
DuckDuckGo launches Search & Stories app - Titanous
https://duckduckgo.com/app/
======
landhar
Just gave it a try... This is so much better than the previous DuckDuckGo app.
Focusing on stories and leveraging the search capabilities of ddg is genious
(at the bottom of every news there's a "suggested searches" menu with very
useful suggestions).

Cherry on the cake ? HN is one of the available sources for stories!

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d0m
I'm a bit confused about the "Stories". What does it mean? Is it articles?
Blog posts?

~~~
cainetighe
Stories are showcased from over 50 carefully selected sources that focus on
different types of content. For example, TIME and BBC are there, but so are
Reddit Funny and BuzzFeed. We also aggressively prevent depressing and
duplicate stories from appearing in the feed.

~~~
cinquemb
> _We also aggressively prevent depressing and duplicate stories from
> appearing in the feed._

Huh? Duplicate I can understand, but depressing stories? Isn't that
subjective? What happened to dontbubbleus[0] principles of not filtering? Did
Fred want a better news reader?

And here I was hoping for a new way to experience search like giving 3rd party
devs more freedom to implement plugins in search…

[0] [http://dontbubble.us/](http://dontbubble.us/)

~~~
cainetighe
It's not a filter bubble because by default everyone sees the exact same
content, just like our Web search results. We decided early on to filter out
things like rape, dismemberment, etc. that we thought were staunchly negative.
Also, this app wasn't designed to be a traditional news reader. Instead it
features interesting content that's currently being shared a lot regardless of
publish date.

~~~
LaGrange
That's... horribly pathological. I'd even claim that's bordering on being
unethical. Also, it's like the facebookey "like" button, in trying to paint
everything in rainbow colors.

There is an issue with media pileup and lack of respect, but sometimes just
because reporting is negative doesn't mean it's not _real_. In fact, you've
just mentioned a huge social problem (rape) that happens even in first world
cultures and is relevant whether we like it or not, that you decided to filter
out.

Which is the usual case with the "irrelevant" "negative" reporting that we
can't "do anything about". Actually, usually we can, but it's small, won't
stroke your ego, and it's easier to hide your head in the sand and pretend
nothing's happening. Because paying attention to food you eat, clothes you
wear and electronics you buy is hard and isn't making life more enjoyable for
you or anyone you know.

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nemoniac
This app goes against the grain of DDG.

Frankly I'm not interested in stories, I'm interested in search. I get my
stories elsewhere.

When I start the app I want to have a keyboard come up so that I can type in
keywords. I don't want to see stories or to have to tap a second time just to
activate the text input area. Then I want the results to open in the external
browswer of my choice.

Is there a DDG app that does this?

~~~
cainetighe
Thanks for the feedback. We take the ability to search fast very seriously.
There are a few home screen options in the app -- just look at the settings.
Also our mobile web site is still accessible and maybe preferred over the app
altogether.

~~~
johnrob
It would be a very straight forward assumption that a DDG mobile app would
laser focused on quick search. I'm curious: how did the stories feature come
to be?

~~~
yegg
It has a long history, starting even before DuckDuckGo.
[https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=watrcoolr](https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=watrcoolr)

Perhaps I should do a post on it on the DDG blog.

~~~
nemoniac
I'd gladly read that.

I'd also appreciate an option on the app to bypass the stories and cut
straight to what ddg does best: no frills, no tracking search.

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pearjuice
DDG might be fresh, safe and secure and have nice features; its search is
still very, very weak.

~~~
a1a
You forgot the most vital reason: They respect your privacy. I personally
believe it's indeed worth wasting some extra energy while searching, in order
to get that respect. Not to mention it's constantly getting better. I have
used DDG as my primary search eninge for the last year, and seen significant
improvement.

~~~
tlrobinson
I set DDG as my default search engine a couple weeks ago. At least 25% of the
time I give up and use Google.

I've even started instinctively switching to Google for certain searches I
know DDG will fail on (particularly technical stuff)

~~~
chimeracoder
Try prepending !s to your searches when needed in DuckDuckGo.

That will send results through StartPage, which will return you Google's
results, but through a proxy (mitigating the privacy loss by using Google).

~~~
avree
Serious question—why would I use DuckDuckGo to use StartPage to use Google?

If I was really privacy conscious, I could go straight to StartPage. If I
didn't really care, I could go straight to Google.

Where does DDG fit in?

~~~
imperialWicket
It's a front-end that gives you one entry point for StartPage, Google,
Weather, IMDB, Amazon, [entire bang support list].

Just a search = "keyword list"

I want Google search = "!g keyword list"

I want Google Finance Search = "!gf keyword list"

I want Amazon products search = "!a keyword list"

No one else gives you this much freedom to coherently pass your request
directly where you want it to go (AND while respecting the fact that you don't
want others to know what you're searching).

~~~
baddox
Bang searching is obsolete as far as I'm concerned. For any bang search I can
think of, I'm confident that I can just search Google for the same keywords
(without the bang) and still get the result I wanted. If I search for a movie
title, I get IMDB in the top ~3 results, if I search for a product, I get
Amazon results, etc.

~~~
isaacaggrey
Using bangs, you can skip a step. I suppose if you're using Google's "I'm
Feeling Lucky" in your URL bar I suppose there is little difference. However,
I find there is a bit more effort when you get outside the simple realm of
products or celebs.

For example, if you want to search HN, you can just `!hn searchterms` rather
than search "hnsearch searchterms", then click. As someone who searches a lot
of different resources frequently, the little bit of time saved is helpful.

If DDG's privacy is not a selling point for someone, then I agree with you;
bangs are hardly a reason to stick with DDG.

~~~
baddox
I suppose bangs save a user input step (since I have to search from the
location bar then Tab + Enter to select a Google result), but I would gladly
trade that for the additional mental steps of deciding which service to search
and what the bang shortcut is for that service.

~~~
isaacaggrey
> I would gladly trade that for the additional mental steps of deciding which
> service to search and what the bang shortcut is for that service.

There are hardly any mental steps plural, if any mental step at all. Give it a
try and see if there's a bang that doesn't make sense.

Examples:

!g - Google

!b - Bing

!gm - Google Maps (also !gmaps)

!bm - Bings Maps (also !bmaps or !bingmaps)

!d - Dictionary (also !dict and !dictionary)

!t - thesaurus (also !thesarus)

!gi - Google Images (also !gim)

!gh - GitHub (also !github)

!yt - YouTube (also !youtube)

!cpp - C++ reference from cplusplus.com

!hn - Hacker News Search

!aur - Arch Linux User Repo

!trulia - Trulia

!domain - domain name search

...etc

~~~
baddox
I essentially used bangs extensively many years ago (not through DDG; I set up
custom keyword searches in Firefox), and I agree that it worked quite well. I
now use raw Google searches, and I think Google is now good enough that it is
not worth using bangs anymore (Google privacy issues notwithstanding).

~~~
isaacaggrey
Fair enough. :) As I said in my original post, if DDG's privacy is not a
selling point for someone, then I agree with you; bangs are hardly a reason to
stick with DDG.

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ciderpunx
I apparently have to have an account on Google play to download this app.

Which means that in order not be tracked by Google (by using duckduckgo) I
have to agree to be tracked by Google (by accepting their 'privacy' policy).

This seems to obviate the utility which I may have gained from using the app.

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akavlie
Anyone know where the images are coming from?

Most of them aren't pulled directly from the story. There are also copyright
issues with images that make this legally tricky to pull off.

~~~
gojomo
I'm curious too. But maybe a good licensing-aware image search facility can
auto-match acceptable images to stories?

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znowi
Installed it right away and... I love this app! Looks well polished. Easy bang
search with a list of available sites right there nicely grouped. A lot of
news sources (HN included) and you can suggest more or add/remove any. Region
bubble is supported, but disabled by default. _Save recent_ is also disabled.
Such care for user privacy is so surprising in mobile apps, it makes me giddy
:)

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mikiem
I don't want the app. Arrg! I am on my iPad and I can't get to what I assume
is a web interface to this... Only a big ugly page with half-showing icons for
how to download the android or iOS apps. Why can't I just exit out of the
offer and see the desktop version? Rawrrrrr!

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k-mcgrady
Just give it a try. Seems like a nicely designed app. !bangs are nicely
integrated and search works well. There are a large number of sources you can
choose your 'stories' page to be populated from and it seems like it is
surfacing interesting content.

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exodust
Very nice, really like the interface and story display on the home screen.
Seems fast. I don't usually use apps for search, instead going to browser
first, but I might try this app for awhile.

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chj
Have been using DuckDuckGo for the last few days (because of the PRISM
incident). I feel it just redirects the query to Bing and then displays the
result. Can't take it seriously.

~~~
jabbernotty
It uses many different sources to get it's information. Bing is probably one
of them, yes. What is it, that makes you feel you can't take it seriously? It
does in fact do what it says on the tin, which is letting you search in an +-
anonymous way.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo#Features](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo#Features)

~~~
chj
Well, it should query more from Google. I often find it is almost identical
from Bing, with poor results. That's the major problem. A minor one is it is
very slow but I can live with that.

~~~
jabbernotty
Why should it query more from Google for people to 'take it seriously'?

Edit: It is through tracking that Google gets results that some people see as
being superiour to those of DuckDuckGo: Google's model of you makes them think
that they know what you want to see, and they give you those pages.

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lgray
Is this news? I downloaded it a few days ago. When did it launch?

~~~
k-mcgrady
The current version was launched today according to the info on the Play
store.

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Sami_Lehtinen
You don't need any additional app(s). Dolphin Browser already supports
DuckDuckGo directly. Any other browser also should have search engine
configuration options. (Don't you guys remember, I won't install your app
discussion.)

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hkmurakami
is there a way I can change the default Google now shooing on android (the one
at the very bottom of the screen) to this?

~~~
oneof11111
yep. install the app. google now should give you two options. select and set
as default...

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ddgtest
Does this app use SSL?

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dhruvbird
This is neat! :)

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awesomifier
So awesome. But please make an app for us BlackBerry Z10 users. Blackberry's
encryption and privacy features is a nice fit with Duck Duck Go's anonymous
search.

Don't forget us!

