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Privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo grew by 46% in 2021
- darinf 5y agoNeeva is another option for privacy minded folks. Plus it is ad free, and Neeva is also much more than just a wrapper around Bing results. Disclaimer: I work on Neeva :)
- lillecarl 5y agoI don't have that much of a problem with unobtrusive ads, but I do have a problem with data hoarding. How does Neeva tackle this?
- darinf 5y agoYou are in complete control. See the FAQ for more details (https://neeva.com/faq https://neeva.com/faq), but the main takeaway is data saved by Neeva is only to improve the product for you and you have the option to clear or disable such functionality. Neeva is just really transparent about that. Neeva is a tool for you and no one else. Products that show you ads can’t make such claims.
- lillecarl 5y agoThanks for the reply! I signed myself up but got put in a queue since I'm Swedish. Could I trick your system with a VPN maybe?
- darinf 5y agoYes, you can get around the geo restriction using a VPN. Note of course that the experience will not be optimized for your locale if you are outside the US (e.g., local searches for restaurants and such will not work well).
- barkerja 5y ago> How does Neeva tackle this? Neeva is a paid product. I’ve enjoyed using Neeva, but not having the ability to make it the default engine in iOS/macOS (Safari) has made it cumbersome to use.
- darinf 5y agoNeeva has a full featured free tier by the way. Glad you are enjoying it. Agree it sucks that Apple doesn’t let you choose Neeva as a default for Safari. The Neeva extensions on macOS and iOS provide a workaround that still lets you search from the URL bar.
- beebeepka 5y agoNot surprising. I also migrated after ixquick/startpage started their aggressive monetisation efforts earlier this year. Frankly, the results are bad. Always have been for me. If it's still powered by bing, that would explain it because it assumes everyone is somewhere in North America. Still beats having to deal with Google, though
- Xevi 5y agoI use it on my phone as my default browser. There's a toggle on the search page to switch between US and local search results. Doesn't that work for you?
- CurrentB 5y agoI agree the results are bad unfortunately. I really do want to like duck duck go. I want to get away from Google and am still in the middle of a full switch to ddg, but I don't know how much longer I can last. The problem is even if 90% of the time the results are good enough on ddg, wondering if I'm missing out on a better result causes me to do a !g google search almost every time I'm searching for something non trivial. And doing two searches for each query gets old after a while.
- johnebgd 5y agoI switched to DDG in 2017 on desktop and in 2019 on mobile. I still revert 1 in 500 searches back to Google since the results aren’t as good. That said, I wouldn’t trade better results to lose the benefit of increased privacy. I also use PI Hole to block tracking at the network level, use UBlock Origin at the browser level, and use Mozilla containers on Firefox to silo my social media accounts so they can’t track my browsing as easily. Most people don’t do these things.
- stjohnswarts 5y agoNever revert to google, use one of the google proxies like startpage.
- npteljes 5y agoI revert to Google (in a Private tab) because if I don't, I can't shake the feeling that Google would have done it better. For me the Startpage etc results are just not the same, because of the localized results for example.
- sh4un 5y agoThis is just a minimum for me and this site is usually as close to social media as it gets. Privacy is one thing, security is another. Lots of script kids out there, but it's the state hackers you need to worry about. Most of their targets are PEPs, journalists, defense contractors etc. Very rare for anyone to care otherwise as the normal persons privacy and security are not worth much.
- typon 5y agoI havent had the need for Google Search as much anymore. I find that the content is lower quality and truly useful information is hard to find. If I need a product review I use YouTube or Reddit search. I increasingly use Github search for code. I use Google Maps for restaurant or store location/hours, then go to the linked website from there. I use wiki search (Firefox prefix) to find quick information on a topic. I use imdb search (Firefox prefix) for movies/show information. And so on. Ten years ago my internet experience would start from Google Search, now its a lot more diverse.
- amelius 5y agoIs there an alternative for Google Streetview (in maps)?
- theklr 5y agoApple Maps is growing their look around feature. So if your in a major city it’s comparable.
- bb88 5y agoAt the start of the internet the meta search engines (search aggregators) were big a long time ago -- HotBot, etc. They still exist but are really popular with the travel crowd. So it may be time for a comeback. I also just want a browser plugin to "wrap" "my" "google" "query" "in" "quotes", because that's apparently the only way to get good search results these days.
- toastal 5y agoSounds like you've moved from searching one big proprietary search, to several negligibly-smaller, closed-source, megacorp-owned, proprietary service's searches. Privacy must not be a goal here.
- typon 5y agoOh yeah - it isn't really. Just describing that even if privacy isn't your goal, and you want the best search experience, Google Search isn't the only game in town anymore.
- skinnymuch 5y agoDoes any one know if statcounter’s data skews any way for the data to be biased in any way? Duck Duck Go on pace to surpass Yahoo at some point in 2022 and not be too far behind Bing is pretty wild to me. Perhaps Bing’s lack of market share is what is more surprising but should not be. Duck Duck Go’s share makes sense. And for Yandex to round out the top 6 at 0.08%. A decade ago AOL and Ask.com still had some relevancy. Also, I wonder if there are any countries outside Russia, Belarus, Turkey, South Korea (technically North Korea too), Japan, and China, where Google doesn’t have at least 80% market share. Or another search engine with at least 5% market share like Vietnam just getting to that.
- 0xdky 5y agoGoogle search on iOS Safari prompts me to install Google app for every search. This alone drove me nuts and I switched to DDG.
- up6w6 5y agoI always question myself about how much DDG can improve theirs results until the Bing backend becomes the problem.
- gigel82 5y agoI'm confused about this... are you saying DDG is doing something on their own? I always thought they are simply a shell for Bing search.
- up6w6 5y agoThey have their own partnerships (e.g. Wikipedia), own web scrappers [1] and they actually change the ranking of webpages with their own algorithm (don't remember where I read it). I still have no idea of how much is really Duck and how much is Bing, though. [1] https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so...
- roylez 5y agoAfter self-hosting whoogle, I never look back. It’s still google but with a lot of junk removed. Sometimes I have to use yandex though, Google’s results are censored and politically biased anyway.
- clajiness 5y ago> Google’s results are censored and politically biased Source?
- lettergram 5y agoThe hunter Biden laptop was censored, Hillary Clinton campaign paying for the Steele dossier, as was multiple things regarding covid: wuhan lab leak, vaccine adverse events, etc I’m not 100% sure it’s google but yeah, it happens often.
- clajiness 5y agoOr those things are not true. They’re definitely not sources. Let’s try again.
- roylez 5y agoIt’s not up to a search engine to decide what is true or false. If they want to play this game, it’s censorship.
- clajiness 5y agoIs everyone trolling me? I’m simply asking for a reputable source stating that google is censoring their search results.
- lettergram 5y agoFeel like “reputable” is loaded here lol I’ve had it happen before in searches where I’ll see something and can’t find it on google, but can easily find it on DuckDuckGo. Idk here’s something for you: https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/10/09/the-good-censor-leaked-google-briefing-admits-abandonment-of-free-speech-for-safety-and-civility/ https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/10/09/the-good-censor-le... There are leaked slides showing the intent to censor. Not sure if this is “reputable” enough, but there is something.
- teitoklien 5y agoFor day to day searching i use duckduckgo by default on every device. Not a lot because of privacy, something about that company ticks me off in terms of privacy. I like duckduckgo’s interface and I feel they genuinely put a lot of effort to ensure people have a great experience using their search engine. Whether its their !bang feature or integration with apple maps or their various themes. (Heck even their no js, search engine option is very cool too). In terms of quality of links and interesting content, i havent come across a search engine better then marginalia[0] for that. But then i search for weird stuff, so who knows. [0](https://search.marginalia.nu/ https://search.marginalia.nu/)
- roenxi 5y ago> Not a lot because of privacy, something about that company ticks me off in terms of privacy. Ditto, I just want something that isn't Google. That company has too many fingers in too many pies. DuckDuckGo isn't more private. That is like when Google was serious about the Don't Be Evil slogan - there is nothing technically stopping them and sooner or later principles get worn down by reality (commercial, political or otherwise). They are sincere today. Great, thanks. But there is nothing here to guarantee what they'll do in the future. I argue that people should use DuckDuckGo. But privacy combined with a public, ad-funded, search engine is just an unreasonable expectation. Anyone looking for that will be disappointed. But they are smaller and more focused - both of which are good if you want to be strategic about data leaking out.
- bussierem 5y agoI could be incorrect in my assumption here so please let me know: I assume as a user of DDG that they aren't collecting data on me. However back when Google was following their motto and young, they WERE still collecting data, weren't they? If that's true (IF) then that would make this an unfair comparison. If DDG eventually erodes their morals and stops caring about privacy then I could just stop using them and they would have no historic data on me. That aside though, what is your alternative? Yes they may in the future collect data but they certainly don't right now, so why not use them now while they don't rather than giving in and just using Google and accepting the surveillance?
- schmorptron 5y agoEven though I don't use their browser, I've found brave search to be able to filter out a lot of the blog spam for simple programming languages compared to ddg and even google, has anyone else made similar observations?
- kw-maller 5y agoPrivacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo is based and hosted in the U.S., and thus subject to U.S. court-and-gag orders. Just something to be aware of.
- stjohnswarts 5y agoDo you have any proof they keep records of searchs and logs of ips/UINs for those searches?
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 5y agoIn this case, you should provide the proof of the opposite)
- plorg 5y agoI switched my default to DDG about a year and a half ago after what I assume was am A/B test that filled the first 3 screen lengths with various Google Widgets, and 90% of the first page results were links to Google products which for the search query was not especially useful. And that's with ads blocked. I've been bothered by Google's business practices for a long time, and have switched to Firefox as completely as possible, but I'm still tied to Android. For some very specific searches Google is still better at surfacing good results. But even when Google results are really good I usually have to scroll past so much first party feature lard that the experience is taxing.
- Terry_Roll 5y agoThere is no privacy with DDG because it pulls content in, so the search results show the website icon so its possible to workout what you are searching for in general terms from the icons that get displayed. when you consider how many websites exists, those general terms dont take much to work out, plus its mainly powered by Bing so Bing needs to know what you are searching in order to deliver the right results. Really surprised people on here thought DDG was private though.
- dgut 5y agoIcons are proxied by DDG, so no data leaking there. Bing's API requires you provide them with an IP address and results are personalized to that address. Because DDG shows the same results to everybody, I assume they have a special deal with DDG and no PII is being sent to Bing. Disclaimer: I run https://okeano.com https://okeano.com, a private search engine.
- Terry_Roll 5y ago>Icons are proxied by DDG, so no data leaking there. Not according to the console view (F12) for images in the browser. You can also verify this with your firewall and dns lookups. >Disclaimer: I run https://okeano.com https://okeano.com, a private search engine. Also uses bing.net, mm.bing.net for safe search and explicit.bing.net for not safe search, but with a GUID linked to every image it pulls in, so there is still traceability and thus accountability, ergo its not private. https://external.okeano.com/1e08822804ae14da3a8841c6e0b7cbf2279d773d?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftse3.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.cm1ls1zg5q0Sai7b_9jkEQHaJ4%26pid%3DApi https://external.okeano.com/1e08822804ae14da3a8841c6e0b7cbf2... I've also noticed there are times when cookies are not cleared on exit with some websites despite browser settings being set to clear cookies on exit. Theres alot more surveillance going on under the hood in the chromium browsers than meets the eye. Anyway it doesnt matter this thread has been bunked off the first page so sheeple wont wake up.
- dgut 5y ago> Not according to the console view (F12) for images in the browser. You can also verify this with your firewall and dns lookups. Are you talking about the DDG browser? On the website, icos and other external content is proxied. > Also uses bing.net, mm.bing.net for safe search and explicit.bing.net for not safe search, but with a GUID linked to every image it pulls in, so there is still traceability and thus accountability, ergo its not private. We (Okeano) don't send any PII to Bing.
- GuB-42 5y agoI noticed several billboard ads for duckduckgo in my town since last year. Over the years, they also made their message clear, it is all about privacy, not bangs, not applets, or anything else duckduckgo is also good at. I don't know how they advertise in other media but clearly, there is a serious marketing campaign going on, and it looks successful. That can explain the growth.
- gigel82 5y agoThat feels fishy somehow... how exactly are they paying for the advertisement? DDG is free to use, which usually means customers (their data) are the product. Is there an in-depth analysis somewhere of what exactly is their business model (where is the money coming from)?
- RealStickman_ 5y agoDDG shows ads relevant to your search query. https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/company/advertising-and-affiliates/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/company/ad...
- notRobot 5y agoDDG is my default on my devices, but at this point I've just defaulted to !g-ing every search query just because of how often DDG is not up to the mark. I like the convenience of those Google quick answer box excerpts. And DDG is TERRIBLE for anything remotely regional, and I don't expect it to be fixed anytime in the next decade because I currently live in what's technically a third-world country, so I doubt they'll allocate any resources towards fixing it. Essentially at this point I only use DDG for the bangs. !g for web search, and others for everything else. Yes, Google search results have been getting worse. But in my experience, they're still better than anything else out there. Has anyone else had a similar experience?
- vhanda 5y agoYup. My experience has been similar. My DDG's results when searching for programing related errors has also been consistently worse than Google.
- ThrashBeard 5y agoIt seemed like DDG improved greatly a few years ago, I started using it and now it just seems like it's slipping again. Of course this is purely anecdotal, maybe it's just in my head but I could've sworn it was better like half a year ago maybe. And it's not about regional searches but searches in english about general stuff like programming problems that seem to return something very loosely related or a lot of pages in chinese. I paste the same query in StartPage and I get all the answers so I'm testing StartPage as the default for now even though I don't like SP's UI as much as DDG's.
- jimbogr77 5y agoI have exactly the same experience. I switched to DDG on all my devices but when searching for regional(greek) stuff, the results are bad.
- jez 5y agoI switched to DuckDuckGo gradually a few years ago, starting on iOS. I was fed up with Amp pages in Google search results—using DDG made them go away. As some other commenters have mentioned, for some queries it’s painfully obvious how bad the DDG results are, and for things like sports results it’s super convenient to have those Google embeds. But the vast majority of my searches go through DDG, and it’s fine. It’s nice that when I search for say some specific car model, I don’t start seeing YouTube recommended videos about reviews for that car later in the day (unless I explicitly search on YouTube).
- ralmidani 5y agoI really wish FRAND search APIs were mandated. This would enable new companies to compete on privacy and UX, and even make partly-FOSS solutions viable. Probably won’t happen unless/until Google angers enough legislators, so for now I’m trying Neeva. The iOS browser is still very much Beta quality, but the search experience has been pretty good. Not seeing ads has been refreshing, but I wish there was a way to say “don’t show this website in search results” and sync that across devices. Even better, let users vote on what’s relevant and high-quality, rather than let websites play the SEO game.
- darinf 5y agoThanks for trying Neeva! We’d of course love any feedback thru the in app support feature.
- jurschreuder 5y agoI don't use DDG because it just uses Yahoo under the hood. I tried to find a link but seems to be deleted by a DDG bot on redit and the page on their own site declaring the news has been overwritten. It's just Yahoo in a trenchcoat targeting the #1 concern with Google with some new marketing slogans.
- RealStickman_ 5y agoDDG gets most of its sources from Bing. They don't mention Yahoo, so it's probably only a minor source, if even used at all. See this help article: https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so...
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 5y agoI used DDG in 2015-2018. Now switched to Qwant. Unlike DDG, it's not US-based. It's also faster, because they have their own index, and need not to go to Bing for search results. Search quality is better, in my subjective opinion.
- nunez 5y agoI tried using DDG as the default for everything, but I consistently get inferior results, especially when I use `site:` searches. (I append `site:reddit.com` to many of my searches). I want to use DDG, but having to use `!g` so often really puts a wet blanket on the idea.