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I've just started using duckduckgo.com. Don't have any complaints so far.

by danw3 12y ago

billconan 12y ago
I tried to use duckduckgo too. but I gave up because google is a very integrated experience, it can search map and has gmail, google news. duckduckgo needs these additional services to really compete with google. openstreetmap isn't as powerful as google map.
- thieving_magpie 12y ago
  That would defeat the purpose of their existence.
jgallag8 12y ago
I use duckduckgo mainly, because I like what they are doing. From time to time I will get search results that aren't very relevant. In these cases, I just prepend '!google' to my search.
- joosters 12y ago
  You can also use !sp to get Google results without Google tracking.
  - dmdeller 12y ago
    You can now also use !s which is the same as !sp. Note that it works as either a prefix or a suffix - it might be easier to put the insertion point at the end of the text box. If you're using Safari, you can use my Safari extension to do this with a toolbar button or keyboard shortcut: http://horizon-nigh.org/re-search/ http://horizon-nigh.org/re-search/
- glaslong 12y ago
  Now that I've gotten used to them, I really like the !bang operators. They're incredibly convenient. A few of the ones I abuse constantly: !g - google !bi - bing image !yt - youtube !so - stackoverflow !w - wikipedia !py - python docs The exhaustive list is here: https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html
  - jgallag8 12y ago
    Didn't know you could just use '!g'. Very cool!
  - arca_vorago 12y ago
    !images goes straight to google images.
  - mattmanser 12y ago
    Why are bangs good? Why not just go to the site? Also Stackoverflow's search and many other site searches are totally rubbish. Not a bit, but totally rubbish. Here's an example: "!so c# read file" => this delivers useless results, the top result being "Reading Excel files from C#" Compare that to "stackoverflow c# read file" on google, which delivers what you actually want, with the question "Reading From a Text File in C#".
    - vacri 12y ago
      You don't have to load the site (trivial, but not negligible), throwing a bang in front of an already written search is simpler than rewriting the search, and google doesn't build a profile around you as another entity is doing the search.
      - icebraining 12y ago
        another entity is doing the search. What? It redirects your browser to Google, it's you doing the search, not any other entity. They don't proxy or anything.
        ripdog 12y ago
        He means that, for example, "!hn rust" would search hacker news directly for rust, whereas "hacker news rust" on google would do a similar job but via google, informing google of your search.
        12y ago
bobajeff 12y ago
DuckDuckGo is cute but doesn't seem to offer anything in the way of competition. It seems very limited in the results it gets and doesn't come close to offering the features that the big guys offer. There really is nothing significantly better about it that I can think of.
toxican 12y ago
I have but one, and it's that it consistently fails to find me what I need as well as Google does. I made a serious effort this week to use DuckDuckGo and made it my default search engine. I wasted so much time googling stuff I'd just DDG'd to find what I actually wanted. I love and support DDG fully, but Google still does search better, imo. Apparently !g is a thing though? I may have to give that a try so I can have the benefits of DDG, but the results of google.
- iopq 12y ago
  Yeah, I usually search with DDG and then add !g to it when I don't find anything good in my first search results
- thomasfoster96 12y ago
  Well, !g will just redirect you to Google Search. And I've noticed lately that DuckDuckGo has gotten much better at short queries lately, at the expense of longer queries. Any query over about 4 words goes straight to Google.

I've just started using duckduckgo.com. Don't have any complaints so far.

by danw3 12y ago

I've just started using duckduckgo.com. Don't have any complaints so far.

I tried to use duckduckgo too. but I gave up because google is a very integrated experience, it can search map and has gmail, google news. duckduckgo needs these additional services to really compete with google. openstreetmap isn't as powerful as google map.

thieving_magpie 12y ago
That would defeat the purpose of their existence.

jgallag8 12y ago

I use duckduckgo mainly, because I like what they are doing. From time to time I will get search results that aren't very relevant. In these cases, I just prepend '!google' to my search.

joosters 12y ago
You can also use !sp to get Google results without Google tracking.
- dmdeller 12y ago
  You can now also use !s which is the same as !sp. Note that it works as either a prefix or a suffix - it might be easier to put the insertion point at the end of the text box. If you're using Safari, you can use my Safari extension to do this with a toolbar button or keyboard shortcut: http://horizon-nigh.org/re-search/ http://horizon-nigh.org/re-search/
glaslong 12y ago
Now that I've gotten used to them, I really like the !bang operators. They're incredibly convenient. A few of the ones I abuse constantly: !g - google !bi - bing image !yt - youtube !so - stackoverflow !w - wikipedia !py - python docs The exhaustive list is here: https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html
- jgallag8 12y ago
  Didn't know you could just use '!g'. Very cool!
- arca_vorago 12y ago
  !images goes straight to google images.
- mattmanser 12y ago
  Why are bangs good? Why not just go to the site? Also Stackoverflow's search and many other site searches are totally rubbish. Not a bit, but totally rubbish. Here's an example: "!so c# read file" => this delivers useless results, the top result being "Reading Excel files from C#" Compare that to "stackoverflow c# read file" on google, which delivers what you actually want, with the question "Reading From a Text File in C#".
  - vacri 12y ago
    You don't have to load the site (trivial, but not negligible), throwing a bang in front of an already written search is simpler than rewriting the search, and google doesn't build a profile around you as another entity is doing the search.
    - icebraining 12y ago
      another entity is doing the search. What? It redirects your browser to Google, it's you doing the search, not any other entity. They don't proxy or anything.
      - ripdog 12y ago
        He means that, for example, "!hn rust" would search hacker news directly for rust, whereas "hacker news rust" on google would do a similar job but via google, informing google of your search.
        12y ago

bobajeff 12y ago

DuckDuckGo is cute but doesn't seem to offer anything in the way of competition. It seems very limited in the results it gets and doesn't come close to offering the features that the big guys offer. There really is nothing significantly better about it that I can think of.

toxican 12y ago

I have but one, and it's that it consistently fails to find me what I need as well as Google does. I made a serious effort this week to use DuckDuckGo and made it my default search engine. I wasted so much time googling stuff I'd just DDG'd to find what I actually wanted. I love and support DDG fully, but Google still does search better, imo. Apparently !g is a thing though? I may have to give that a try so I can have the benefits of DDG, but the results of google.

iopq 12y ago
Yeah, I usually search with DDG and then add !g to it when I don't find anything good in my first search results
thomasfoster96 12y ago
Well, !g will just redirect you to Google Search. And I've noticed lately that DuckDuckGo has gotten much better at short queries lately, at the expense of longer queries. Any query over about 4 words goes straight to Google.