4 Weeks with DuckDuckGo

I was discussing this with a colleague recently and I figured I'd mention it on HN the next time DuckDuckGo came up.<p>I feel somewhat silly saying this, but DuckDuckGo is not that great of a name. I love the engine, and have gotten some great results from the few times I have used it, but I really, really wish it were not named DuckDuckGo. It seems tacky to me and it's hard to say. There's a support article that encourages users to "duck it". No thanks. I swear I would become a regular user of this product if it were named something more professional.<p>I know tech products often have whimsical names, and it's usually positive or at least tolerable, but something about "DuckDuckGo" rubs me the wrong way.

I find Googles' invasion of privacy a big turn off. I have long since stopped using Facebook for exactly this reason. I am not quite at the point with Google where I say I don't trust them, unlike Facebook. I regularly check out DuckDuckGo but its search results are not quite there yet for me, in comparison to Google. At this stage the gap is narrowing, both as a result of my increasing concerns over the invasion of privacy from Google and the increasing quality of DuckDuckGo.<p>It is only a matter of time before I say goodbye to Google forever....

I tried DDG for little more than a week about a year a go and it made me realize how much I use the search suggestion feature in Chrome. The lack of that feature using DDG really annoyed me. Often I don't know the exact spelling of the thing I'm looking for or the best way to phrase my question (English being my third language), and the suggestions I get in chrome just by typing a few letters in the address bar is really great. And often times I'm just looking for how to spell a word and with the suggestions I don't even have to leave the page I'm on.

Last week I was searching for a: Sabian 18" HHX Chinese cymbal. I was considering buying one for my kit and wanted to see some reviews, video samples, prices etc.<p>DuckDuckGo: The top three results were American Ebay search results (I live in Canada), a drum shop in Memphis (15 hour drive), and various other online stores like discountdrumequipment.info... looks legit.<p>Google: The first page of results had links to the official Sabian product pages, Youtube videos of people playing it, and the most impressive thing was a 3 day old Kijiji ad (still popular in Canada) with the exact cymbal I wanted for a good price in a city just 45 minutes from me. I responded to the ad, drove the 45 minutes, and purchased it.<p>DuckDuckGo's stance on user privacy is admirable, but Google is going to be my primary search engine for a very long time with results like that... it's accuracy still impresses me.

One of my favorite things about DDG is the bang, and my absolute favorite bang (when I use one) is !g. Because the URL for the resulting page is just the search, without all the cruft.<p><pre><code> !g googol https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&#38;q=googol direct via google: http://www.google.com/#hl=en&#38;gs_nf=1&#38;cp=6&#38;gs_id=36&#38;xhr=t&#38;q=googol&#38;pf=p&#38;sclient=psy-ab&#38;oq=googol&#38;aq=0&#38;aqi=h1g-s1g2g-s1&#38;aql=&#38;gs_l=&#38;pbx=1&#38;bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&#38;fp=aa8b317ec80710f&#38;biw=1036&#38;bih=663 </code></pre> Whenever I want to send a google search to someone, I do it via DDG. Although I usually send DDG searches, to help promote DDG.

The writer appears to be the wrong audience of !bang. As a physics student, I find !w tremendously helpful. Image searching is also much faster since it all can be done in the search bar rather than requiring the mouse. !wa for wolfram alpha is again great. It's far better for sites in which there is no better alternative than using their search bar, rather than the type of usage the article seemed to employ.

I think the bubble trend is dangerous. For a while, I was comfortable with Google knowing so much about me. But since they're using that data to decide what I need to know, I decided that it was time to ween myself off their services, including Business Gmail.

I use google mostly for "How to do x in y framework", and I can get a good response 75% of the time, and that goes up to about 85% with some better phrasing. I tried ddg for a week, but I used g! so much that I felt a bit silly.

The fact that DuckDuckGo is even being compared to Google shows how much they have accomplished already ... it also shows that domain names do not matter AT ALL.

"most site’s internal search engines suck, returning results that are somewhat hit or miss. "<p>If I want to find a movie, I type !imdb Avengers<p>If I want to find a recipe, I type !allrecipes pizza<p>If I want to play music right now I type !grooveshark AC-DC Thunderstruck<p>If you know where to look use bangs. If you think Google does a better job, there's a bang for that too type !g

I really want to love DuckDuckGo, and will usually give it a try for a day or two every couple weeks - but Google is just a superior product.

A pretty balanced review of the two search engines. I have had DuckDuckGo as my main search engine for almost a year now. I still find myself using the google bang (g!) for a significant percentage of searches. However, I don't find typing the extra 3 characters in my search query to be enough of a chore to warrant switching back to Google as default engine. From experience, I usually have a strong premonition when a particular query will be more appropriate for Google to handle, so I don't waste time hitting DuckDuckGo first.

Search quality is more important than privacy, and Google is better at most of my searches.<p>Also, Google crawls and index's new content within 1-3 minutes. DDG takes 10+ minutes.

I tried using ddg as my default search in chrome but had to switch back pretty quickly, not because of search relevance, but because of speed. For me every ddg search takes roughly 2-5 seconds to show results, as opposed to Googles &#60;1 second.<p>I tend to do many searches in quick succession, so it sort of breaks my train of thought.<p>I suspect this has more to do with my internet connection/location than ddg, but for now it still makes it frustrating to use day to day.

I've spent approximately the last 4 weeks with DDG, as well, and I haven't decided yet if I want to keep it as my primary search engine.<p>For the most part it works well, although, I periodically g! just to make sure I'm not missing something important.<p>The thing is, I don't particularly mind Google building up a profile of me, keeping track of my browsing, email, and prior searches. I mind them doing it to <i>show me ads.</i><p>I strive to avoid needless purchases and prefer to keep as few items as possible (I've whittled my wardrobe down to couple pairs of pants and about a week's worth of shirts, undies, socks). I want to keep a simple, regular grocery list of bread, chicken, etc, and so avoid the coupons lest I be enticed to buy a fancy cereal or something. I know that Google constantly inundating me with products more and more relevant to my interests will lead to a life of higher spending.<p>DuckDuckGo is better in that regard (usually only one ad in the results) so I'm happy. But if I could pay a yearly ad-free fee to Google I'd do it in a heartbeat.

In terms of privacy, before you embrace DuckDuckGo as a "good guy" and Google as a "bad guy", please be aware of a more-or-less universal truth: you are a good guy, until you become big.<p>After all, Google's motto is "don't be evil". I think it's a bit naive to compare DuckDuckGo to Google at this point in time, where they have different statuses.

It's simple.<p>For brute force 'rgrep /internet' google has the scale and the technology to be way ahead of everybody else. But when I already know roughly what I want will exist, I apply duckduckgo.com, because they're less raw processing and more intelligently automated quasi-curation.

I love DuckDuckGo, even if a good half of my searches end up beginning with !g.<p>Love the bang syntax for site-specific searching. I have set up my browser before to do this, but now it's far more convenient to just set my browser's default engine to DDG and !bang syntax search.

I think speed is a pretty big issue, too. I can't bring myself to use DDG for really quick searches, for URLs I can't remember etc. because it's just not fast enough. DDG makes me wait between 5 and 10 seconds before I see anything, whereas Google is almost instant.

These are good points, though I think ddg really shines in it's focus on the query, and not trying to be too clever.<p>Google tends to put too much weight on regional proximity and browser language settings, sacrificing the relevance to the query. I guess their approach works for a majority of people and queries, but there are so many times it just feels wrong.<p>E.g. on a simple query : <a href="http://imgur.com/ezKUm" rel="nofollow">http://imgur.com/ezKUm</a> (I am located in France, so french results come first. the two windows are in incognito mode for fairness, it's worse when logged in)

I've been using ddg as my default choice for about 7 months now.<p>They have really improved in the last 3-4 months. The results related to programming are better than googles (imo).

"I certainly don’t mind a search engine using my previous search history to help me find better content."<p>I actually do. This, in fact, is a form of control over the information you get. Since I do not like that, I stick with DDG despite all the inconveniences.<p>Google should give people a way to opt out of the bubble.

I also use DuckDuckGo on a daily basis and it's great. Far better than google in my opinion. And how, with DuckDuckHack, it will only get better...

I like DDG and I'm using it for more than 6 months, and will never go back to google.

For me, just couple of queries was enough to see that results were bad.

Back in 1998/9 I was Director of IT of a tech company in the valley. IT, as always, was resposible for deploying all corp machines with the std image.<p>I was following what was happening in the valley at the time - and everyone used Yahoo!.<p>I went through and replaced all browser homes with the new and scrappy Google.com as the main search page.<p>I deployed this on all new machines as well, and I educated users on why this new, minimal site was better.<p>They ALL started using Google from that point on (~400 employees)<p>---<p>This is the same thing that needs to happen here.<p>Get an IT manager to set the default page to DDG and educate the users.<p>(<i></i>CAVEAT! -- users are far more informed now than then, back then people hardly understood the internet's potential, let alone WTF a search co was -- so telling the avg user "google is bad, DDG good" will be more challenging than then...)

Google is better only with ads turned off. Otherwise DDG and Bing beat Google's ads anytime. Try surfing Google without an ad blocker to see what I'm talking about, they've gone way over what's acceptable.<p>Either way I go the extra mile to give the underdog a chance.