8 ms·

Duck duck is barely usable On the contrary, I find Google barely usable these days, with everything covered in layers and layers of horrible bloat, random UX m

Duck duck is barely usable On the contrary, I find Google barely usable these days, with everything covered in layers and layers of horrible bloat, random UX mess of the week and constant pestering about G+. DDG is nice and clean, has features Google is (still) lacking and just gets me the results. I may resort to other search-engines (like Google) once a week or so, but at this point, there's no way I'm going back to having Google as default. That's just not worth it.

SomeCallMeTim 13y ago
I've been using DDG as my primary search from desktop for several years now, and I find its results to be equivalent to or better than Google's most of the time. When I can't find something, I'll try a !g, but only rarely does that help any more.
- bhrgunatha 13y ago
  I agree completely. In fact I'll also say that when I first switched I used the !g pretty often - maybe even as much as 20%-30%. These days I rarely use !g - the results have improved considerably and the bang searches are a very clever way of not requiring me to change search engine to search another site specifically.
- Derbasti 13y ago
  I totally agree. In the beginning, I was !g a lot. These days, I mostly !g for more natural language kind of questions. For more technical searches, Google has become next to useless for me. "lupdate.exe not working Qt" transforms to "did you mean 'Update not working'?" (lupdate.exe is part of the Qt translation toolchain and Windows forces it to run as admin only because there is "update" in its file name. The Google 'correction' of that is perfectly useless).
  - protomyth 13y ago
    The second huge fail of google with technical queries is when it starts substituting synonyms for words in your query the make the search useless. It makes you not want to name commands in a common sense style.
    - cerberusss 13y ago
      Yeah but DDG does this as well. Try searching for NSString. It'll actually search for strings.
      - protomyth 13y ago
        It seems to be all NSString for a while. Am I missing something?
  - jmpe 13y ago
    For more technical searches, Google has become next to useless for me. Same here. I used to have corrections for java -> javascript but that seems to have been fixed. Just this morning I tried searching for this: µC/gui button detach ... "detach" gets corrected to "remove" and "disconnect", resulting in useless links. The top 2 links are general features overview pages. Which is odd, because googling this: button detach results in lots of uncorrected queries for event delegation. You'd think that adding "µC/gui" would narrow the context, but no.
  - lmm 13y ago
    I use an extension to always set google to Verbatim search results. It works very nicely.
cpncrunch 13y ago
Google's interface seems to have improved recently, now that they have removed the duplicate left-hand column and put the options on top. As for search results: I tried DDG again last week, and was shocked by the poor quality of results compared to google, bing or yandex. Search for "html table tag" and you'll see no w3schools or MDN results. Instead a lot of other, crappier sites. Google, yandex and bing all show w3schools and MDN near the top, so DDG must be filtering these results (which is ironic, given that they say they don't put you in a "filter bubble").
- streetnigga 13y ago
  The results seem perfectly usable to me, sorry your favorite sites are not top ranking[0]. Care to explain why you think DDG is explicitly filtering them? [0] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=+%22html+table+tag%22 https://duckduckgo.com/?q=+%22html+table+tag%22
  - cpncrunch 13y ago
    It's not that they're not top ranking - they don't appear anywhere in the first few hundred results. DDG must be filtering them because those sites are at the top of yandex and DDG says it is getting the results from yandex. As for "perfectly usable", mountaindragon (result 2) and codesinhtml.com (result 3) are atrocious. And makemyownwebpage.com (result 10 or so) looks like a homepage from the 90s. I think the issue is that DDG is getting crappy results from yandex, then filtering out the good sites to make the results even worse. Weird :)
    - streetnigga 13y ago
      Please explain this theory of filtering results out some more.
      - nilkn 13y ago
        I don't know at all if this is true, but his argument seems to just be that DDG is pulling its results from yandex, yandex shows w3schools at the top, and DDG doesn't have it in the first few hundred results--therefore DDG is filtering or significantly reordering the yandex results.
skizm 13y ago
Google + Adblock is your friend. All results are now relevant :D
res0nat0r 13y ago
Im not sure where all of these cluttered Google search UI comments are coming from, this is what I see. Maybe a reality distortion field due to pent up HN Google hate? Just a few icons in the top right off screen with my profile pic and configuration wheel icon you can't see. Things look fine. http://i.imgur.com/J9AqaQK.png http://i.imgur.com/J9AqaQK.png
- barik 13y ago
  Using a term like 'hn' isn't really a representative example, since it's unlikely that any advertising would be purchased for such a term or have any custom "knowledge panels". So, first, turn off AdBlock (if you hadn't already done so), then try a more representative query like "flowers": http://i.imgur.com/jsx1feJ.png http://i.imgur.com/jsx1feJ.png It's a big difference, and these different experiences with Google could just be a matter of which keywords people tend to use (e.g., very general vs. very targeted searches) and what extensions they chose to install in their browser.
  - enneff 13y ago
    What result do you expect for something as vague as "flowers"? Try something like "flower delivery <your city>" or "hydrangea" to see a useful search result page.
    - Crito 13y ago
      I would expect a glorified redirect to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flower http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flower That is what I expect for any search that is vague or generic. The results for "RTG" are pretty much my idea of what a set of results should look like. (Note that while DDG's results page for 'flowers' is cleaner, the actual results are similarly shit.)
      - RandallBrown 13y ago
        When I search google for "flower" the first result is the wikipedia page for flower. While you might want the wiki page for flower when you search "flowers" I think most people might actually want to order flowers.
coin 13y ago
I find the infinite scroll annoying, taking away from its otherwise clean feeling.
JoshTriplett 13y ago
Agreed. It took me a little time using DDG before I could reliably tell the difference between "poor results" and "results that don't feel like Google results".

SomeCallMeTim 13y ago

I've been using DDG as my primary search from desktop for several years now, and I find its results to be equivalent to or better than Google's most of the time. When I can't find something, I'll try a !g, but only rarely does that help any more.

bhrgunatha 13y ago
I agree completely. In fact I'll also say that when I first switched I used the !g pretty often - maybe even as much as 20%-30%. These days I rarely use !g - the results have improved considerably and the bang searches are a very clever way of not requiring me to change search engine to search another site specifically.
Derbasti 13y ago
I totally agree. In the beginning, I was !g a lot. These days, I mostly !g for more natural language kind of questions. For more technical searches, Google has become next to useless for me. "lupdate.exe not working Qt" transforms to "did you mean 'Update not working'?" (lupdate.exe is part of the Qt translation toolchain and Windows forces it to run as admin only because there is "update" in its file name. The Google 'correction' of that is perfectly useless).
- protomyth 13y ago
  The second huge fail of google with technical queries is when it starts substituting synonyms for words in your query the make the search useless. It makes you not want to name commands in a common sense style.
  - cerberusss 13y ago
    Yeah but DDG does this as well. Try searching for NSString. It'll actually search for strings.
    - protomyth 13y ago
      It seems to be all NSString for a while. Am I missing something?
- jmpe 13y ago
  For more technical searches, Google has become next to useless for me. Same here. I used to have corrections for java -> javascript but that seems to have been fixed. Just this morning I tried searching for this: µC/gui button detach ... "detach" gets corrected to "remove" and "disconnect", resulting in useless links. The top 2 links are general features overview pages. Which is odd, because googling this: button detach results in lots of uncorrected queries for event delegation. You'd think that adding "µC/gui" would narrow the context, but no.
- lmm 13y ago
  I use an extension to always set google to Verbatim search results. It works very nicely.

cpncrunch 13y ago

Google's interface seems to have improved recently, now that they have removed the duplicate left-hand column and put the options on top. As for search results: I tried DDG again last week, and was shocked by the poor quality of results compared to google, bing or yandex. Search for "html table tag" and you'll see no w3schools or MDN results. Instead a lot of other, crappier sites. Google, yandex and bing all show w3schools and MDN near the top, so DDG must be filtering these results (which is ironic, given that they say they don't put you in a "filter bubble").

streetnigga 13y ago
The results seem perfectly usable to me, sorry your favorite sites are not top ranking[0]. Care to explain why you think DDG is explicitly filtering them? [0] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=+%22html+table+tag%22 https://duckduckgo.com/?q=+%22html+table+tag%22
- cpncrunch 13y ago
  It's not that they're not top ranking - they don't appear anywhere in the first few hundred results. DDG must be filtering them because those sites are at the top of yandex and DDG says it is getting the results from yandex. As for "perfectly usable", mountaindragon (result 2) and codesinhtml.com (result 3) are atrocious. And makemyownwebpage.com (result 10 or so) looks like a homepage from the 90s. I think the issue is that DDG is getting crappy results from yandex, then filtering out the good sites to make the results even worse. Weird :)
  - streetnigga 13y ago
    Please explain this theory of filtering results out some more.
    - nilkn 13y ago
      I don't know at all if this is true, but his argument seems to just be that DDG is pulling its results from yandex, yandex shows w3schools at the top, and DDG doesn't have it in the first few hundred results--therefore DDG is filtering or significantly reordering the yandex results.

skizm 13y ago

Google + Adblock is your friend. All results are now relevant :D

res0nat0r 13y ago

Im not sure where all of these cluttered Google search UI comments are coming from, this is what I see. Maybe a reality distortion field due to pent up HN Google hate? Just a few icons in the top right off screen with my profile pic and configuration wheel icon you can't see. Things look fine. http://i.imgur.com/J9AqaQK.png http://i.imgur.com/J9AqaQK.png

barik 13y ago
Using a term like 'hn' isn't really a representative example, since it's unlikely that any advertising would be purchased for such a term or have any custom "knowledge panels". So, first, turn off AdBlock (if you hadn't already done so), then try a more representative query like "flowers": http://i.imgur.com/jsx1feJ.png http://i.imgur.com/jsx1feJ.png It's a big difference, and these different experiences with Google could just be a matter of which keywords people tend to use (e.g., very general vs. very targeted searches) and what extensions they chose to install in their browser.
- enneff 13y ago
  What result do you expect for something as vague as "flowers"? Try something like "flower delivery <your city>" or "hydrangea" to see a useful search result page.
  - Crito 13y ago
    I would expect a glorified redirect to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flower http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flower That is what I expect for any search that is vague or generic. The results for "RTG" are pretty much my idea of what a set of results should look like. (Note that while DDG's results page for 'flowers' is cleaner, the actual results are similarly shit.)
    - RandallBrown 13y ago
      When I search google for "flower" the first result is the wikipedia page for flower. While you might want the wiki page for flower when you search "flowers" I think most people might actually want to order flowers.

coin 13y ago

I find the infinite scroll annoying, taking away from its otherwise clean feeling.

JoshTriplett 13y ago

Agreed. It took me a little time using DDG before I could reliably tell the difference between "poor results" and "results that don't feel like Google results".