8 ms·

I know I should hate google for some reason, but despite the SEO spam, they are still better than bing and duck duck go. I think my cocktail of degoogled Googl

I know I should hate google for some reason, but despite the SEO spam, they are still better than bing and duck duck go. I think my cocktail of degoogled Google products + adblock solutions + being that person who doesn't care about privacy has made Google 'fine'. I avoid using Google products unless they are FOSS. I'm not going to get screwed by "play music" or similar again. Out of FAAMG, I think I like Google the best. But that doesn't say much.

kayson 4y ago
I've long since switched to DDG nearly exclusively and I've rarely felt like I am unable to find what I'm looking for. When I can't, I switch to Google (easily using DDG's !g bang) and almost always can't find it there either.
_8j50 4y ago
Ddg works for me for technical searches, google is better for digging up stuff though. I default to ddg but use google as needed.
lofatdairy 4y ago
>FAAMG Is that with Netflix swapped with Microsoft? If that's the case, we might as well change the entire acronym to GAMMA to account for the Facebook -> Meta rename.
- theandrewbailey 4y ago
  F*** the MMAAAN: Meta Microsoft Alphabet Apple Amazon Netflix
  - scarface74 4y ago
    Netflix never deserved to be in the same sentence as Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Google. Their market influence and market cap were never in the same realm.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  Or we could simply not comply with their attempt to launder their reputation, and keep calling them Facebook.
- waynesonfire 4y ago
  No. FAANG is basically an eponym at this point. The companies that make up the acronym are irrelevant and they'll change overtime but the idea doesn't. "FAANG is an acronym for the five best-performing American tech stocks in the market"
  - sseagull 4y ago
    I remember when there were The Four Horsemen (apparently even two versions): Around 2000, it was Microsoft, Intel, Dell, Cisco Later, around 2007, it was Apple, RIMM (Research in Motion/Blackberry), Google, Amazon Source: https://247wallst.com/media/2007/06/06/cramers_new_fou/ https://247wallst.com/media/2007/06/06/cramers_new_fou/
  - __derek__ 4y ago
    FAANG: Five Assets Appreciating 'N' Growing
givemeethekeys 4y ago
I like Duckduckgo - it is my default search and I haven't felt the need to try other searches in a while.
- _vdpp 4y ago
  DDG results are a little “different” than Google’s but no worse. Like somebody else said, usually when DDG can’t find the answer neither can Google.
rentfree-media 4y ago
I don't think you have evaluated the quality of your results from Google very carefully. Research is part of my job. I routinely find things on Google that I circle back to later to check up on and find that they've disappeared (not things disparaging to anyone that one would be motivated to get off of google, talking about things just disappearing for inexplicable reasons). For the first time in a decade, during the past year I have started using alternative search engines because the quality of Google results is bad.
- tuckerman 4y ago
  Perhaps we are searching in different domains or have different expectations but I haven’t had the same experience. I use DDG as my primary search engine but very often I end up adding !g to get to results that are usable and it’s to the point where for a lot of things I !g straight from the start.
  - threads2 4y ago
    Same! the google maps m! is just too good for me not to use DDG. (does Google have an equivalent?)
  - mellavora 4y ago
    Haven't had the experience of things disappearing off of google? Of things which were a top result a year ago but now show on page 20? What domains are you searching on??? Google explicitly personalized your search results, which means it is intentionally presenting different results with every search. Google might be your current best option, but that doesn't discredit the poster's view.
    - tuckerman 4y ago
      I've not experienced any of the things which you describe and I find personalization to be generally valuable. I also think its less personalized than many people believe it to be. (Disclaimer: I used to work at Google/Alphabet but not on Search). I didn't say Google was the best for everyone all of the time, just for me most of the time. I just didn't agree that anyone that uses Google hasn't carefully evaluated the quality of the results: I intentionally made an alternative my default and, despite it being harder for me to use Google now, I still fall back to it more often than not.
brightball 4y ago
I’ve given week at a time committed tries to several other search engines at this point. I tried Kagi, DDG, Bing and Brave Search. I was surprised that I kept getting good results from Brave. Still using it and generally don’t need to look elsewhere for most searches. The others were more of a mixed bag.
- AlotOfReading 4y ago
  DDG and brave have been my default search engines for the past couple years. Despite that, only 2 of my last 10 or so searches weren't followed up with !g. Take the last search ("bronze patina thickness"), where I wanted to know how thick a typical bronze patina is. The first brave result is a hardware store in Spokane (not even my state!) that sells door latches. The rest of the page is SEO content about watches. The first result on Google links a paper and the results excerpt tells me 40-50um, up to 70um with prolonged exposure. The performance still isn't close for me despite the clear decline in Google search quality over the years.
  - knoebber 4y ago
    Results from https://kagi.com/search?q=bronze+patina+thickness https://kagi.com/search?q=bronze+patina+thickness 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patina https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patina 2. https://www.adamsbronze.com/bronze-patinas/ https://www.adamsbronze.com/bronze-patinas/ 3. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/materials-science/patina https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/materials-science/patin... 3a. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352409X21003278 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S23524... 4. https://www.corrosionpedia.com/important-facts-you-might-not-know-about-copper-patina/2/6817 https://www.corrosionpedia.com/important-facts-you-might-not... 5. https://www.accurateimageinc.com/CutMetals/Finish_CutBrnzPat.aspx https://www.accurateimageinc.com/CutMetals/Finish_CutBrnzPat...
  - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
    DDG has been falling down in the past week with "no results" showing up frequently for trivial searches.
ErrrNoMate 4y ago
DuckDuckGo is Bing.
mrweasel 4y ago
> I know I should hate google for some reason I've come around a bit, after getting asked at an interview: "So, why no apply at Google?". Google doesn't align with my personal values. They contribute a great deal to our industry, they provide good jobs to a large number of people and they have a number of good products, like GCP. My problem with Google is they reliance on ads. It's not a model I wish to support. It damages they primary product, search (well, I mean, their primary product is ads now), and damages their credibility and overall brand. We haven't been able to trust product like Chrome or Android for years.. That is they choice, but I don't have support it, or help them build these products. Not that I think they'd hire me. But I don't hate Google, they're just not particular relevant to me anymore. Other search engines provide just as good searches. DuckDuckGo happens to be a little better and have a better interface than Bing or Ecosia, even if they're all "just Bing".
- waynesonfire 4y ago
  > Other search engines provide just as good searches. That's just plain false. Perhaps better stated is you're tolerant to the results provided by alternatives. I tried DDG for a few months and found myself having to re-run my query on Google 60-70% of the time. It was an annoying experience.
  - mrweasel 4y ago
    > That's just plain false. I think it's subjective. If 90% of your results are ads, then it's not actually better. What I believe it boils down to is what you search for, and slightly how you search. Personally I'm at a point now that if DDG can't find something, then neither can Google. The difference is that Google will yank out the primary keyword, if it thinks that will yield results, but those are obviously always wrong. Some things are unsearchable on bother DDG and Google, topics like weightloss, have just been SEO'ed to death and are no longer available online. Others maybe two ads on DDG, but an entire page on Google.
  - cpeterso 4y ago
    I've used DDG for 5+ years. Its results used to be mixed, but for the last 2-3 years, its results are good. I only fall back to Google for less than 2% (1 in ~50) searches, though I do rely a lot on DDG's !bang searches that redirect to specific sites for different technical topics. But I don't see that as a failing of DDG. When I do fall back to Google, it's for "needle in a haystack" searches.
mrkramer 4y ago
Google is no longer place where do you go to find useful information and good websites. First page of Google Search results is always a mix of popular websites like WSJ, NYT, BBC, Guardian, Reuters, Forbes, Bloomberg or any other famous and popular site like for example Reddit and other part of the mix are some low quality, spammy, copy-paste content random sites that are of no real use. Google prefers popular information instead of useful information and on top of that nobody really knows how exactly Google's ranking algorithms work not even Google's engineers but general rule is like I said popular content must be on the first page. One thing I like about Google tho is their Knowledge Graph[0] because I can type keywords like time, temperature or convert in the search box and Google will do this small task for me. I see it as a set of little web apps on top of Google which help us users to automate our tasks. [0] https://support.google.com/knowledgepanel/answer/9787176?hl=en https://support.google.com/knowledgepanel/answer/9787176?hl=...
mark_l_watson 4y ago
I find it interesting that you don’t like Google Play Music (now called YouTube Music). You didn’t like the rebranding? The Google products I like: YouTube, YouTube Music, and GCP (my favorite hosting platform). For search, I usually use DDG - good enough for me.
- jdeaton 4y ago
  GPM to YTM wasnt wasn't a rebranding, its a completely different (and much worse) product.
MBCook 4y ago
To a degree that’s Google’s fault. Every person doing a search is a data point. Every result they go to is a signal. You can use that information to do a better job of providing relevant hits to good quality websites. Google is good -> gets more traffic -> gets more signals -> Google gets better faster. Everyone could do that. But Google gets the most traffic. They have the most popular browser. The most popular phone OS on earth. And they pay for that same advantage from the only other popular phone/tablet OS. If someone else was the default search on iOS they could improve much faster than they do today and be a bigger threat to Google. So Google pays.
bergenty 4y ago
I don’t hate google, I like their product and everything about the company to be honest including the fact that they regularly kill off products. Do I miss the products? Yes but I like the churn and the idea that multiple teams are working on similar products.
2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
> they are still better than bing and duck duck go. I'm not so sure about that. I curiously had to use Bing to find more information about this. Google kept showing me old news or this exact article.
scarface74 4y ago
I like a business model where I give a company money and they give me stuff. That leaves Google and Facebook as my least favorite company. Not surprisingly, those two have the worse “customer service” because you are not the customer.
joe_the_user 4y ago
While being better than Bing, Google has declined significantly over just the last few years. Even with some small percent of Google's search results, Bing must have a lot of eyes and I suspect it's declined in the fashion of Google - trying to squeeze every dime of monetization out of each result. The thing is, the Internet has facilitated the creation of a world of unlimited competition where no institution wants or can afford to trade squeezing out maximum profits now for building a better future they could benefit from.
NayamAmarshe 4y ago
Brave Search has been a blessing. The results are even higher quality than Google, it's honestly surprising at times. Plus I don't have to sell my soul to use their services, it's great!

kayson 4y ago

I've long since switched to DDG nearly exclusively and I've rarely felt like I am unable to find what I'm looking for. When I can't, I switch to Google (easily using DDG's !g bang) and almost always can't find it there either.

_8j50 4y ago

Ddg works for me for technical searches, google is better for digging up stuff though. I default to ddg but use google as needed.

lofatdairy 4y ago

>FAAMG Is that with Netflix swapped with Microsoft? If that's the case, we might as well change the entire acronym to GAMMA to account for the Facebook -> Meta rename.

theandrewbailey 4y ago
F*** the MMAAAN: Meta Microsoft Alphabet Apple Amazon Netflix
- scarface74 4y ago
  Netflix never deserved to be in the same sentence as Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Google. Their market influence and market cap were never in the same realm.
MichaelCollins 4y ago
Or we could simply not comply with their attempt to launder their reputation, and keep calling them Facebook.
waynesonfire 4y ago
No. FAANG is basically an eponym at this point. The companies that make up the acronym are irrelevant and they'll change overtime but the idea doesn't. "FAANG is an acronym for the five best-performing American tech stocks in the market"
- sseagull 4y ago
  I remember when there were The Four Horsemen (apparently even two versions): Around 2000, it was Microsoft, Intel, Dell, Cisco Later, around 2007, it was Apple, RIMM (Research in Motion/Blackberry), Google, Amazon Source: https://247wallst.com/media/2007/06/06/cramers_new_fou/ https://247wallst.com/media/2007/06/06/cramers_new_fou/
- __derek__ 4y ago
  FAANG: Five Assets Appreciating 'N' Growing

givemeethekeys 4y ago

I like Duckduckgo - it is my default search and I haven't felt the need to try other searches in a while.

_vdpp 4y ago
DDG results are a little “different” than Google’s but no worse. Like somebody else said, usually when DDG can’t find the answer neither can Google.

rentfree-media 4y ago

I don't think you have evaluated the quality of your results from Google very carefully. Research is part of my job. I routinely find things on Google that I circle back to later to check up on and find that they've disappeared (not things disparaging to anyone that one would be motivated to get off of google, talking about things just disappearing for inexplicable reasons). For the first time in a decade, during the past year I have started using alternative search engines because the quality of Google results is bad.

tuckerman 4y ago
Perhaps we are searching in different domains or have different expectations but I haven’t had the same experience. I use DDG as my primary search engine but very often I end up adding !g to get to results that are usable and it’s to the point where for a lot of things I !g straight from the start.
- threads2 4y ago
  Same! the google maps m! is just too good for me not to use DDG. (does Google have an equivalent?)
- mellavora 4y ago
  Haven't had the experience of things disappearing off of google? Of things which were a top result a year ago but now show on page 20? What domains are you searching on??? Google explicitly personalized your search results, which means it is intentionally presenting different results with every search. Google might be your current best option, but that doesn't discredit the poster's view.
  - tuckerman 4y ago
    I've not experienced any of the things which you describe and I find personalization to be generally valuable. I also think its less personalized than many people believe it to be. (Disclaimer: I used to work at Google/Alphabet but not on Search). I didn't say Google was the best for everyone all of the time, just for me most of the time. I just didn't agree that anyone that uses Google hasn't carefully evaluated the quality of the results: I intentionally made an alternative my default and, despite it being harder for me to use Google now, I still fall back to it more often than not.

brightball 4y ago

I’ve given week at a time committed tries to several other search engines at this point. I tried Kagi, DDG, Bing and Brave Search. I was surprised that I kept getting good results from Brave. Still using it and generally don’t need to look elsewhere for most searches. The others were more of a mixed bag.

AlotOfReading 4y ago
DDG and brave have been my default search engines for the past couple years. Despite that, only 2 of my last 10 or so searches weren't followed up with !g. Take the last search ("bronze patina thickness"), where I wanted to know how thick a typical bronze patina is. The first brave result is a hardware store in Spokane (not even my state!) that sells door latches. The rest of the page is SEO content about watches. The first result on Google links a paper and the results excerpt tells me 40-50um, up to 70um with prolonged exposure. The performance still isn't close for me despite the clear decline in Google search quality over the years.
- knoebber 4y ago
  Results from https://kagi.com/search?q=bronze+patina+thickness https://kagi.com/search?q=bronze+patina+thickness 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patina https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patina 2. https://www.adamsbronze.com/bronze-patinas/ https://www.adamsbronze.com/bronze-patinas/ 3. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/materials-science/patina https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/materials-science/patin... 3a. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352409X21003278 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S23524... 4. https://www.corrosionpedia.com/important-facts-you-might-not-know-about-copper-patina/2/6817 https://www.corrosionpedia.com/important-facts-you-might-not... 5. https://www.accurateimageinc.com/CutMetals/Finish_CutBrnzPat.aspx https://www.accurateimageinc.com/CutMetals/Finish_CutBrnzPat...
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  DDG has been falling down in the past week with "no results" showing up frequently for trivial searches.

ErrrNoMate 4y ago

DuckDuckGo is Bing.

mrweasel 4y ago

> I know I should hate google for some reason I've come around a bit, after getting asked at an interview: "So, why no apply at Google?". Google doesn't align with my personal values. They contribute a great deal to our industry, they provide good jobs to a large number of people and they have a number of good products, like GCP. My problem with Google is they reliance on ads. It's not a model I wish to support. It damages they primary product, search (well, I mean, their primary product is ads now), and damages their credibility and overall brand. We haven't been able to trust product like Chrome or Android for years.. That is they choice, but I don't have support it, or help them build these products. Not that I think they'd hire me. But I don't hate Google, they're just not particular relevant to me anymore. Other search engines provide just as good searches. DuckDuckGo happens to be a little better and have a better interface than Bing or Ecosia, even if they're all "just Bing".

waynesonfire 4y ago
> Other search engines provide just as good searches. That's just plain false. Perhaps better stated is you're tolerant to the results provided by alternatives. I tried DDG for a few months and found myself having to re-run my query on Google 60-70% of the time. It was an annoying experience.
- mrweasel 4y ago
  > That's just plain false. I think it's subjective. If 90% of your results are ads, then it's not actually better. What I believe it boils down to is what you search for, and slightly how you search. Personally I'm at a point now that if DDG can't find something, then neither can Google. The difference is that Google will yank out the primary keyword, if it thinks that will yield results, but those are obviously always wrong. Some things are unsearchable on bother DDG and Google, topics like weightloss, have just been SEO'ed to death and are no longer available online. Others maybe two ads on DDG, but an entire page on Google.
- cpeterso 4y ago
  I've used DDG for 5+ years. Its results used to be mixed, but for the last 2-3 years, its results are good. I only fall back to Google for less than 2% (1 in ~50) searches, though I do rely a lot on DDG's !bang searches that redirect to specific sites for different technical topics. But I don't see that as a failing of DDG. When I do fall back to Google, it's for "needle in a haystack" searches.

mrkramer 4y ago

Google is no longer place where do you go to find useful information and good websites. First page of Google Search results is always a mix of popular websites like WSJ, NYT, BBC, Guardian, Reuters, Forbes, Bloomberg or any other famous and popular site like for example Reddit and other part of the mix are some low quality, spammy, copy-paste content random sites that are of no real use. Google prefers popular information instead of useful information and on top of that nobody really knows how exactly Google's ranking algorithms work not even Google's engineers but general rule is like I said popular content must be on the first page. One thing I like about Google tho is their Knowledge Graph[0] because I can type keywords like time, temperature or convert in the search box and Google will do this small task for me. I see it as a set of little web apps on top of Google which help us users to automate our tasks. [0] https://support.google.com/knowledgepanel/answer/9787176?hl=en https://support.google.com/knowledgepanel/answer/9787176?hl=...

mark_l_watson 4y ago

I find it interesting that you don’t like Google Play Music (now called YouTube Music). You didn’t like the rebranding? The Google products I like: YouTube, YouTube Music, and GCP (my favorite hosting platform). For search, I usually use DDG - good enough for me.

jdeaton 4y ago
GPM to YTM wasnt wasn't a rebranding, its a completely different (and much worse) product.

MBCook 4y ago

To a degree that’s Google’s fault. Every person doing a search is a data point. Every result they go to is a signal. You can use that information to do a better job of providing relevant hits to good quality websites. Google is good -> gets more traffic -> gets more signals -> Google gets better faster. Everyone could do that. But Google gets the most traffic. They have the most popular browser. The most popular phone OS on earth. And they pay for that same advantage from the only other popular phone/tablet OS. If someone else was the default search on iOS they could improve much faster than they do today and be a bigger threat to Google. So Google pays.

bergenty 4y ago

I don’t hate google, I like their product and everything about the company to be honest including the fact that they regularly kill off products. Do I miss the products? Yes but I like the churn and the idea that multiple teams are working on similar products.

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

> they are still better than bing and duck duck go. I'm not so sure about that. I curiously had to use Bing to find more information about this. Google kept showing me old news or this exact article.

scarface74 4y ago

I like a business model where I give a company money and they give me stuff. That leaves Google and Facebook as my least favorite company. Not surprisingly, those two have the worse “customer service” because you are not the customer.

joe_the_user 4y ago

While being better than Bing, Google has declined significantly over just the last few years. Even with some small percent of Google's search results, Bing must have a lot of eyes and I suspect it's declined in the fashion of Google - trying to squeeze every dime of monetization out of each result. The thing is, the Internet has facilitated the creation of a world of unlimited competition where no institution wants or can afford to trade squeezing out maximum profits now for building a better future they could benefit from.

NayamAmarshe 4y ago

Brave Search has been a blessing. The results are even higher quality than Google, it's honestly surprising at times. Plus I don't have to sell my soul to use their services, it's great!