Use DuckDuckGo to improve your privacy online (2018)

I first tried DDG in its early years and it just didn't yield the results I needed, I tried it again a couple of years ago and have stuck with it ever since as it has must better results these days.

If the user submits a GET request to DDG from the commandline with Javascript disabled, then all results links are prefixed with the address of a DDG server, e.g., <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;example.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;example.com</a> becomes <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;duckduckgo.com&#x2F;l&#x2F;uddg=https%3A%2F%2Fexample.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;duckduckgo.com&#x2F;l&#x2F;uddg=https%3A%2F%2Fexample.com</a><p>Whatever the reasons may be for this decision, it allows DDG to track all links that the user follows from the results page. That is no better than Google. It is not a privacy improvement in that regard.<p>If the user submits the request via POST, then the results are not prefixed. For example, if the request is submitted from an html form with method set to &quot;post&quot;.<p>I submit that allowing users to GET (clean) results without using Javascript would be a privacy improvement over Google. Not to mention that it would please many users who get frustrated when trying to copy links from a Google results page only to find they have been prefixed and loaded with Google url parameters.<p>Users deserve clean result links.<p>To see the difference between prefixed and non-prefixed result links:<p><pre><code> curl -o a.htm https:&#x2F;&#x2F;duckduckgo.com&#x2F;lite&#x2F;?q=example.com grep -m1 .=result-link a.htm curl -o b.htm -d &quot;q=example.com&quot; https:&#x2F;&#x2F;duckduckgo.com&#x2F;lite&#x2F; grep -m1 .=result-link b.htm</code></pre>

I&#x27;ve stopped using Google and moved to DDG not because of privacy, but because the results on Google just seem the same everytime even when I use different wording, making it feel like Google has been becoming a &quot;recommendation engine&quot; rather than a &quot;search engine&quot;.

I love DDG (and have been using it as my primary search engine for about six months) but I feel like the hacker community (including me) forgets that DDG <i>is</i> a for-profit corporation, and that at some level posting these kinds of links is more or less the same as just giving them free advertising.

Switched to DDG for my defaults over a year ago now. Still occasionally have to append a !g to my search, and Google Maps is still unmatched, but for run of the mill searches it&#x27;s been working out. Google lost my trust, so if I can avoid using a service of theirs with a viable alternative, I do so. Go, OpenStreetMap!!

DDG has been my default search in FF for a very long time now. If I can&#x27;t find what I&#x27;m looking for with ddg, I&#x27;ll simply add !g to my search, and it will redirect to Google.

I can’t tell if everyone here is serious when they say they haven’t looked back.<p>Google knowledge graph is years ahead of DDG. Average person does not want to click through results, s&#x2F;he just wants the answer. Compare these queries in Google vs. ddg:<p><pre><code> - nba scores - 2018 super bowl - lakers roster - movies in theatres - game of thrones cast - $aapl - where is my phone - 2019 thanksgiving </code></pre> etc

All hail the duck! (Not tongue in cheek. I&#x27;m a fan of the duck)

Also available at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;duck.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;duck.com</a> now, after much ado.

I&#x27;m not trying to defend Google by any means, but I&#x27;ve always wondered how DDG can be as profitable as Google if they take into account less information when showing you ads. Surely using more information allows you to more efficiently match supply with potential demand, which is the point of ads. Is there any research out there that shows that this efficiency gap does not exist?<p>I don&#x27;t use or follow Facebook that much, but every time I hear Mark Zuckerberg defending Facebook&#x27;s business model, he always says something like &quot;we want to make sure the ads you see are actually useful&#x2F;relevant to you&quot;. Is there a way to achieve this outcome without taking into account more personal information?

Switched to DDG about two years ago. First, it was worse than Google. However in the meantime, DDG has improved a bit and Google got worse, showing a lot of performance devrading crap&#x2F;boxes&#x2F;large text instead of search results.<p>So DDG is now all around the better choice.

I love DDG! Switched to it about a year ago and haven&#x27;t looked back. The odd time I need to use Google at work for a specific technical lookup but otherwise I don&#x27;t need too. I love to support the underdog who values privacy. I recommend it to everyone.

Does this offer anything unique that other content blockers cannot? From what I can see it would only be the forced encryption and I guess the letter grade.<p>I love DDG for search but not sure this browser competes with 1Blocker X Safari integration on iOS.

I&#x27;m glad most a lot of these comments are saying DDG works for them; I still have a lot of issues with the search quality and switched to Startpage a while ago which uses anonymized google results.

I&#x27;m glad they&#x27;re moving forward, but I still don&#x27;t buy it. Someone is tossing a big load of money on them (you know that when you see their ad in twitter every day, and articles like this), specially in the last year. When that happens, investors will want their return, no matter what.<p>People saying they respect your privacy, but... how do you <i>really</i> know? Also because &quot;improved privacy&quot; != &quot;no targeted ads&quot;. They can still do massive amounts of money from the data we provide.<p>At some point:<p>1) they would have to comply with some law somewhere, handling user data (logs). 2) they may become the number 2 search engine. Spammers will target them and they would have to start doing some behavioral analysis on &quot;what links worked well to those kind of users&quot; to fix that.<p>Are they so transparent and well intentioned? Is their system so simple, so innocuous and filled only with anonymous data? Fine, they should Open-source the engine and servers, prove that they are using the same code we see, give us RO access to the DBs, and the equivalent of a MacDonalds kitchen tour.<p>Otherwise, they are just relying on nice words.

Why is this suddenly on the front page?

I believe in everything DDG stands for but just earlier I did a search comparison to see which search engine provided the most helpful results. I searched &#x27;asus block third party firmware&#x27; (no quotes) and objectively I have to say that Google provided the most helpful results. Search yourself and see if you come to the same conclusion.

Missing features I wish DuckDuckGo had (and reasons why I manually type google.com even though I have DDG set as my default browser: - sports searches. If I search for “Washington Capitals”, I want to know when they’re playing next and what channel it’s on, as well as the results of their past game. This goes for any time I search for a sports team. - searches for dictionary terms should one-box the definition (for instance, today I looked up mortified with “mortified definition”). I should see the one-box of what I’m looking for. - one-boxing in general: stack overflow answers, definitions, calculations (feet to meters, grams to pounds, etc), sports, time zones, cities, monuments, etc.<p>The search results from DDG just feel “off” compared to google search. I want to like DDG and I keep attempting to use it; but it’s failing at making relevant information immediately available at my fingertips.

I switched to DDG for two reasons:<p>- Privacy<p>- It doesn&#x27;t try to be smarter than me<p>More often when I use Google to search (e.g. for research), it decides to ignore one or multiple words, yielding irrelevant results. It&#x27;s fixable, I can quote them, it even offers to do that, but it drives me nuts.

As usual most of the comments here are &quot;I made the switch and couldn&#x27;t be happier&quot; and have nothing to do with the actual submission. Therefore I feel obligated to post my usual rant about DDG just being a wrapper for Bing.

How does DuckDuckGo make money?

I started using DDG everywhere in December after reading a story how Google tried to steal a MIT researcher&#x27;s work.<p>I thought they &quot;Do No Evil,&quot; were all about corporate and social good? That&#x27;s the image I once had!

Google built things that circumvent it.<p>I love how commercials &quot;follow you around&quot;. If I search for diamond rings in a browser on one computer, they suddenly materialize everywhere.<p>I tried it with Duck-Duck-go, searching for something I nearly never search for, something such that the ads follow you around. I just searched in DDG, but did not go to the end website. I then resumed non-DDG browsing, and those came up as ads. I don&#x27;t know if they are looking at image caches, or loading javascript libraries.<p>They have a way around it already, and it runs.

I switched my browsers to using DuckDuckGo as the default search engine and almost miss never Google at all. Any time I do miss Google, I just manually navigate to Bing and use that instead.

I deliberately look for DNT (do not track) header and don&#x27;t load any analytics for those users. As far as I can tell, the ddg app does not send those headers, which could be helpful.

&gt;improve your privacy by downloading another app I don&#x27;t see how piling even more technology onto privacy unfriendly internet habits helps. You&#x27;re not going to get more privacy by using this on a site like Facebook. The real solution is to simply remove them from your life. See if there&#x27;s something you can remove to improve the situation first instead of adding stuff.

If you&#x27;re looking for privacy, you shouldn&#x27;t use DDG as it&#x27;s based in the US. Consider searx or startpage instead

I have been using it for the last month, thanks to HN, but also those who contribute. :D

We changed the URL from <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;duckduckgo.com&#x2F;app" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;duckduckgo.com&#x2F;app</a> to the page that explains what that app does.

Why would I use another AMERICAN &#x2F; Western search engine? I personally feel we would be better off using Yandex (Russian) or Baidu (Chinese) search engines. We need more COMPETITION to reduce our reliance on parasites like Google &#x2F; Microsoft &#x2F; FB etc and thus force the industry to reevaluate their business model on how they make money from us.<p>Yandex has a pretty decent search engine, and also helpfully provides a link to Google &#x2F; Bing too, in case one isn&#x27;t satisfied with their search results. This is smart of them as they still get data to improve their search engine, but also don&#x27;t leave their users disgruntled when the search results aren&#x27;t relevant.

I use bing. I dont really mind that someone is monitoring my searches and tracking my usage. I just dont want Google to dominate, so hopefully using bing helps to balance the world.

Startpage.com is better and has better privacy and search results

DDG is absolutely great! I am not sure if they are a profitable company yet? It would be great to have different players on the www again, not just monopolies...

DDG gets simple things right, but for more complex queries I still have to fallback to google sadly

I want to use this but the scroll responsiveness is slow and it lacks a solid way to refresh.

How do I make ddg the default on my old android phone?

ddg is nice for the bangs (although sometimes they drop some) and for very simple queries<p>for the rest you&#x27;re only one !g away from the usual

I tried. No maps.

Startpage.com ?

searx anyone?

DDG has the most aggressive and adversarial marketing by an internet company I&#x27;ve ever seen that&#x27;s only matched in intensity by Brave browser&#x27;s company. Is Gabriel trying to sell before the end of the business cycle?