
Adieu google - epi0Bauqu
http://kitenet.net/~joey/blog/entry/adieu_google/
======
benatkin
I'm tired of google's stemmer getting in the way of doing specific searches.
Even quotes won't keep it from showing results that are the same except for
having an _s_ dropped or added. It's frustrating at times.

It was bad enough not being able to search for strings.

What I'd really like is an uncrippled search engine that lets people be very
specific in their searches. I'd really like support for simple regexes.

~~~
jacobolus
Use the '+' character.
[http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer...](http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=136861)

~~~
jcapote
[http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%2B$HOME&aq=f&#...</a> still doesn't
work...

~~~
Sandman
For comparison, here's what ddg comes up with:
[http://duckduckgo.com/?q=%24HOME&v=](http://duckduckgo.com/?q=%24HOME&v=)

------
gxs
I agree- the irony in google fighting for the next platform to be open
regardless of what it is, is in google monetizing data that I would rather
remain 100% private.

Google is fast approacting too good to be true status, at least for me
personally: I use google voice, gmail has become my primary email client
(including letting it manage my own domain email), I use google docs to edit
documents on the fly, and was probably one of the first people to download
chrome and chrome os.

That is far, far more information than I feel comfortable letting any one
company have about me.

~~~
derefr
The other choice is simply spreading it between multiple companies. In the
modern age, all that disparate data will eventually get centralized or
aggregated somewhere, somehow, whether or not it's your choice to do so, that
of the companies you're interacting with, your friends', your own employer's,
or your government's.

------
DanBlake
Am I missing something? Why using duckduckgo? The only mention I have seen of
it is a paid ad they bought on reddit. Is there any reason they are better
than the plethora of existing alternatives? Do they even maintain their own
index, or are they a scraper?

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Ultimately the reason you should use it is because it gets you the information
you want faster and with less mental effort. That's the primary goal. I'd
encourage you (or anyone!) to try it for a week and then let me know how it
goes with this goal in mind.

We've tried to achieve that goal via UI and a number of features that may or
may not appeal to you individually. We also try to concentrate on features
that the major search engines won't do because of their business position. A
lot of those features are listed here: <http://duckduckgo.com/about.html>

What's not listed there that I think appeals to this crowd in particular is
the background relevancy stuff I mentioned in my other comment and answer to
your other question: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=979479>

I think what also appeals to people like me (and by extension, I assume a lot
of HN types) is keyboard shortcuts, aggressive filtering of parked/spam
domains, and disambiguation.

We do have our own index and use it to improve relevancy as well as to add our
own Zero-click Info and links to search result pages. Search any major topic
and you should see a red box on top with a quick snippet and related topics.
We also use it to build our own category and disambiguation pages, e.g.
<http://duckduckgo.com/c/Social_bookmarking>

Our most recent major feature launch was Duck It!, a search view accessible
from our homepage that features more topic summaries, e.g.
[http://duckduckgo.com/?q=tinychat&v=d](http://duckduckgo.com/?q=tinychat&v=d).
HN feedback link here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=919505>

Of course, we'd welcome suggestions for additional features/improvements!

~~~
joeyh
Hey, while you're here, one thing about Duck Duck Go that concerns me is that
it can be killed on a per-IP basis by locking on "safe" search.

If I accidentially do this at home, or if I find that I have to use tor too
often while in coffee shops to ensure I see all search results, (or if I use
tor and some idiot has forced it on for those IPs), that could be a problem.

Also, I wonder how hard it would be to spoof packets to kill IPs one doesn't
even have access too? Do you send a nonce back to the user and check it before
completing the banning process?

~~~
epi0Bauqu
The short answer is when we start running into collisions we'll change the
parameters of this service, or perhaps sooner. That is, I'm fully aware of
these limitations/issues and am actively monitoring them.

I wanted to try the extreme case (at least for a time) to see if a lot of
schools and businesses that use one static IP would find the process super
simple and just use it. After all, they could set all their computers to safe
search in one click. This experiment is ongoing, but it will probably evolve
into a program where we have more of a back and forth opt-in process.

I hope this addresses your concern!

------
JulianMorrison
They want to put a random cookie on your browser and link it to your search
preferences. Oh my goodness, how horribly bad of them!

Yes, Google knows all your secrets (even if you never went online, they'd
probably have enough data from your contact with the rest of the world to
reconstruct a profile). No, they have not shown any inclination to misuse this
information. Privacy is dead - luckily, it was killed by Google and not MSN.
Welcome to the 21st century, learn to cope.

------
alastair
I think the days of an invincible google are clearly over. Their brand is
diluted (imho) with countless products, I think that at least for search -
someone could beat them.

Eg, If facebook bought or built a search engine, it could be 'game on'.

~~~
nostrademons
FaceBook has a search engine, it's just that it's for searching your social
life instead of the web.

~~~
chronomex
Don't forget that they contract out web search to Bing. Try it, query for
something on the Web with Facebook's search box. I always ignore it because
it's noise -- when I go to Facebook I want to look for people, not essays or
blog posts.

~~~
unalone
If they figure out how to market that better, though, they've got a massive
userbase. That could be incredible.

------
byrneseyeview
I also switched from Google to Duck Duck Go about a week ago. It's perfect for
common terms, but I still switch to Google for the more obscure stuff. But
it's _not_ like Google in 1999. Search has gotten harder, and more expensive
-- which is part of why Google is doing what they can to get a competitive
advantage (by hoovering up more of your data) and exploiting it (by selling
the data, displaying ads based on it, etc.).

~~~
blinks
> ... (by selling the data, ...) ...

<http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacypolicy.html> -> grep Information
Sharing.

~~~
dangrossman
They purposely restricted that section to "personal information". If they
don't tie your web history to your persona, they are free to sell it or do
whatever else they want with it.

------
mark_l_watson
I hear you. I am still a "google fan," specifically I have a business idea I
want to implement on top of Wave, and I plan on continuing using GMail.

That said, I switched my default Firefox search to Clusty yesterday. This
morning, I searched for a vendor of old Rudger Mark II magazines/clips. I
clicked on a paid link, and ended up spending a fair amount of money. Clusty
got a profit slice that Google would have got if their privacy issues had not
caught my attention.

The sci-fi author David Brin (a cool guy, BTW) advocates for no privacy as
long as everyone has an equal amount of "non privacy" - the problem as I see
it is the corporations, who profit by knowing everything about you via
discount cards at supermarkets, the web, etc. I'll stop complaining when we
have the ability to know private corporate details, have congress people have
to wear Nascar-like advertisements on their clothes, etc.

------
RevRal
My last straw was seeing the Chrome logo.

I've always had the " _they're watching you_ " thought running in the
background of my mind. But, I have always ignored those thoughts.

Then I saw the Chrome logo. To me, it very blatantly looks like an imposing
robotic eye, watching every move. I said: screw this, too f'n much. And I,
incidentally, also moved on and also use Duck Duck Go. But, I still use Google
as a spell checker every once in a while.

\----

Addendum: Google has the uncanny ability of making bad logos look nice.

Link to robotic eye logo: [http://www.gadgetzone.ro/wp-
content/uploads/2009/11/chrome-l...](http://www.gadgetzone.ro/wp-
content/uploads/2009/11/chrome-logo.png) .

~~~
andreyf
Yeah, because the logo of a fully open-source browser is totally reasonable.
Well, it's probably as reasonable as freaking out over 180-day anonymous
cookies that improve your search results.

~~~
RevRal
Well, the logo alone would be a pretty stupid reason to abandon Google. But,
like I said, it was just the last straw.

And if I am going to have a last straw, the thing that removes that piece of
straw must be eccentric. Yet, vaguely resemble truth. The point is to have
prepared a retort to "why don't you use Google search?" Because people will
ask with the intent to condescend.

I find myself smug about the robotic eye logo because I think it is ironic. It
is as if a totalitarian government plastered posters onto drab brick walls.
The posters say: "big brother respects your privacy." And on the poster, above
those words, is a picture of a robotic eyeball staring at the citizens who
stopped to read.

I'd much rather have a fun reason to change loyalties, so I don't have to go
into the many details.

It'll keep me from receiving the same flak as when I switched to Linux.

~~~
unalone
The problem is that when you go into such detail about this eccentricity, it
stops coming across as a funny joke ("Of course Google's evil. Did you see the
_eye_?!") and starts sounding like you've cracked.

Why worry about flak? Use what works for you. If people get bitchy about that,
tell them you like it, and if they push it tell them to fuck off. End of every
pointless tech debate you'll ever have. If you're going so far as to build
_defenses_ you're worrying too much.

~~~
RevRal
I wouldn't go as far as saying that I've cracked because I explained a joke.
Something I called an eccentricity since I do realize it is a little out
there. Besides that, I just came up with the "totalitarian government" thing,
and I thought my explanatory comment was a more suitable place to extrapolate
into the small story.

But, it is intrinsically me to worry too much. Sardonic fun.

I don't know why I've explained here... but in real life the almost-joke would
stop the conversation _before_ there was even a debate. Which is valuable to
me because hearing people's inane remarks is worse than fingernails on a
chalkboard.

I enjoy the company here.

------
garply
I've been stuck behind the Chinese firewall for a while now and while I do
proxy for searches that clearly need it, I surf most of my web unproxied. For
whatever reason, the firewall seems to arbitrarily and frequently block many
of my (non-risque and non-politically-sensitive) Google queries. The end
result is that I've been using a whole lot of Bing. Aside from my habit of
using Google as my default search tool, I don't see much reason in terms of
performance for me to stick with them. As it is, I will likely be switching my
default search engine to Bing once I figure out how to do it in Chrome.

~~~
pietro
Type "bing.com" in the address bar, hit Tab instead of Enter and search for
anything.

Open Options from the tool menu. On the Basic tab, locate "Default search" and
click the Manage button. In the list of "Other search engines", select
bing.com and click Make Default.

~~~
garply
Thanks! I had been putting it off because the last time I tried to configure
Chromium on Linux for something (a Socks 5 proxy) it was very unfriendly.

------
tybris
Google has focussed too much on common searches (the money makers). They have
had so little competition that they forgot that people select their search
engine based on specific searches.

------
scorxn
I discovered the Google Accounts Dashboard today and had a similar reaction:
<https://www.google.com/dashboard?hl=en>

On the one hand, once you sign over your email, you've signed over
verification on any site. On the other, it's pretty jarring to see all the
personal information (CC and address) and relational data (contacts, RSS
subscriptions, purchase history) Google owns.

------
simanyay
What stops anybody from deleting their web history data and disabling Web
History thing altogether?

~~~
bham
You implicitly trust that it is deleted when you click that button?

~~~
simanyay
I am not a fan of conspiracy theories.

~~~
y0ghur7_xxx
from <http://www.google.com/searchhistory/privacy.html>

"You can delete information from Web History using the remove feature, and it
will be removed from the service. However, as is common practice in the
industry, and as outlined in the Google Privacy Policy, Google maintains a
separate logs system for auditing purposes and to help us improve the quality
of our services for users."

------
known
Build your own Google <http://www.archive.org/iathreads/post-
view.php?id=243665>

------
sahaj
i'm not sure if this is over-reaction.

* It's completely separate from your Google Account and Web History (which are only available to signed-in users). You'll know when we customize results because a "View customizations" link will appear on the top right of the search results page. _

------
zackattack
I have been noticing a decline in Google's search results, _especially_ for
computer-related help. Tons of awful blog posts, from years ago, created for
AdSense money.

Why can't Google [surreptitiously?] rank search results by actual relevancy
(e.g. clicks & abandons)? And don't tell me because of voting rings: I have
seen "voting ring detection" often as a common screening problem for job
interviews.

~~~
mcav
> _Tons of awful blog posts, from years ago,_

This. While humanity has uploaded a lot of valuable, worthwhile information
online in the past decade, that's just a blip compared to the amount of
totally useless junk online. That makes things harder for all search engines.
It also will be interesting to see how search engines cope with the internet
as the number of websites/pages continues to grow in the next fifty or so
years.

~~~
jordyhoyt
Sorry for this to get all meta, but what is the meaning of saying "this" at
the beginning of a comment? I've seen it elsewhere, sometimes as the entire
response. I'm afraid I missed the beginnings of this convention, and it's not
intuitive (at least to me).

~~~
steerpike
It's a shorthand for 'I totally agree and what was said bears repeating'. I
think it originated on fark, but I'm not totally sure.

~~~
telemachos
I thought we already _had_ a way to say that: ditto.

~~~
carbocation
The original post asked a question: "Why can't Google [surreptitiously?] rank
search results by actual relevancy (e.g. clicks & abandons)?"

The respondent felt that the original post contained the answer to its own
question. Therefore, the respondent said, "This," pointing to the answer.

~~~
jordyhoyt
Ok, I see now that the original poster was effectively saying "this is why",
not necessarily using the "this" meme that I was confused about. Still, I got
my answer _and_ the post has been clarified for me. Thanks, guys.

