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Most of the time what I want is in "the little box" right at the top of the list (aka the "Instant Answer"), so I don't have to click and scroll... Google had "
by vy8vWJlco 14y ago
Most of the time what I want is in "the little box" right at the top of the list (aka the "Instant Answer"), so I don't have to click and scroll... Google had "I'm feeling lucky," but just putting the summary of the primary result at the top is better/faster/visually cleaner.
- pbhjpbhj 14y agoGoogle have some instant answer style results now (eg search "barack obama"). I'm not sure if they're a result of DDG's work on "instant answer" but it looked that way from where I'm sitting. Just general industry development though I'd guess.
- vy8vWJlco 14y agoThe same search on DDG gives a less "newsy" and more useful and explorable result, like a software encyclopedia. It looks like a Facebook profile (because it's taken from the Wikipedia page, which reads that way). I think that's the right approach. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=barak%20obama&kp=-1&k1=-1 https://duckduckgo.com/?q=barak%20obama&kp=-1&k1=-1 Now, if Google can pull off something similar with heuristics alone they may have an advantage, because those little boxes are run by code covering a whole bunch of special cases, and that could be a bottleneck. But I love the exploration options of the instant answers.. What Google is doing is definitely more time-sensitive (they're justifiably tooting their own horn a bit with it), but it doesn't feel as useful in the typical case (does anyone really use Google like a newspaper?). If you search something like "barak obama news" on DDG, you get basically the same result as the Google headline summary, and it didn't get in the way of the list on the "barak obama" results page. It feels more natural, to me at least. "I came for the privacy, but I stayed for the features..."