you're after a general list of usable images, then DDG is better.

mackrevinack 5y ago
DDG also makes it very to download images, unlike Google that now makes you go though to whatever site and have to scroll around in the page to find the image
- extropy 5y ago
  Google was forced to do that because sites where screaming google is stealing their traffic by linking directly to images. Once DDG is big enough, they will be forced to do the same.
- losvedir 5y ago
  Or as people like to say about Uber, DDG is doing "legal arbitrage" since they're still small and Google can't do that anymore.
paraknight 5y ago
> but then forget that the reason G's results are so good is because they add little bits of context in through their profiling I disagree. I've tried to switch to DDG several times too, and always go back to StartPage, which is a proxy for Google, and the results were always better even without profiling. There is a case to be made for Google having better results globally from aggregate user behaviour though.