I see duckduckgo's traffic page referenced a lot: <a href="https://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html" rel="nofollow">https://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html</a><p>Anyone have any idea what Google or Bing's traffic graphs might look like over the same period? Would be very interesting to do a comparison.<p>I run a small subreddit, and was quite pleased with how it's grown. Then I noticed I actually FELL in subreddit rankings. turned out there's just a huge rising tide.<p>My intuition is that DDG is growing faster than search is growing, but that the growth rate may be less impressive than it appears from simply looking at the chart.<p>Either way, I'm really, really happy they're challenging google (and also glad Bing is still in the game). Monopolies are no good for anyone.
I made the switch to DDG a couple of months ago, as I like their search results page (long listing, not short pages like Google), but after repeatedly being frustrated by not finding the results I need (and surprised each time I hit Google only to find the results right at the top), I switched back to Google yesterday. DDG as awesome as they are, simply are not Google. :(
I'm not sold that are a competitor. I'm also not sold on the privacy niche that they are trying to fill.<p>Without funding, they will have to rely on advertising. It's fact. I doubt companies with serious marketing budgets will use their platform.<p>Look at AppNexus for example. Pretty advanced technology.<p>You, as an advertiser would be a total idiot to spend the money on a 'static' ad placement within DDG.<p>Statistics matter. If this was 1990, maybe. Not in todays world. People don't just throw money at stuff like this.<p>Now from privacy angle. Has anybody actually verified their claims? Or do we just take their word for it?<p>Now, they offer Chrome extension and serve advertising. Both of those things leak data. So slowly, they are starting to have those 'exceptions'.<p>And do you really think they will be able to tell FBI 'We don't track stuff sorry guys!' when FBI really needs something from them?<p>They will either be shut down or forced to log data once they get any useful traction. That's the way it works.<p>I bet that once they reach that point, they will pivot as a 'regular' search engine or look for a buyer (re: Google).<p>Don't worry, you will get a warm notice of how they fought for your privacy but at the end they had no choice.
For those who think only Google can find what your looking for there is two reasons for that, one of course is they are tracking the crap out of you and tailoring search results for you in your own little search bubble world you've created, but an even bigger reason why some have trouble switching is because whether you know it or not, you've trained your brain to search in a Google like fashion, in otherwords, every search engine takes a little finessing when choosing what terms your use in your search, I've been using DuckDuckGo so long now, that my brain is now trained to use DuckDuckGo style search terms, so much so that those same terms don't always work on Google when they work just as I expected on DuckDuckGo. If anyone wants some pointers on how to make the change, simply try adding one extra search parameter to your regular query that you would use on google and wala, duckduckgo will more than likely find it, which to me is a small price to pay for a bit more privacy. Yes at times I also !g bang google, but its gets more or more less frequent.
previous submission, with lots of comments:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7270973" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7270973</a>
I've tried switching to DDG a few times but since so many other things are integrated into Google/Bing it never sticks.<p>Have the search results been gamed like they have on Google? That's my fear of DDG getting too big. Google is next to useless for so many searches that just return result after result of useless sites who have farmed questions/answers from other sites.
Alright, so this is probably the place to ask this.<p>Why is there a juxtaposition between what people want and between what people are willing to give?<p>Specifically: why do so many people ban web crawlers other than the "large" ones, and then wonder why the quality of other search engines are lacking?
Looks like from the query graph in the article, that DuckDuckGo enjoyed a huge surge in users after the Snowden leaks (more than doubling).<p>I've only toyed with the idea of switching off google for searching... mostly because I'm so tied into their ecosystem with my Android... but, I must say, DuckDuckGo looks impressive.