Why should I use DuckDuckGo instead of Google?

245 点作者 berkeleyjunk超过 6 年前

42 条评论

growt超过 6 年前

No offense to Gabriel or DDG, but this kind of question on quora always looks a bit set-up.If you take DDG out it reads like "Why should I use <specific product>?", to which the creator/CEO/Owner of <specific product> can now answer with the complete marketing blurb he/she has ready, without guilt.I also have seen that about some obscure AI-Algorithm and a question like "Why is <obscure algorithm> so superior?". To which the inventor of said algorithm had a few pages as a reply.

评论 #18007510 未加载

评论 #18006749 未加载

评论 #18006379 未加载

评论 #18007499 未加载

评论 #18007883 未加载

评论 #18007894 未加载

评论 #18006904 未加载

评论 #18007929 未加载

评论 #18006862 未加载

评论 #18007027 未加载

评论 #18007126 未加载

vntok超过 6 年前

> You may realize they also track you on YouTube, Gmail, Chrome, Android, Gmaps, and all the other services they run. Yes, you can live Google-free. I’ve been doing it for many years.You can, however all these alternatives are measurably worse in terms of features and ease-of-use, so much so that switching to them is both painful at first and frustrating on a daily basis. Consider the sheer number of people who in every DDG thread keep on saying "well yes DDG results are worse than Google's, but you can use Google from DDG so it's okay". Well it's not okay for most people.Also, bangs seem like a great idea at first, until you realise that Google simply does not need them to return relevant results! Then they suddenly seem way less differenciating and more like an acknowledgement of the inferiority of DDG compared to Google. And as a user, I'd much rather type "duckduckgo" and get the official site at first then the wikipedia entry (with a complimentary knowledge box on the side) than have to decide first where I want to look and then type "!w duckduckgo".Even in this very thread, we can read stuff like> "I've been using DuckDuckGo for years now. It's not perfect but if you think carefully about your query it will work fine.> For me the killer feature is DDG's bang commands (<a href="https://duckduckgo.com/bang" rel="nofollow">https://duckduckgo.com/bang</a>) prepend "!w" for wikipedia, "!imdb" for movie trivia stuff, etc."Well, Google will achieve the same or better results without this need to mentally switch context. This is a feature, and a key differentiator.

评论 #18006590 未加载

评论 #18007114 未加载

评论 #18006725 未加载

评论 #18006913 未加载

评论 #18006586 未加载

评论 #18006596 未加载

评论 #18006602 未加载

评论 #18007768 未加载

评论 #18007127 未加载

评论 #18010980 未加载

评论 #18007980 未加载

评论 #18007918 未加载

评论 #18007542 未加载

bad_user超过 6 年前

I've been a long time Google Search user that used to complain about DuckDuckGo's results. That changed and I'm now a full time DuckDuckGo user, on desktop and mobile.For one I became aware of privacy implications, so went to my Google account and deleted all apps history I had. To their credit they let you delete your data (although under GDPR companies now no longer have a choice). I did this because looking back I was amazed at how many things they could infer from my searches over the last decade at least (my Google account is from 2004).Without that history Google's results became visibly worse than before, worse than DuckDuckGo!Also once you become privacy aware you end up being concerned with the actual searches. For example I'm now following a ketogenic diet for weight loss and I also have hypothyroidism issues, so lately I ended up doing a lot of searches on weight loss, diabetes, ketosis, hyperinsulinemia, heart disease, interpretation of cholesterol results, high uric acid and gout, etc... some of these issues have been for my own education, but I cannot in good conscience let Google know of my potential health issues. I was careless enough to join a local T2 diabetes group on Facebook and now I'm getting ads for diabetics.Whenever I searched for a subject on DuckDuckGo, I never noticed subsequent "relevant" ads following me around the web ... although you can get them via Google/Facebook enabled tracking planted on the landing pages themselves, but I'm armored with an ad-blocker, Privacy Badger, plus Firefox's FB Multi-account Containers.I cannot investigate DuckDuckGo's implementation of course. This is not open source. So there's always the risk of betrayal. But the difference is I already know what Google is doing and I want none of it.And as far as quality is concerned, I got used to it, plus I now have better peace of mind, coupled with the blocking of trackers and with a good VPN of course. Once the privacy mindset infects you, it's really hard to go back unfortunately :-)BTW, I don't know if DuckDuckGo is the best choice. For European users, it's still hosted in the US which might be a concern. Here are 2 other alternatives:1. <a href="https://about.qwant.com/" rel="nofollow">https://about.qwant.com/</a>2. <a href="https://www.startpage.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.startpage.com/</a>

评论 #18006703 未加载

clubm8超过 6 年前

I've been using DuckDuckGo for years now. It's not perfect but if you think carefully about your query it will work fine.For me the killer feature is DDG's bang commands (<a href="https://duckduckgo.com/bang" rel="nofollow">https://duckduckgo.com/bang</a>)prepend "!w" for wikipedia, "!imdb" for movie trivia stuff, etc.And if you don't find what you're looking for "!s" will search with Startpage (a site that proxies Google searches for you)

评论 #18007431 未加载

评论 #18006578 未加载

评论 #18008640 未加载

void_starer超过 6 年前

Besides the privacy issues, the single most frustrating thing is it's dropping of keywords that are critical to the query so it can pretend that it always has search results ready for you (here are zillion results found in 0.0000001 seconds!)

评论 #18007546 未加载

评论 #18008252 未加载

评论 #18006480 未加载

acheron超过 6 年前

I've been using DDG for many years now. I rarely resort to !g anymore, and when I do it doesn't help. (That is, if I don't find anything good in the DDG results, I don't find anything any better in the !g results.)(That said, my Google account is purposefully pretty clean of "personalization", so if you've let Google track you for many years then maybe it will still return better results for you.)

izietto超过 6 年前

When I visit duckduckgo.com, uBlock reports blocking a tracking image from the domain improving.duckduckgo.com whose url includes my browser user agent. That doesn't seem fair to me.

评论 #18006643 未加载

评论 #18007064 未加载

bla2超过 6 年前

DDG is an ok skin on bing search results, but their pushy and misleading marketing is a huge turn-off to me. And I'm very very sympathetic to the "we don't track you" cause in general.

评论 #18006403 未加载

ljf超过 6 年前

I want to love DDG - but for local search in the UK - it is terrible. I can be in a small town, searching for that small town, and it will give me a whole bunch of American results.It is still my default search on my phone (plus I use Brave as the browser) - but I find myself popping back to google when I want a 'proper' search (and by that I mean the way that I've conditioned myself to thinking search should work with the last X years of googling - sure DDG will feel more natural one day)

sdegutis超过 6 年前

> "When you search, you expect unbiased results, but that’s not what you get on Google. On Google, you get results tailored to what they think you’re likely to click on, based on the data profile they’ve built on you over time from all that tracking I described above."That explains why I get much more helpful results for technical questions on Google than when I tried DDG. Granted, that was 3-4 years ago, maybe I should give DDG another try.

评论 #18006516 未加载

fabricexpert超过 6 年前

I've been using DDG for a while now.It's taken some time, but I am now finding that DDG is giving me more relevant results than Google. The only time it doesn't is for breaking news, which is something I rarely search for.Occasionally if I can't find something I'll put !g before it and get Google's results, it's getting very rare now that Google has a better result. Earlier today I started to reflex type ! into Google and then realised there was nowhere to search and google doesn't even have bangs for other sites.Honestly if I was banned from Google Search I wouldn't miss it now. Couldn't say that 6 months ago.

bitL超过 6 年前

Did anyone notice that DDG recently stopped treating prefix - as a way to remove search results that contain the prefixed term, i.e. -news would remove all pages with "news"? It is now instead highlighting "news" as the term you searched for... I hope this is just a bug they are going to fix, otherwise I'd have no choice but to migrate elsewhere, as without it search results are mostly useless.

评论 #18007104 未加载

评论 #18007379 未加载

评论 #18006476 未加载

sdfjkl超过 6 年前

Because DDG doesn't bloody geolocate you and then shove some dreadful localized content in your face, in a language you do not understand. If you travel, you'll know what I'm talking about.

utopcell超过 6 年前

Instead of advertising that their quality is better in some way, they employ FUD to say that Google is bad because they tailor their results to the user.Notice how it's always Google that is under attack and never Bing, which has 20% of the US desktop market share and, incidentally, provides their web results.What a pathetic way to market a product.

评论 #18008601 未加载

edoo超过 6 年前

I use DuckDuckGo regularly now and Google only when the results aren't up to par (often with technical stuff). I do this in protest of Google becoming the opposite of their motto.It is faster than google for some things. For example it is nice to be able to type xxxx !octo and auto search at octopart.

BeetleB超过 6 年前

Since DuckDuckGo always seems to get the most publicity, I feel compelled to point out two other search engines:<a href="http://www.startpage.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.startpage.com</a>Searx (<a href="https://asciimoo.github.io/searx/" rel="nofollow">https://asciimoo.github.io/searx/</a>)You can install searx on your own host/PC, or use one of the public instances like <a href="http://searx.me" rel="nofollow">http://searx.me</a> (although no one can guarantee that the public instance isn't tracking you). Searx has apparently been around for quite a few years. I installed it recently on my machine and the results are decent enough that I continue to use it.

评论 #18007944 未加载

jordhy超过 6 年前

DDG is a better search engine for developers for a number of reasons:- Infinite scroll allows you to find information faster, even from not so notable sources- Privacy means you can search freely and do research on issues that will probably not be found out on a civil case (patents, papers, dev articles etc).- Bangs allow for a streamlined, faster search experience if you use certain services massively.- Search results are very simple. No knowledge graph boxes, etc. So you can just get the content you want.- Less (irrelevant) advertisements when you leave the search engine. You will be tagged by the content you consume and not the one you search due to privacy settings.- Your personal data will be safe in case of a Google hack.* Disclosure: Some years ago I was a DDG ambassador.

评论 #18009940 未加载

评论 #18008368 未加载

评论 #18006911 未加载

breitling超过 6 年前

I've seriously given it a shot, but it's just not the same. I really want DDG to succeed, but don't think it's fully-there, yet. I get significantly more relevant results with google.

评论 #18006404 未加载

评论 #18006370 未加载

评论 #18006392 未加载

评论 #18006953 未加载

评论 #18006358 未加载

MarkusAllen超过 6 年前

I am blown away that DuckDuckDuck.com continues to claim no tracking after being exposed for tracking here:<a href="https://archive.is/qntuk" rel="nofollow">https://archive.is/qntuk</a>

评论 #18006959 未加载

评论 #18007203 未加载

评论 #18007695 未加载

_Donny超过 6 年前

Even though it is a 'minor' feature, I find the !bangs feature incredibly useful and time-saving. They even make searching on Google faster!

评论 #18006936 未加载

rudolph9超过 6 年前

I’ve switched to DuckDuckGo on my mobile device and it’s great but I found it difficult to commit to on my work machine and switched back to Google.When conducting searched pertinent to software development the results on DuckDuckGo tended to be too generic, often missing the stackoverflow posts discussing exactly what I’m looking for.

评论 #18006514 未加载

jccalhoun超过 6 年前

> #1 — Google tracks you. We don’t.I'm not convinced this is a problem. I have commented before that even after 9 years on facebook they still suggest totally irrelevant groups for me to join (for example, facebook recently suggested I join a group for progressive asian-american christians. I am not asian or a christian)>#3 — Get unbiased results, outside the Filter Bubble.I read Eli Pariser's book and it was terrible. Full of "might" and "could" and little hard data. I am highly skeptical of the effect of a filter bubble.>#8 — Our search results aren’t loaded up with ads.>For many Google searches, most of the entire first page is ads. On mobile it can be even worse.Really? I have not encountered that many ads on google searches.>#9 — Search without fear.Being afraid isn't really a good reason to switch in my mind.More power to DuckDuckGo but the main thing that will make me use it is if it has good search results.

xte超过 6 年前

IMVHO you shoudn't. They are both companies that run proprietary service outside user control.If you want a different approach you should use something like YaCy witch is a FOSS, distributed, search engine, based on solr. So something you can know (have the code) and that does not run on a single company server.

评论 #18009550 未加载

nobody271超过 6 年前

They still filter and curate search results though.For example if you ddg "crimes committed by the fbi" you get a whitewashed and filtered response. So what other responses are modified?Another good litmus test is to ddg something politically incorrect. Most of the time the response does not match the query.

评论 #18011211 未加载

yotoyo超过 6 年前

I feel like I'm having DDG shoved down my throat atm with all the cheesy twitter advertising and spontaneous HN posts. Clearly what happens when you take VC money.To me - not tracking searches (or, "not doing anything") is not protecting my privacy - It's just not doing anything. Privacy is just a commercial narrative to reinforce a weak service IMO when it comes to DDG.It's pretty hard to believe there is a big team behind this website. It doesn't feel like it has changed in many years - what are all the employees doing. Clearly lacks leadership on all levels. Probably need better peopleI genuinely fear the biggest contribution DDG makes to privacy is their yearly contributions to companies / products that actually product privacy of everyday people

olivermarks超过 6 年前

I think it's important to use multiple search engines in order to see different results and disparities. DDG, Google & Bing are the 3 I mainly use and there is quite a disparity on every given search.

评论 #18007609 未加载

brentadamson超过 6 年前

Shameless plug: I've tried DDG in the past and didn't like that they weren't completely open source. I've been developing <a href="https://jivesearch.com" rel="nofollow">https://jivesearch.com</a> and it is similar to DDG with all the !bangs and tons of instant answers. It offers better privacy IMO because it is 100% open source and you can run it on your own server or even locally. Plus, we aren't hosted on AWS.

评论 #18040375 未加载

ta3435353535超过 6 年前

I've been using DDG for quite a few years now, and it's been great, but I wish they would stop with the Yummly recipe results when I search for recipes.Yummly is a cancer on the Internet, they're just an aggregator as far as I can tell, that gets in the way. We didn't need a recipe site aggregator, search engines work fine. Awful UI/UX while they try and advertise to you and shove things down your throat. DDG, banish Yummly please.

lhball超过 6 年前

The irony of this linking to Quora is painful. Spen 0.5 on the page; get a request for notifications permissions.

y-c-o-m-b超过 6 年前

> Even less well known is they also enable advertisers like airlines to charge you different prices based upon your personal information.I hate this with a passion and it highlights why privacy is valuable to every individual whether or not they think they have "nothing to hide"

philamonster超过 6 年前

Been missing Scroogle just about as long as I've been a DDG user....<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_concerns_regarding_Google#Scroogle" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_concerns_regarding_Goo...</a>

netman21超过 6 年前

I have switched to DDG as my default. It answers the many daily questions I have. Have to switch to maps.google for directions though. For research I actually use Yippy. Great filters and easier to set dates.

xjia超过 6 年前

Slightly related: in the linked article from the answer, iOS is proposed as the privacy preserving alternative to Android. But I am having a hard time to agree to that. Are there anything else?

looperhacks超过 6 年前

As much as I like using DDG, the search results rarely feel on par with Google - But I'm mostly searching for German results or specific technical stuff.

评论 #18007845 未加载

moneytide1超过 6 年前

An very simple reason I use it: being able to push the arrow keys to cycle through search hits. Google used to have it, but it's gone now.

tempswdf超过 6 年前

DDG is known to be backed by Yandex search engine. This means that your request's metadata is already reported to Russian government services.<a href="https://www.quora.com/How-does-the-partnership-between-Yandex-and-DuckDuckGo-work" rel="nofollow">https://www.quora.com/How-does-the-partnership-between-Yande...</a> <a href="https://duck.co/forum/thread/2725/yandex-partnership" rel="nofollow">https://duck.co/forum/thread/2725/yandex-partnership</a>

评论 #18007266 未加载

评论 #18007124 未加载

gesman超过 6 年前

Large employers fake GOOG certificates and spy on employee's search queries.They usually won't do that for DDG and smaller portals.

评论 #18006900 未加载

评论 #18006639 未加载

评论 #18008042 未加载

评论 #18008331 未加载

the_arun超过 6 年前

It is not just about Google Search vs DDG. If you use DDG via Google Chrome, google can still track you.

the_clarence超过 6 年前

I use it for streaming movies, Google has managed to clean its results from a lot of these websites.

known超过 6 年前

DDG should display Google results side-by-side

评论 #18008271 未加载

rufio1超过 6 年前

Use Brave instead of Chrome (:

sfohohoho超过 6 年前

Will they make me use AMP? I don't want to use AMP.

评论 #18006902 未加载