6 ms·

Inside DuckDuckGo, Google's Tiniest, Fiercest Competitor

38 points by mparramon 12y ago

valarauca1 12y ago
To any readers. I highly suggest you try DuckDuckGo, especially for tech related/documentation searches. The !{language} searches are incredibly powerful. Taking you to the language's documentation repo, and displaying results only there. Which I find hugely help for learning new languages. I've switched over completely for my day to day searches. Google offers next to nothing I can't get with DuckDuckGo.
- ufo 12y ago
  "[language] bla bla !so" is also pretty neat. It searches Stackoverflow and filters by language tag.
- ausjke 12y ago
  I use it occasionally, what does !{language} search mean?
  - tomclancy 12y ago
    Google it
  - duggieawesome 12y ago
    Say you want to refer to the JavaScript docs, you can type: "!javascript function" and it will take you immediately to the documentation.
    - ausjke 12y ago
      Thanks. I was confused by language for various countries...
    - christiangenco 12y ago
      This works sporadically for me, and the autocomplete text is completely wrong: http://i.imgur.com/v3skzTX.png http://i.imgur.com/v3skzTX.png That search, "!ruby string", also redirects to... a google search?
      - valarauca1 12y ago
        Luckily DuckDuckGo is partially open, you can help contribute fixes :)
        droope 12y ago
        Duck duck go does not share search data with any open search database e.g. YaCy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YaCy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YaCy It'd be pretty great if they did!
  - polymatter 12y ago
    !java means limit search to Java documentation !scala means limit search to Scala documentation !golang means limit search to Go documentation !cpp means limit search to C++ documentation etc. see (https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html) for more.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
jstalin 12y ago
I've been using DDG since the early days. At first, it wasn't very good, but I've gotten to the point where I don't use any other search engine anymore. And it keeps getting better at serving up relevant links.
breitling 12y ago
I know a lot of people here love DDG, but my experience hasn't been the same. I have tried many times to switch over to DDG, but the quality of search results just isn't the same as google. It's like google just knows what I'm looking for. Everyone loves a good underdog story; I would love to see DDG catch up and be equivalent to Google search.
- at-fates-hands 12y ago
  You think this has anything to do with all the data they probably have on you in order to serve you what you're looking for? Not being sarcastic at all. I wonder if this one untold benefit of all the data collection they do.
  - Volundr 12y ago
    In my case I know it often is. For example if I search for Rust on DDG, I get the rust-lang.org as result 7. Scrolling down I don't see any more results related to the language until well down the page (and still few of them). Google: rust-lang.org is my second result and most of the page is taken by libraries, the Wikipedia page, etc. Something tells me that's not what most people see. That said I have noticed on occasion when I break from my usual search patterns, DDG has actually given me better results than Google. I still have DDG as my default search engine because being able to do !hoogle, !ruby, !clojure, etc is freaking awesome.
    - kibwen 12y ago
      This inspired me to check whether DDG has a !rust directive, and it actually does! Very cool.
- alan_cx 12y ago
  Yeah, I keep trying to settle on DDG, but every time I get frustrated with the results and end up back on google. I remember back when google first appeared, I used it and never turned back. Its was immediatly clearly superior to everything else, and not problematic to stick with it. I never felt like I was making do with an inferior engine, hoping it would improve. Sadly, DDG has never, in my experience, achieved that. Given that, I think its asking too much for users similar to me to keep going back to DDG to see if its improved. In the end, that is too much effort. Its a waste of my time when I have things I need to do. Users need to see an immediate gain, or reason to stick. Just sticking it to google and/or supporting the underdog isn't enough when we need useful, relevant search results. I suppose what people like me are looking for is a google that's not google. But its the whole google thing, all the snooping, data retention, privacy busting techniques, and what not, which enables such great results. I guess there is a cost to everything. I am glad that the likes of DDG are out there, but for now, for me, they are just an interesting side show. Hopefully at some point in the future they will provide a comprehensive viable alternative for google.
austinl 12y ago
This article has been posted three times before. It's interesting to see how opinions change over time. 10 months ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7270973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7270973) 9 months ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7397794 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7397794) 3 months ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8263296 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8263296)
ShannonSofield 12y ago
I'm a big DDG fan, but I'd hardly call them a Google competitor when they process .008 (4M/500M) queries that G does per day. That said, their search operators are getting really powerful.
ausjke 12y ago
I used duckduckgo when visiting China where google.com is blocked, its own baidu.com is useless for searching technical content, most developers need use vpn to visit google.com for development, but VPN is not a safe bet since the GFW keeps evolving and many VPN can not cope with that for daily reliable usage. duckduckgo can do well in that market, better than bing.com and yahoo.com in most cases from my experience, but not enough comparing to google.com.

38 points by mparramon 12y ago

To any readers. I highly suggest you try DuckDuckGo, especially for tech related/documentation searches. The !{language} searches are incredibly powerful. Taking you to the language's documentation repo, and displaying results only there. Which I find hugely help for learning new languages. I've switched over completely for my day to day searches. Google offers next to nothing I can't get with DuckDuckGo.

ufo 12y ago
"[language] bla bla !so" is also pretty neat. It searches Stackoverflow and filters by language tag.
ausjke 12y ago
I use it occasionally, what does !{language} search mean?
- tomclancy 12y ago
  Google it
- duggieawesome 12y ago
  Say you want to refer to the JavaScript docs, you can type: "!javascript function" and it will take you immediately to the documentation.
  - ausjke 12y ago
    Thanks. I was confused by language for various countries...
  - christiangenco 12y ago
    This works sporadically for me, and the autocomplete text is completely wrong: http://i.imgur.com/v3skzTX.png http://i.imgur.com/v3skzTX.png That search, "!ruby string", also redirects to... a google search?
    - valarauca1 12y ago
      Luckily DuckDuckGo is partially open, you can help contribute fixes :)
      - droope 12y ago
        Duck duck go does not share search data with any open search database e.g. YaCy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YaCy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YaCy It'd be pretty great if they did!
- polymatter 12y ago
  !java means limit search to Java documentation !scala means limit search to Scala documentation !golang means limit search to Go documentation !cpp means limit search to C++ documentation etc. see (https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html) for more.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

jstalin 12y ago

I've been using DDG since the early days. At first, it wasn't very good, but I've gotten to the point where I don't use any other search engine anymore. And it keeps getting better at serving up relevant links.

breitling 12y ago

I know a lot of people here love DDG, but my experience hasn't been the same. I have tried many times to switch over to DDG, but the quality of search results just isn't the same as google. It's like google just knows what I'm looking for. Everyone loves a good underdog story; I would love to see DDG catch up and be equivalent to Google search.

at-fates-hands 12y ago
You think this has anything to do with all the data they probably have on you in order to serve you what you're looking for? Not being sarcastic at all. I wonder if this one untold benefit of all the data collection they do.
- Volundr 12y ago
  In my case I know it often is. For example if I search for Rust on DDG, I get the rust-lang.org as result 7. Scrolling down I don't see any more results related to the language until well down the page (and still few of them). Google: rust-lang.org is my second result and most of the page is taken by libraries, the Wikipedia page, etc. Something tells me that's not what most people see. That said I have noticed on occasion when I break from my usual search patterns, DDG has actually given me better results than Google. I still have DDG as my default search engine because being able to do !hoogle, !ruby, !clojure, etc is freaking awesome.
  - kibwen 12y ago
    This inspired me to check whether DDG has a !rust directive, and it actually does! Very cool.
alan_cx 12y ago
Yeah, I keep trying to settle on DDG, but every time I get frustrated with the results and end up back on google. I remember back when google first appeared, I used it and never turned back. Its was immediatly clearly superior to everything else, and not problematic to stick with it. I never felt like I was making do with an inferior engine, hoping it would improve. Sadly, DDG has never, in my experience, achieved that. Given that, I think its asking too much for users similar to me to keep going back to DDG to see if its improved. In the end, that is too much effort. Its a waste of my time when I have things I need to do. Users need to see an immediate gain, or reason to stick. Just sticking it to google and/or supporting the underdog isn't enough when we need useful, relevant search results. I suppose what people like me are looking for is a google that's not google. But its the whole google thing, all the snooping, data retention, privacy busting techniques, and what not, which enables such great results. I guess there is a cost to everything. I am glad that the likes of DDG are out there, but for now, for me, they are just an interesting side show. Hopefully at some point in the future they will provide a comprehensive viable alternative for google.

austinl 12y ago

This article has been posted three times before. It's interesting to see how opinions change over time. 10 months ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7270973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7270973) 9 months ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7397794 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7397794) 3 months ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8263296 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8263296)

ShannonSofield 12y ago

I'm a big DDG fan, but I'd hardly call them a Google competitor when they process .008 (4M/500M) queries that G does per day. That said, their search operators are getting really powerful.

ausjke 12y ago

I used duckduckgo when visiting China where google.com is blocked, its own baidu.com is useless for searching technical content, most developers need use vpn to visit google.com for development, but VPN is not a safe bet since the GFW keeps evolving and many VPN can not cope with that for daily reliable usage. duckduckgo can do well in that market, better than bing.com and yahoo.com in most cases from my experience, but not enough comparing to google.com.