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Make DuckDuckGo your Chrome default search engine
- socillion 13y agoI've been using DDG as default search engine in Firefox, with Google on fallback under the keyword "g". You can make a bookmark with a URL like https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%s and add arbitrary keywords to the bookmark, like "yt", "g", or "so". Then you can simply enter that keyword followed by the search term in the address bar. DDG definitely doesn't have the same quality results as Google, but it's close enough in most circumstances for me that the times I have to search twice aren't a huge factor.
- jredwards 13y agoI use DuckDuckGoog. Non bash-syntax searches automatically hit google.
- fungi 13y agoi always make ddg my default... but then ill just use google for a sec and forget to change my search back to ddg and then without noticing ill be using google for the next week. .... so my project for the weekend is to make a firefox extension that resets your search default every X hours/days.
- jafaku 13y agoWhy not use Startpage then? It uses Google's results, but without the spying.
- maxerickson 13y agoHave you seen the ! queries on DuckDuckGo? If you add !g to a search, it redirects you to Google. !i goes to Google Image search. I guess there are others.
- jaryd 13y agoThere are quite a few! And the list is growing... :) https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html
- stevewillows 13y agoLike a previous commenter noted, the instant math portion of google is a good feature. Any way to do this with DDG?
- chrismorgan 13y agoSimple queries are done in just the same way: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=42*PI https://duckduckgo.com/?q=42*PI More complex queries are typically done with Wolfram|Alpha. This goes a long way: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=graph+y+%3D+x%2Bcos^2%28sqrt%2842*PI*x%29%29+-+z https://duckduckgo.com/?q=graph+y+%3D+x%2Bcos^2%28sqrt%2842*...
- rpearl 13y ago...and you trust Chrome? Not even Chromium, but... Chrome. Google makes Chrome, you know.
- hkmurakami 13y ago"make duckduckgo your default Firefox search engine" http://help.duckduckgo.com/customer/portal/articles/216441-firefox http://help.duckduckgo.com/customer/portal/articles/216441-f...
- sp332 13y agoYou don't have to trust it. You can sniff 100% of the traffic coming out of your own computer. You can even configure a firewall to block all traffic to Google's netblocks.
- jafaku 13y agoAll of which is pointless, since you have already installed their binaries.
- daurnimator 13y agoEven if you have their binaries they'd have to communicate home to transgress your privacy.
- TallGuyShort 13y agoedit: Missed the suggestion to block traffic entirely with a firewall - thought the discussion was only on sniffing traffic. Less ridiculous then :) You're suggesting people that already stated a distrust in Google do a thorough network traffic analysis after every update, so that they know their privacy is violated after the fact? That's a bit ridiculous, really.
- jonknee 13y agoIt's pretty simple with something like Little Snitch...
- depsypher 13y agoThe only thing stopping me from making this switch is that doing arithmetic in the url bar stops working... I use that quite a bit. Is this some deep integration with chrome or can it be made to work with ddg as well?
- iAinsley 13y agoUse AlfredApp for arithmetic ;)
- gee_totes 13y agoor the command line utility bc
- lloeki 13y agoIf you use bash, you can also use $(( 3 + 2 )). More often than not, if it gets cumbersome to fit it into Spotlight, I'm going to fire up a Python console.
- lloeki 13y agoThe fact that Spotlight does arithmetic seems like it's regularly overlooked.
- alex_doom 13y agoDid google do the math without hitting send? This works for me https://duckduckgo.com/?q=5*5 https://duckduckgo.com/?q=5*5
- Hovertruck 13y agoYes: http://i.imgur.com/kfOzmUD.png http://i.imgur.com/kfOzmUD.png
- depsypher 13y agoI'd rather not have to hit send, and that only works when google search is enabled unfortunately :(
- proex 13y agoDDG is a nice search engine for simple research, but I don't use it as much for its search purpose as for its !bang utility. Being able to search on almost any website by adding a simple keyword is a real plus and I will go even further and say that sometimes it accelerates the search process (say you know you want to search on wikipedia for instance). However, I have to admit that most of the times I end up searching on google :)
- CoryG89 13y agoIn regards to searching a particular site, is this the same thing as using the tag site:wikipedia.org on Google?
- proex 13y agoIt's better, in my opinion, as it loads the website specified and use the website's search tool directly. Give it a try, go on DDG and type !w to search on wikipedia.
- jafaku 13y agoWhat kind of joke is this? You are telling us to use a US-based search engine in a propietary browser made by a US-based company that we already know has given direct access to the NSA? What the fuck.
- cromwellian 13y agoWe don't "know" anything such thing about direct access. We have no evidence other than interpretations of a vague slide that fly in the face other claims.
- josteink 13y agostill... it seems odd to tell people that to ensure their privacy they should change their search engine preference, but keep on running a full-time spying program created by Google.
- alan_cx 13y agoDo you need yet another individual to become a "traitor" to the US government on this specific assertion before you decide its good enough to "know"?
- humanspecies 13y agoUsing DuckDuckGo in Chrome is like asking for privacy while walking around naked in Times Square. Chrome has 100% unrestricted access to anything your user can access on your PC, no matter what search engine you choose.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- m0th87 13y agoHere's a full list of what data is sent back to google: http://lifehacker.com/5763452/what-data-does-chrome-send-to-google-about-me http://lifehacker.com/5763452/what-data-does-chrome-send-to-... Do the autocomplete results still go to google? If so, then enabling DDG on chrome is indeed fruitless.
- nivla 13y agoJust as an FYI, new versions of chrome also sends back the full URL and the hash of any file you download or save. I bumped across this when I was trying to download light table and it din't let me open it. After a bit of research I found file scanning to be the new addition to chrome's malware checks. With all the NSA debacle going on now, I am feeling even more paranoid. I love chrome but I will be switching to Firefox or IE10 soon.
- humanspecies 13y agoChrome is the most invasive piece of spyware you could ever install. Unless you turn off some 10 or more options, it literally phones back your entire online activity, in or out of incognito mode, in or out of any google service.
- magicalist 13y agoNo, it doesn't. I've detailed how safe browsing works in Chrome, Firefox and Safari works before[1]. tl;dr only partial hashes are exchanged, so you can't reverse it even if you really wanted to. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5588362 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5588362
- pavilion 13y agoBetter on Firefox Aurora give it a try
- dpcan 13y agoOK, but tomorrow when I've forgotten that I've done this and I do a quick search, if the very first thing that comes up isn't what I want, I bet I switch right back.
- Helianthus 13y agoYou get used to typing !g if you want google's results, and then it's automatically run through encrypted.google.com
- oelmekki 13y agoAlso, since we talk about chrome, there are very handful and underused search engine shortcuts built in : simply type the first letters of the search engine in address bar and press <tab>. I've switched to duckduckgo about a month ago, and indeed I'm regularly making search on google because duckduckgo just can't provide the results I want as well (especially when it comes to non english search). But it's way less a pain that it seems : I just type "g<tab>", and I'm using google. And I still have the high privacy advantage of duckduckgo for most of my searches where the duck is enough. The bonus of that is that I now frequently use "gi<tab>" to search on github or "y<tab>" to search on youtube.
- psbp 13y agoHacker news forgets that people need to get shit done, and all of this bullshit marketing is just a distraction.
- hkmurakami 13y agoI found that having the !$var shortcuts to all sorts of sites (including !g for google, !w for wikipedia, and single word strings for many lesser trafficked sites) has made me more productive than a plain google search bar where I often need to add an extra click to the workflow.
- magicalist 13y agoAs is usually pointed out in these threads, if you're using Chrome anyways, you can do the same thing (and with the same bang syntax, if you want to go to the bother of customizing them that way) with the location bar in Chrome. Start typing the web address, hit tab, enter the query, and it just goes straight to wikipedia, google, etc with no DDG intermediary. It's slightly different, but you can do almost the same thing with Keywords in the Firefox location bar, and they presumably could support the bang syntax (or whatever) as well.
- JEVLON 13y agoBetter Privacy VS Tailored Search.
- lsiebert 13y agoChrome passwords have an export feature, right?
- bariswheel 13y agoStop using your credit cards while you're at it...
- joeblau 13y agoI love DDG and I used it for 6 months but the problem I had is that when I was looking for things related to coding or Linux--it fell short. I would type in an error from Objective-c, Node.js, Java, JavaScript or Scala and nothing helpful would return. This forced me to return to Google which I ended up doing so often that I switched my default search engine back :(.
- hkmurakami 13y agohave you checked out some of the !bang options available? I just took a look and here is a sampling of what you have available. Sysadmin: !apache !awesome !bsd !chef !codeweavers !cookbook !cve !datasheet !distro !distrowatch !eventid !everymac !exex !exploitdb !filext !fsf !fsfe !funtoo !gdiag !gnomebugs !gnu !howtoforge (!htf) !ip !irp !iso !linode !linuxfr !linuxhcl !linuxmint !lxr !mysql !nginxwiki !openbsd !openbsdmisc !opensuse !oracle !osvdb !parabola !peppermintos !playterm !postgresql !psql !puppet !qth !salix !salixforums !sectube !senderbase !spice !splunk !sqlite !susebug !susepkg !technetlib !timestamp !tldp !trisquel !use !vmkb !vol !wog !zahe Sysadmin (debian): !debbug (!dbugs) !debian !debianforums !debianfr !debml !debmla !debwiki !dfiles !dman !dpackages (!dpkg !dpts) !dtag !fanch Sysadmin (FreeBSD): !bsdman !fports !freebsd !freshports !fxr Sysadmin (Gentoo): !gbugs !gentoo !gentoowiki !gpackages !gwiki Sysadmin (RedHat): !rbugs Sysadmin (Solaris): !sunpatch Sysadmin (Ubuntu): !askubuntu !docubu !docubufr !omgubuntu (!omgu) !ppa !puc !ubottu !ubuntuforums (!ubuntuf) !ubuntuusers !uman !upackages !upkg !uu !uude https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html
- johnpmayer 13y agoPart of me thinks those are cool, but the rest of my shouts "why should I have to do that?!".
- Makkhdyn 13y agoBecause Google learns what your preferences are, DDG don't. This is why there is no "search bubble", unfortunately it comes at a price.
- doktrin 13y agoDDG is already my default search engine, and landing page (in FF, mind you). However, honestly, I prefer Google's results. Has anyone else had this experience?
- ramblerman 13y agoIf you're typing !g more often than not. What keeps you using it?
- bifrost 13y agoI switched to DDG about 2 years ago and haven't looked back. My take is they have pretty good clue, are appreciative of security, and they use FreeBSD :)
- afsina 13y agoAnd Bing.
- pilooch 13y agoDDG is nice initiative. The problem is that it does not solve any problem related to privacy because it is based on a matter of trust. Distributed search, similar to bittorrent, DHT-based designs and the like are notoriously difficult. I've participated in such efforts, like the Seeks Project [1], Yacy [2], and related initiatives like Unhosted [3], and it takes a certain amount of dedication (and suffering ;) ). However, I believe it is not entirely impossible that we see a true alternative sometimes. From what experience, what is needed is a slightly better set of distributed algorithms, a business model with the ability to sustain such a technical effort, and a range of features that no search engine can yet offer (because centralized). [1] http://www.seeks-project.info/ http://www.seeks-project.info/ [2] http://www.yacy.net/ http://www.yacy.net/ [3] https://www.unhosted.org/ https://www.unhosted.org/
- bru 13y agoSide note: working URL for unhosted is https://unhosted.org/ https://unhosted.org/
- ippisl 13y agoWhich of those is the best for the average joe?
- pilooch 13y agoProbably none yet, unfortunately. Seeks is usable because it relies on Google or any other engine in the background, when no results are available among peers. Yacy is more advanced, uses a DHT, but does not really work for daily use, the accuracy being too low. Unhosted is distributed architecture on top of the Web really. I've mentioned it because it may be useful and/or an inspiration to whoever interested in these matters.
- ippisl 13y agoI've tried to download seeks, but it's linux only. This makes it much harder to build a large user community and to develop a decent business model.
- revathskumar 13y agoI trust Google than Facebook.
- laureny 13y agoPretty lame of DuckDuckGo to use this controversy to gain some cheap exposure. Besides, there are zero guarantees that they are immune to the kind of accusation currently aimed at Google and co.
- manojlds 13y agoIt is just linking to the DuckDuckGo support page. You are talking as though they made a blog post saying "PRISM!! Use DuckDuckGo instead of Google" and posted it on HN.
- Frostbeard 13y agoOn the other hand, they have been contacting bloggers and media in exactly such a manner. https://plus.google.com/+JeffJarvis/posts/5X7nHcjijsC https://plus.google.com/+JeffJarvis/posts/5X7nHcjijsC
- davidjgraph 13y agoIf they're not supposed to gain a marketing advantage at the time the problem they're trying to solve is in the spotlight, when exactly is the right time?
- _ak 13y agoI would go even further: how could they prove that they're not an NSA front?
- mileszs 13y agoIt'd be hard to provide any data to the NSA based on DuckDuckGo's privacy policy: http://donttrack.us/ http://donttrack.us/ (Unless, of course, you think they're blatantly lying about what they do and do not track, in which case I'm wasting my energy.)
- tuananh 13y agoDDG when searching for reference: yeah; bang syntax is great. Google for everything else.
- oscilloscope 13y ago!g everything else
- mtgx 13y agoI can support this, but only if it offers real safety as opposed to Google. So does it? Or is it safe only because NSA hasn't bothered to go to DDG yet, or do whatever they are doing to get Google's search data (cable splitters or whatever)?
- edge86 13y agoThey claim not to record any data, so there's no worry about gov't requests. http://donttrack.us/ http://donttrack.us/
- jebeng 13y agoOh wow. I didn't know this. Interesting. This could become a real competitive advantage for them.
- yesplorer 13y agoNo, actually it will not.The vast majority of people using Google do not care whether their data search data is being recorded or not. Heck, most even do not know how Google search engine works from 'behind' let alone worry about the difference between Google and DDG. So they will really need something more compelling to get the average Joe (who make up the vast majority mentioned earlier), who always get his results from Google's first page, to switch from Google to DDG. Yet, in the context of search engines, I don't see anything that could be more compelling than always getting the most relevant search results.
- rcthompson 13y agoYou should read their privacy policy: https://duckduckgo.com/privacy#s5 https://duckduckgo.com/privacy#s5
- wtvanhest 13y ago"Also, like anyone else, we will comply with court ordered legal requests. However, in our case, we don't expect any because there is nothing useful to give them since we don't collect any personal information." Yes, until the NSA requests that DDG allow them to see all searches in real time. You could argue that it says "court ordered" but no one here has any clue what type of pressure the government used to get PRISM through at a major publicly traded company or what they are capable of with a small operation like DDG. [added] as pointed out below, the NSA could and will just save the searches which would result DDG being just as insecure as google.
- comrade1 13y agoIt's only really meaningful if their operations and management are outside the u.s. Is this the case? Are there search companies with their engines in Switzerland or even the EU?
- quattrofan 13y agoHow does this help? Isn't DDG still located in the US?
- kryten 13y agoWhy would you use Chrome if you have privacy concerns and want to use DuckDuckGo? Google isn't exactly known for respecting privacy. Install Firefox instead.
- dredmorbius 13y agoChrome (or Chromium, if you prefer to have someone else run your builds) is open source. It's subject to inspection. It's got some known privacy issues (e.g., safe-browsing mode sends a file URL and hash which is stored with your IP for two weeks, then your IP is stripped). But if there's anything really untoward going on and people learn about it, it's going to look extremely bad for Google. While I wouldn't say that's impossible, it's not a high-likelihood event in my book. Of course, you're free to use alternative browsers. Just ... keep in mind that if you're using a WebKit browser you're trusting Apple, and if it's WebCore, you're still trusting Google. Mozilla's Gecko is still independent, however.
- kryten 13y agoSo basically it's got known privacy problems, requires trust of Google and you're winging it. Lets also add that Chrome!=Chromium. Chrome is based on Chromium. Not all of it is open and it is not compiled in the public eye. No thanks.
- dredmorbius 13y agoSo basically it's got known privacy problems Most of which can be addressed. There's also a UUID in each build. Privoxy can remove that AFAIU. I don't use Chrome myself, but Chromium. As I said: you're arguing in the absence of evidence on a pretty widely available and analyzed application. Rather than simply throwing out hypotheticals, a more interesting exercise would be to do some research of posted information to see if there are known issues. Might even make for an interesting HN submission. I might do that myself.
- kushti 13y agoHow to make Blekko default search engine in Firefox : http://chepurnoy.org/blog/2012/11/how-to-make-blekko-your-default-search-engine-in-firefox/ http://chepurnoy.org/blog/2012/11/how-to-make-blekko-your-de...
- Flying_Dwarf 13y agoOh look, another Google bashing thread. HEY GUYZ, how about posting Facebook alternatives? Didn't you hear, NSA is all over them too? Oh, what's that? Hating Facebook doesn't get your circlejerking karma like hating Google? That's a crying shame. Really.
- gboone42 13y agoAnyone who tried to find news about the Boston Marathon Bombings on the day they happened via DDG should be aware the engine's inferiorities.
- zenbowman 13y agoI don't trust Chrome, DDG w/ Firefox is easy and at least they are open about their practices.