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I've encouraged numerous non-technical friends and family members to switch to DuckDuckGo and they've all gone back to Google within a week.

by cdogl 5y ago

iKevinShah 5y ago
Although my default is DDG and I am technical, but I still find myself heading back to Google in case DDG disappoints. and that happens frequently (although definitely not always)
- tomerv 5y ago
  That's my experience as well. I'm on DDG for a few months now, and I often resort to using Google when DDG doesn't give me the results I want.
- maxk42 5y ago
  I had the same problem with DDG. I use Bing now. It may not be as ideal as DDG, but it's not Google and I seldom have difficulty finding what I'm searching for.
rchaud 5y ago
How much of that is down to them missing the familiar look of the Google results page? I wish we could do a blind study where users were asked to use a white-labeled search page where the results are served by Google or Bing (or others), but not disclosed. They would be asked to use that engine exclusively for 3 months, and rank their satisfaction with it. I imagine the results would be similar, but people would still feel a pull towards Google because it's been around for 20 years.
- Kye 5y ago
  Microsoft did something like this almost a decade ago. https://techcrunch.com/2012/09/06/bing-it-on-microsoft-claims-21-users-prefer-bings-search-results-over-googles-in-blind-test/ https://techcrunch.com/2012/09/06/bing-it-on-microsoft-claim... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bing#Bing_It_On https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bing#Bing_It_On It was marginal, in favor of Bing, though I don't think they did extended experiments with individuals.
- cromwellian 5y ago
  I dont understand how people make these claims. For web search, Google is obviously better but for other classes of queries like question answering of structured knowledge or video search, it’s way better. Ask DuckDuckGo for “Shang chi cast” and compare that with Google. Or look at how it now returns search results that contain deep links into VIDEOs at the exact time index that is relevant. (I think this may be done with VideoBERT and if you search for that it will return deep links into a videobert presentation!) In any case Apple would have along long way to go to match what Google is doing. Search is no longer just TFIDF and 20 blue links.
Tarsul 5y ago
I really think DDG should at least search for results of "my" country by default. Otherwise it's just too annoying for the regular user. Aside from that, I like DDG more than Google.

I've encouraged numerous non-technical friends and family members to switch to DuckDuckGo and they've all gone back to Google within a week.

by cdogl 5y ago

I've encouraged numerous non-technical friends and family members to switch to DuckDuckGo and they've all gone back to Google within a week.

iKevinShah 5y ago

Although my default is DDG and I am technical, but I still find myself heading back to Google in case DDG disappoints. and that happens frequently (although definitely not always)

tomerv 5y ago
That's my experience as well. I'm on DDG for a few months now, and I often resort to using Google when DDG doesn't give me the results I want.
maxk42 5y ago
I had the same problem with DDG. I use Bing now. It may not be as ideal as DDG, but it's not Google and I seldom have difficulty finding what I'm searching for.

rchaud 5y ago

How much of that is down to them missing the familiar look of the Google results page? I wish we could do a blind study where users were asked to use a white-labeled search page where the results are served by Google or Bing (or others), but not disclosed. They would be asked to use that engine exclusively for 3 months, and rank their satisfaction with it. I imagine the results would be similar, but people would still feel a pull towards Google because it's been around for 20 years.

Kye 5y ago
Microsoft did something like this almost a decade ago. https://techcrunch.com/2012/09/06/bing-it-on-microsoft-claims-21-users-prefer-bings-search-results-over-googles-in-blind-test/ https://techcrunch.com/2012/09/06/bing-it-on-microsoft-claim... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bing#Bing_It_On https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bing#Bing_It_On It was marginal, in favor of Bing, though I don't think they did extended experiments with individuals.
cromwellian 5y ago
I dont understand how people make these claims. For web search, Google is obviously better but for other classes of queries like question answering of structured knowledge or video search, it’s way better. Ask DuckDuckGo for “Shang chi cast” and compare that with Google. Or look at how it now returns search results that contain deep links into VIDEOs at the exact time index that is relevant. (I think this may be done with VideoBERT and if you search for that it will return deep links into a videobert presentation!) In any case Apple would have along long way to go to match what Google is doing. Search is no longer just TFIDF and 20 blue links.

Tarsul 5y ago

I really think DDG should at least search for results of "my" country by default. Otherwise it's just too annoying for the regular user. Aside from that, I like DDG more than Google.