I have to admit I was skeptical about DDG chances but hard work and being in right place at the right time with privacy has given it the success it deserves.<p>(and it's written in perl of all things)<p>ps. bonus points for deleting eHow from results
Great job to DDG!<p>Remember to change your default search engine:<p><a href="http://help.dukgo.com/customer/portal/articles/216440-chrome" rel="nofollow">http://help.dukgo.com/customer/portal/articles/216440-chrome</a><p><a href="http://help.dukgo.com/customer/portal/articles/216441-firefox" rel="nofollow">http://help.dukgo.com/customer/portal/articles/216441-firefo...</a><p>Let's make protecting privacy a good business decision.
Part of the reason Google has seemingly perfect search results is because of the bubble, and because it knows us so well. It's quite the dilemma of whether the loss in privacy is worth the better search results.<p>For example when I search 'Egypt' on Google all of the search results (except for Wikipedia) are on the competing political factions, something I've read extensively out of interest. The same search on DuckDuckGo results in a mix of travel, encyclopaedia, a dictionary.com definition of the word Egypt, linkbait, and a couple of relevant news articles.<p>The trade-off here is I would have to start being much more specific with my search queries to get what I want out of DDG, and often times I can't put into words what I want so being specific is not an option, Google knows what I want to see.<p>It will be interesting to see how long this lasts after the next big media fad comes and everyone forgets about the NSA.
Even 2 of my friends who don't even know the difference between Chrome and Internet Explorer recently talked about "this new search engine, something with duck...".<p>It's catching on :)
Is there any reason to switch if you don't really care about privacy? For me DDG is just a skin on top of the Bing search index with a silly name. Why would I use it?
They got a huge boost out of the whole NSA fallout, which they consequently used to great effect for marketing. Good for them! I still hate the name, though.
For privacy, I'd love to switch to DDG. I try them out almost every time I read about them. But I always end up switching back to GOOG because I just can't find what I want.<p>Here's how today's switch went:<p>1. Install DDG chrome extension<p>2. Set DDG as default search provider<p>3. Search "duck duck go bang feature" (for a refresher)<p>4. What I wanted (<a href="https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html" rel="nofollow">https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html</a>) was nowhere in the search results<p>5. Switch default search provider back to GOOG<p>6. Search "duck duck go bang feature"<p>7. #1 result: <a href="https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html" rel="nofollow">https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html</a><p>Alas, I wish it weren't so...
Good. Google monopoly is bad for everyone except their shareholders.<p>I'd love the search market to be split into 3-4 entities with similiar market share - not one getting 80-90% of the cake. Google extracts way too much value out of web traffic, killing the small business - and this phenomenon increases quarter by quarter in its intensity.
I like DDG in theory a lot, and have switched my default search to it, but admittedly still end up going back to Google a lot, as DDG often doesn't bring up what I'm looking for, whereas it'll be the first result on Google.
I'm really glad that DDG has been able to capitalize on the NSA fallout. I remember checking the site out awhile ago but defaulted to expecting failure (hey, I'm not a VC).<p>The only real reason I haven't switched is that I'm VERY wired into the Google ecosystem. I use Google Apps heavily and have a Nexus phone. Search results on DDG aren't always great but that was never really a problem for me.
It surprised me to see how DDG actually succeeded in getting noticed by mainstream media and millions of users despite operating on a very small footprint in an extremely difficult market dominated by Google, arguably by making a few right business / ethic choices. That may be encouraging for people who'd like to keep developing for the web, but found too many interesting areas already well-covered by industry behemoths (with weaknesses?).
I didn't think I could ever get off the Google habit, but I for one welcome our new DDG overlord! I use it for 100 percent of my searches now.<p>Data point: unlike some, I love the name and branding.
This increase in traffic are not being seen in the unique visitor counts measured by Compete (<a href="https://siteanalytics.compete.com/duckduckgo.com/" rel="nofollow">https://siteanalytics.compete.com/duckduckgo.com/</a>). It appears as if a loyal core of duckduckgo users are switching to it entirely. Alternatively, duckduckgo users are not tracked by Compete, which is entire possible since I believe Compete gets their data from browser extensions that don't respect privacy. Note, Compete data is old, and wouldn't reflect this surge.
I've finally managed to make the switch to DDG and this time it seems to stick. Every time I've tried before, I've quickly gone back to google, not finding the results good enough.<p>Either the results have improved since then, or I'm more conscious about my provacy and thus avoiding using and depending on Google products all over the line.<p>The last 2 months I've completely dropped at least 4 Google products, and I can see the list getting longer.<p>Thanks to the DDG-team for being one of the actors out there who respect my privacy!
DDG is headed in the right direction. But it still isn't quite ready for me to use it daily. I start typing a query in and have to wait a minute wondering why the suggestions aren't showing up. I am completely used to how Google works.<p>A critical feature I would like to see are real-time search results that Google added a few years ago. Autocomplete suggestions are also critical.
I love the ducky. From the idea of privacy to the name and the cutest logo. Yes, the quality of the search is not as finely bubbled as Google's, but it's actually a feature.<p>I'm very glad that Gabriel was brave enough to start a new search engine and stuck to the project, which really paid off. We have a viable, non-tracking alternative to Google now.
Startpage.com is doing pretty well, too (and is not based in US). They've just reached 4 million searches per day:<p><a href="https://startpage.com/eng/press/pr-four-million.html" rel="nofollow">https://startpage.com/eng/press/pr-four-million.html</a>
I really like duck duck go. I just wish they would register ddg.cm so I don't have to type out the whole url. I would register it myself and forward it if it wasn't for the fact that cm registrations cost nearly 100 dollars.
I personally think the 7 day average gives a better picture than the 28 day for the usage trends. 1 day has too much noise with the day of the week variations. In th 7 day average you can see a decrease after the last spike.
If the NSA is recording search requests from the wire, does it matter which search engine you use?<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6021008" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6021008</a>
I've got to say that I read the title as "DuckDuckGo gets 28 queries a day on average".<p>It was a lot more impressive when I actually looked at the graph.
The <a href="http://dontbubble.us/" rel="nofollow">http://dontbubble.us/</a> site did it for me -- in a contest to see who filters the most accurate results for my brain between my brain and their artificial intelligence...I will <i>always</i> win.
I switched to DDG for a week. I found the results very good considering they don't track at all and can't improve ambiguous terms. I found the performance a bit disappointing however and the lack of Chrome instant suggestions a minor annoyance.
I am doing 90% of my searches in DDG. And its just a matter of time to also do the remaining 10%.
Meanwhile, if they add the something like google apps, it will be awesome. Specially a free email service.
Wow I didn't realise how little traffic they got previously. They must have had like... 5,000 regular users? Hopefully a lot of the new traffic sticks around.
Do people that switch really think that their privacy is better off? I though the NSA was logging everything that travels the network at some large backbones?