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Is DuckDuckGo, DuckDuckDone?
- krnlpnc 4y agoSpoiler, DuckDuckNope it's not
- s_dev 4y agoThe problem is Google objectively provide better search results. I'm a DDG user as well this is my opinion -- DDG is my chosen default because of their stance on privacy. If it turns out DDG isn't offering much privacy as they claim then back to Google. It's not enough to make me switch right now but I am watching to see where this hockey puck goes.
- cestith 4y agoIn my experience whether Google provides better results or not heavily depends on what sort of information you're seeking. Things I used to find easily on Google suffer both from a serious recency effect and are SEO-manipulated half to death. Try finding anything from more than a few years ago, and the first dozen pages are often more recent pages about more recent topics that happen to have some similar words involved but are less topical to the actual search.
- juice_bus 4y agoGoogle's search result quality are taking a nose dive.
- bsedlm 4y agomy mileage varies... but when ddg's results are useless, it's possible to add !g in any part of the query and it'll redirect (which for some reason forces me to refresh everyonce in a while before google's results appear)
- ck2 4y agoDDG is just a proxy for bing, that's it. Saying DDG is a search engine is like saying instacart is a supermarket. They are just delivering someone else's business and could disappear overnight if the source decides to disallow them. Which brings up the question if computing power, storage and bandwidth has never been cheaper, why are Google and Bing the only two major search engines surviving?
- asldjajlfkj 4y agoThe growth of the internet may well compensate the decreased pricing of compute. Hosting Google of 1999 is much much cheaper now. But hosting contemporary Google ist much much more expensive than hosting Google of 1999 in 1999.
- JasserInicide 4y agowhy are Google and Bing the only two major search engines surviving? Massively high technical barrier to entry, and in Google's case, bullying the little guy with impunity.
- lostmsu 4y agoThe technical side should have become easier since the inception of Google: you can probably beef up a single machine to index the entirety of relevant internet.
- richardsocher 4y agonah, it costs A LOT of money to build an up-to-date index of the web. we're doing it slowly on you.com - one sources/url/app at a time.
- lostmsu 4y agoWhere does your cost come from mostly?
- richardsocher 4y agopeople, machines, crawling, storage, etc.
- sct202 4y agoA lot of the internet is behind semi-walled gardens and GoogleBot and BingBot have preferential access. All the large social sites, Cloudflare, and other CDNs will just stop serving unknown bots after awhile, which is why there are spidering/scraping services that cycle thru IP addresses. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29417061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29417061
- HomeGear 4y agoHe doesn’t want to use Startpage because “I really don’t like their purple colour scheme.” Interesting. In terms of DDG, I wonder if a non-invasive search engine is viable. I can’t think of a company (Apple?) would has the resources to do it.
- cestith 4y agoThe usual rule applies. If a controversial question is in the headline, the answer is almost certainly no.
- ezekg 4y agoI recently switched to Kagi (https://kagi.com https://kagi.com) and quite like it. I don't have any plans to go back to DDG.
- chunkyks 4y agoI've been using Kagi for a while. I'm totally on board with springing $10/mo for good search. The biggest thing that worries me about Kagi is that, in order to be using it and paying for it, I have to log in, across all my devices. I'm literally collaborating on the process of someone doing much, much finer-grained and definitive tracking than other search engines currently do. While Kagi assure me they aren't putting all this information together... I am giving it to them, and that gives me pause.
- Melting_Harps 4y ago> I've been using Kagi for a while. I'm totally on board with springing $10/mo for good search. If privacy is the concern, why not just use a VPN and use Google? Doesn't this achieve the same end, but with a VPN you have far more usecases than just search? I mean, if you really wanted to take things to the extreme you'd run TOR or use Tails, right? It's not the cost that makes me question this, I pay for a VPN after all, but what does Kagi do to justify itself beyond the 'it's better than google?'
- ezekg 4y agoRead up on Kagi a bit. You can tailor your results to you. For example, I can rank-adjust any domain and those adjustments are applied to any future searches. I can even block specific domains (like those Stack Overflow clones and the SEO spam sites that plague Google results).
- Melting_Harps 4y agoSo, a curated Internet? I guess that seems reasonable, filters were always a thing with adblockers, I guess this allows for a all inclusive turn key experience.
- someotherperson 4y agoI was all aboard the DuckDuckGo train until a few weeks ago when they went nuts[0] and went to Google. Not that Google is any better, but if I'm going to get censorship either way I might as well get a decent browsing experience. DuckDuckGo at this point provides 0 value. I haven't had the time to look for something else, I feel like I'll move away from Google in the next few weeks. It's not as easy on iPhones however as Safari forces you into using like ~5 hardcoded search engines and I can't find something to replace Safari with that doesn't suck. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30627892 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30627892
- Retric 4y agoThe point of search engines is to rank websites not simply to hold a giant index. As such down-ranking disinformation seems completely appropriate, what exactly is your concern?
- theandrewbailey 4y agoDDG's downranking was the result of politics, not of merit or technical reasons. Furthermore, what one person's 'disinformation' is another's lived experience. Hell, it might be the accepted truth tomorrow.
- 8note 4y agoMerit is inherently political. The way you grant it is a function of your politics
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- somenameforme 4y ago"Breaking News: Ukraine ended its “combat mission” in Mariupol and said fighters were being evacuated, signaling that the battle at a steel plant was over." [1] In the article originally linked [2]: "Ukrainian officials said that evacuations from the Azovstal steel factory had begun. The military said that 264 service members, 53 of them “seriously injured,” had been taken by bus to areas controlled by Russian forces." That is how the NYTimes, alongside the rest of the corporate media - in unison, chose to describe the recent mass surrender of thousands of Ukrainian forces in Mauripol where the most intense fighting to date had occurred. That is literal and intentional disinformation intended to mislead readers. Of course don't expect the corporate media to get down-ranked anytime soon. Because "disinformation" isn't about disinformation, it's about publishing anything that runs contrary to the narrative of the day, a narrative that disturbingly often now ends up being completely false. [1] - https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1526336507430182912 https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1526336507430182912 [2] - https://web.archive.org/web/20220516233043/https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/16/world/europe/azovstal-mariupol.html https://web.archive.org/web/20220516233043/https://www.nytim...
- alephnan 4y agoFor all the ideological schpiel... > Startpage would be the closest, but I really don’t like their purple colour scheme. That can be solved with a plugin to override the CSS.
- heistus 4y agoWhich one would you suggest ?
- alephnan 4y agohttps://superuser.com/questions/560539/how-can-i-force-my-css-styles-when-i-visit-a-website https://superuser.com/questions/560539/how-can-i-force-my-cs...
- mftb 4y agoI use several search engines, but my primary right now is startpage. It's been ok (If you'd asked me what color the page is I couldn't have told you).
- kayson 4y agoThe article is a little disingenuous. DDG didn't do this in secret and no one "found out". They announced it... Discussed at length here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31490515 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31490515
- GekkePrutser 4y agoSome employee mentioning this on Twitter is not an announcement. That would be a press release, a blog post or at least a tweet from their official corporate account. I use DDG too but I wish they wouldn't use bing as a backend.
- shkkmo 4y agoIt's hard to tell. Given that DDG signed a confidentially agreement barring discussion, the "employee mentioning on twitter" might have been the only feasible way to get the information out. That said, this has been going on a while, and it seems more likely that DDG was fine with keeping it secret and the employee was probably acting independently. I think the fact the DDG signed the confidentiality agreement willingly does not speak well of their overall priorities.
- throwusawayus 4y agothat screenshot tweet is DDG founder/ceo, so not just “some employee” agree that official announcement would be better though
- boomboomsubban 4y agoAnd since that post they have added a note to their app info page on Google play (and presumably elsewhere) saying >Note About our Tracker Blocking: While we block all cross-site (3rd party) cookies on other sites you visit, we cannot block all hidden tracking scripts on non-DuckDuckGo sites for a variety of reasons including: new scripts pop up all the time making them difficult to find, blocking some scripts creates breakage making parts or all of the page unusable, some we are prevented from blocking due to contractual restrictions with Microsoft. Sure they could have revealed this better, but it doesn't really seem like they were trying to hide it.
- stefanos82 4y agoThe day I saw this output, I never looked back. mtr -t -c 3 -w duckduckgo.com Start: 2022-05-26T18:29:55+0300 HOST: debian Loss% Snt Last Avg Best Wrst StDev ... ... ... 6.|-- microsoft.mrs.franceix.net 0.0% 3 56.2 56.5 56.0 57.3 0.7 7.|-- ae22-0.ear01.mrs21.ntwk.msn.net 0.0% 3 56.3 56.8 56.3 57.0 0.4 8.|-- be-21-0.ibr02.mrs21.ntwk.msn.net 0.0% 3 78.4 78.4 78.3 78.5 0.1 9.|-- be-7-0.ibr02.gva20.ntwk.msn.net 0.0% 3 78.2 78.7 78.2 79.3 0.5 10.|-- be-4-0.ibr02.zrh20.ntwk.msn.net 0.0% 3 78.5 78.7 78.4 79.0 0.3 11.|-- be-6-0.ibr02.fra21.ntwk.msn.net 0.0% 3 159.7 158.0 136.6 177.7 20.6 12.|-- be-8-0.ibr02.ams30.ntwk.msn.net 0.0% 3 78.4 79.0 78.4 79.7 0.7 13.|-- ae126-0.icr04.ams30.ntwk.msn.net 0.0% 3 78.7 78.9 78.5 79.4 0.5 14.|-- ??? 100.0 3 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 If I wanted to use Bing, I would have done so in the first place!
- edgyquant 4y agoYup this is why I’ve never went to duck duck go and just stuck with Google.
- uhtred 4y agoDo you use google only in private browsing mode and via a vpn? Because although DDG are using Bing as a backend, presumably they are not forwarding on cookie data or my ip address to Bing.
- adventured 4y ago> Because although DDG are using Bing as a backend, presumably they are not forwarding on cookie data or my ip address to Bing. Why would anybody default to believing that to be the case? DuckDuckGo has built their faux privacy-focused search engine on Microsoft's not-privacy-respecting Bing foundation. They use, benefit from and monetize whatever privacy abuses Microsoft have utilized to provide Bing results (to get the data to the point where it's at now). I've never seen any evidence they have qualms with the moral stench of that, of swimming in that sewer. No, we don't get the oil from Russia, we buy it from a guy that buys it from Russia. Our hands are clean.
- 0daystock 4y agoA while back, I noticed DuckDuckGo stopped working when I blocked network access to Microsoft ASNs on my router. It turns out - DDG is hosted directly on Microsoft servers!
- aaaaaaaaata 4y agoYou've heard of Azure, no?
- 0daystock 4y agoAzure is owned by Microsoft.
- olyjohn 4y ago
- roughly 4y ago> Kagi looks promising, but I feel like $10/m for search is a little steep. But what’s the price of privacy, amirite? As long as this is our reaction to paying for things - and in this case, if not the thing we derive the most value from on the internet, certainly within the top 3 - we’re going to keep getting screwed by advertisers.
- function_seven 4y agoI can't wait for Kagi to start charging me. I've already switched and it's fantastic. With Netflix letting me down, I'll justify it as a $5.99 savings each month by cancelling one and paying for the other.
- kspacewalk2 4y agoWhat happened with Netflix? Is this about the price hike, or is there some other Thing I'm supposed to be upset about?
- function_seven 4y agoNothing specific. Just the general irritation of cheap, low quality content; shows cancelled before they run their course; etc. I find myself trying to watch new shows on there, and getting bored halfway through the first episode of some series. I'd pay $5 or $10 a month, but not $16. It ain't that good.
- bombcar 4y agoThe value of Netflix is small compared to its price - Disney+ is $10 and has a much larger back catalog (if you like the kind of content they have), and Apple TV+ or whatever they call it is only $5).
- elromulous 4y agoI have to mention this cliche here (although it's probably already been mentioned): If you're not paying, you're the product, not the customer.
- 4y ago
- BenoitEssiambre 4y ago>my oldest son says “DuckDuckGo it” instead of “Google it” It though it was supposed to be "Duck it".
- fulvioterzapi 4y ago> Brave search is a possibility, but they’re owned and managed by a homophobic douchebag. Here we go again... He donated a few thousands dollars in 2008 and 2010 to a referendum campaign against same-sex marriage. He then repeatedly said he was sorry. Is this being a "homophobic douchebag", considering that all politicians from both sides of the aisle held the same views at some point not so distant in time from 2008? Just to put things in context, in 2008 Joe Biden asserted he opposed “redefining from a civil side what constitutes marriage.” Also a "homophobic douchebag"? Also the guy is a genius, he invented Javascript, his technical prowess would probably have an effect on Brave, rather than his political views. This intolerance of even the slightest political dissent is worrying.
- basisword 4y agoHe donated money to try and prevent a group of people from having the same rights as the majority of people. That’s never ok and it shouldn’t take an awakening to figure out that it’s wrong. Not advocating he should be #cancelled or anything like that, but justifying his advocacy against civil rights as “political dissent” is disingenuous. Edit: I find it pretty appalling that a comment calmly stating that advocating against civil rights is wrong is downvoted AND flagged.
- jaywalk 4y agoSo is donating money better or worse than an actual lawmaker saying they shouldn't have those rights? I'm confused.
- basisword 4y agoWhat does that have to do with anything? They’re both wrong and it doesn’t matter which one is “worse” if in fact either one is. One bad thing does not negate a less bad thing if that’s the direction you were going.
- jaywalk 4y agoI think that it's asinine to list a private citizen previously holding this view as a reason to not use a web browser but at the same time being OK with a lawmaker who also previously held the same view being POTUS.
- dankboys 4y agoThis article makes me want to use Brave lol
- thaway2839 4y agoWhat a terrible decision by DDG. That's as generous as I can get regd. this.
- rognjen 4y agoWhat a missed opportunity! The title should have been: > Is DuckDuckGo DuckDuckGone?
- atc 4y ago