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Sorry for my ignorance, but as a user: why would I use DDG over Google?

by ilyaeck 12y ago

boyter 12y ago
This is something I posted in a Quora question and should hopefully answer it for you. 1. Privacy enabled by default. This certainly helped get traction when the NSA security revelations came around. DDG is not the only privacy conscious search engine but certainly one that pushes it as a feature more then others. See https://duckduckgo.com/privacy https://duckduckgo.com/privacy 2. !bang syntax. Remember back in the early days of Google they had a “Try this search on” and a list of search engines? !bang is that idea on steroids. This makes the cost of switching to DDG much lower then any other search engine because you are not locked in when its results are lacking. 3. Gabriel Weinberg (Creator) came up with a way to index the web for a fraction the cost of anyone else. I.E. use someone else’s index through web API’s such as Bing/Yahoo Boss. This means DDG can have an index in billions of pages without buying hundreds of machines and then crawling and indexing. Consider Cuil as an example. This isn't a reason to use it so much as explain why its a viable thing to use. 4. Persistence. Quite a few search engines based on Yahoo Boss and other API’s have come and gone, however DDG continues to be worked on. Just being around for 4 years gives it credibility. 5. DuckDuckHack. If you are a developer you can go to DuckDuckHack and add functionality you want. This may not sound that good, but because DDG already has traffic its a good incentive for start-ups and others to build on the DDG API to get some traction, which means they want to use DDG and promote it which fuels growth. 6. People. The people working on DDG are pretty awesome. 7. Uncluttered results. The results are pretty much just some links without too much fancy stuff going on.
- kunstmord 12y ago
  Also the search results are never based on your previous search history - so no "search bubble" (I think it's called that). Everyone gets the same results.
- icebraining 12y ago
  Gabriel Weinberg (Creator) came up with a way to index the web for a fraction the cost of anyone else. Not to be overly dismissive, but search engines using third-party indexes are nothing new; it's essentially the same concept behind metasearch engines like Metacrawler and HotBot.
anon9876 12y ago
To keep Google's monopoly in check. Google has exerted way more than its legal power to manually remove sites from its search results. Once removed, it means you don't exist. No entity should have that kind of power in denying people's freedom of speech. Manually action to remove sites is pure evil. With their world class engineers, scientists, billions of capital and years in the field, if they are not capable of algorithmically rank sites, then they have a problem.

Sorry for my ignorance, but as a user: why would I use DDG over Google?

by ilyaeck 12y ago

Sorry for my ignorance, but as a user: why would I use DDG over Google?

This is something I posted in a Quora question and should hopefully answer it for you. 1. Privacy enabled by default. This certainly helped get traction when the NSA security revelations came around. DDG is not the only privacy conscious search engine but certainly one that pushes it as a feature more then others. See https://duckduckgo.com/privacy https://duckduckgo.com/privacy 2. !bang syntax. Remember back in the early days of Google they had a “Try this search on” and a list of search engines? !bang is that idea on steroids. This makes the cost of switching to DDG much lower then any other search engine because you are not locked in when its results are lacking. 3. Gabriel Weinberg (Creator) came up with a way to index the web for a fraction the cost of anyone else. I.E. use someone else’s index through web API’s such as Bing/Yahoo Boss. This means DDG can have an index in billions of pages without buying hundreds of machines and then crawling and indexing. Consider Cuil as an example. This isn't a reason to use it so much as explain why its a viable thing to use. 4. Persistence. Quite a few search engines based on Yahoo Boss and other API’s have come and gone, however DDG continues to be worked on. Just being around for 4 years gives it credibility. 5. DuckDuckHack. If you are a developer you can go to DuckDuckHack and add functionality you want. This may not sound that good, but because DDG already has traffic its a good incentive for start-ups and others to build on the DDG API to get some traction, which means they want to use DDG and promote it which fuels growth. 6. People. The people working on DDG are pretty awesome. 7. Uncluttered results. The results are pretty much just some links without too much fancy stuff going on.

kunstmord 12y ago
Also the search results are never based on your previous search history - so no "search bubble" (I think it's called that). Everyone gets the same results.
icebraining 12y ago
Gabriel Weinberg (Creator) came up with a way to index the web for a fraction the cost of anyone else. Not to be overly dismissive, but search engines using third-party indexes are nothing new; it's essentially the same concept behind metasearch engines like Metacrawler and HotBot.

anon9876 12y ago

To keep Google's monopoly in check. Google has exerted way more than its legal power to manually remove sites from its search results. Once removed, it means you don't exist. No entity should have that kind of power in denying people's freedom of speech. Manually action to remove sites is pure evil. With their world class engineers, scientists, billions of capital and years in the field, if they are not capable of algorithmically rank sites, then they have a problem.