

How DuckDuckGo is fighting an 800 lb gorilla (Video interview with Founder) - g0atbutt
http://thestartupfoundry.com/2011/03/02/how-duckduckgo-is-fighting-an-800-lb-gorilla-video-interview-with-founder/

======
guynamedloren
Am I the only one that fails to see a problem with Google search? I'm all for
fighting the 800 lb gorilla. I love to support the little guys with big ideas,
and I'm usually quick to realize and point out flaws with the incumbents.

But with Google, I have never had any issues. It does exactly what I need it
to do, and it does it instantly. It gives me the results for what I meant to
search for even if I typed my search completely wrong. In the matter of
seconds I can learn about any topic that pops into my mind, no matter how
ridiculous it may be. I can't even remember the last time I had to click that
itty-bitty "2" at the bottom of Google's search results.

"The relevance of the articles have been declining"? Bullshit.

"Content farms"? Who cares. If they give me the answers I'm looking for, I'll
gladly wander over to those content farms.

"Privacy" What?

Don't get me wrong. I live for the David and Goliath type stories, but I think
these guys are going about it all wrong.

~~~
act
>Am I the only one that fails to see a problem with Google search?

I agree with you about google's spell check, relevance, and speed.

DDG's !bang search is a killer feature for me, though. I can type "!wikipedia
topic" in the omnibar and it gets me to the exact page I'm looking for,
without stopping at a middleman. The same feature makes google maps, images,
videos, and youtube easier to use to with ddg as my default search than with
google as my default search. I have been surprised by the amount of search
traffic that I redirect to something other than a general web search now that
it is convenient for me to do so.

~~~
kgtm
Chrome:

Ctr+T | "wi" | <TAB> | Topic

Ctr+T | "the" | <TAB> | Torrent

Etc..

~~~
act
Thank you for that, I hadn't found that feature. It specifically isn't working
for me with wikipedia or google maps, although it works beautifully for a
couple other test cases.

~~~
sathyabhat
Search once, and it'll be added for future use. Search more frequently and
number of characters required to type preceding <tab> will reduce

------
say_
I have a probably dumb question about search privacy, but what are the chances
of Google actually screwing up/getting hacked, and spilling our search
histories into the public (like AOL from a few years ago)?

DDG's search results are fine, but I like Google just a little bit more.
Assuming I don't care about the government or Google's advertising algorithms,
and I just don't want my private thoughts/questions spilling out into the
public, does the risk make it worth using DDG?

~~~
docgnome
Well, it's sort of a hard question to answer. But Google has been hacked in
the past. <http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/01/operation-aurora/>

I think the creepier (and more likely) problem is an Evil Googler.
<http://gawker.com/#!5637234>

Not that that is a problem that just Google has, but given that Gabriel really
has no way at all to link two searches together, let alone build a profile,
makes it attractive to me.

I also seem to be one of the few people who actually finds that DDG returns
much better results. All the people I've talked to irl seem to think the
opposite. Wonder if that is a placebo effect of sorts on my part ("DDG is one,
pretty cool guy so of course it's better than giant corperation!") or what.

------
AdamGibbins
Gabriel is such an excellent speaker, I'm not sure why - something about him
just makes you want to listen.

