
Nothing Can Stop Google. DuckDuckGo Is Trying Anyway - kjhughes
https://medium.com/s/story/nothing-can-stop-google-duckduckgo-is-trying-anyway-718eb7391423
======
mangoman
Back in the day, before I just defaulted to using Google, I remember checking
multiple search engines to find the thing I was looking for. You'd check
Yahoo/Google/Lycos, try a couple of different phrasings, and then if that
didn't work try searching on a few other search engines. Somewhere along the
way, Google had won me over, because I almost always found my answer. I had
stopped even considering other search engines.

Now that I'm on DDG, I find that I'm following a similar pattern of searching
DDG, then searching google, and I'm finding that most of my searches work
great on DDG. What's surprising to me is that when I move on to using Google,
I'm considering widening my search even beyond DDG and Google. It feels like,
by considering different search options, I'm going back to how I used to
explore the internet, rather than defaulting to taking Google's results as
truth.

And now, seeing a variety of options from DDG, I am surprised at how
irrelevant some of the links are on Google some times. It feels like when I
search on Google, Google is telling me 'No no, you don't care about JsonAPI
parsing performance, you care about parsing json, because we know best'.

I'm glad that DDG is alive and doing well. I love using it and I don't notice
any difference for most queries, and falling back to google hasn't really been
as painful as I thought it would be.

~~~
the_duke
I think it's very much search topic related:

* DDG is atrocious for anything other than English * Programing/IT searches often yield garbage on DDG while on Google a good result is within the first 3.

I have it as my default now too, but "!g" is a constant companion.

===

Regarding Google and Amazon being unstoppable... it seemed the same once for
Microsoft.

Once they get too big/powerful (which they arguably already are), they could
be broken up or severely hamstrung by legislation.

They can also start to stagnate and be out-done by new competition based on
new technologies.

All of those seem unlikely right now, but 10 years can change a lot.

Of course both Google and Amazon both enjoy large network effects and are
pretty capital intensive. Which is typical for mono/oligopolies.

~~~
npongratz
> "!g" is a constant companion.

May I recommend an alternative bang? "!s" (for startpage.com) is my companion.

It doesn't always work perfectly, but in theory [0] Startpage offers the same
(edit: non-bubbled[1]) results as big G, while retaining your privacy.

!s usually works for me. I always use !s before begrudgingly doing a !g. I
have no other affiliation to Startpage or DDG. And to be fair, I think we have
to simply accept Startpage's assertion that they preserve your privacy.

[0]
[https://support.startpage.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Artic...](https://support.startpage.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/158/0/what-
is-the-relationship-between-startpagecom-and-google) [1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble)

~~~
eipi-1
When I decided to move away from Google Search I went with DDG for some time,
since it seemed to be the more independent / open approach, compared to
Startpage. I found myself switching back to Google way to often, for either
performance and / or relevance of results. I then switched to Startpage and
used it as primary search for well over a year - only switching back to google
for image search. I still feel like DDG would be the philosophical superior
option and with !s in mind I will give it another try, to see how far it came.

I'd be interested in more concrete reasons to use DDG over Startpage. First
thing that comes to my mind is that with Startpage, Google still "reads" your
search queries, which might leak info. What else?

~~~
npongratz
Upsides:

1) I came to like DDG's grouping of results by site. See a result and think
that page's site might have more results? Click the favicon.

2) DDG is faster now than it was a few years ago. (At least it seems that way,
for me and the things I typically search for).

3) Extensive bang shortcuts:
[https://duckduckgo.com/bang](https://duckduckgo.com/bang)

4) Different, non-personalized search bubble. I like the idea of non-
monocultures, which I guess extends to my search results.

Downsides:

-1) Some time ago DDG changed to requiring the same stupid quoting behavior Big G began mandating for required search terms, replacing +.

~~~
FabHK
Upsides

5) might come in handy, if you're a keyboard person: you can use cursor
down/up to scroll through the search results, and Return to select (go to)
one.

------
losvedir
I use and like DDG but I can't believe this article didn't mention Bing, which
powers DDG's organic results. Like, yes DDG is a small company based "just
east of nowhere" in PA because _Microsoft has spent literally billions of
dollars on Bing_.

To the extent we have a choice in search provider at all, it's entirely due to
Microsoft's huge investment, and I feel like it's remiss not to consider those
implications. If Microsoft eventually throws in the towel and shuts off Bing,
then DDG will cease to exist. It's not like this plucky little underdog of a
company that people are rooting for has any chance on its own. The market
dynamics of running a successful search crawler and engine are important to
consider here and totally brushed under the table in this article.

~~~
otachack
MS also invested a ton into Windows Mobile, I imagine, but market share only
went down according to Wikipedia.

If DDG is simply a skin for MS Bing along with anonymous/little tracking,
maybe that's what the people want?

~~~
zapzupnz
I don't understand how this comment relates to GP. Whether people just want a
DDG skin for Bing doesn't really address GP's points that (A) the article
failed to mention this, and (B) failed to consider its implications.

------
dec0dedab0de
You know what can stop google? a search engine that assumes I want every word
in my query, or even better a search engine that honors a string in quotes to
mean these words in this order. When did google stop doing this?

edit: This wouldn't stop google, it would just make that part of my life as
easy as it was 10 years ago.

~~~
the_duke
I'm also annoyed by this.

Google tries to out-smart the user and often yields garbage or generic popular
crap even when looking for something very specific.

I want my quotes back too!

An even bigger issue:

Due to SEO and ranking benefits for popular sites, it's basically impossible
to discover quality content by smaller sites/blogs via Google. Unless you go
to like page 10+, where you also get a lot of irrelevant stuff.

~~~
est31
This hit me very recently when I was doing a crypto project [1] and ASN.1 DER
came up. I'm german and "der" means "this" in German so google just treats
"der someword" as search for "someword". So when I want to know e.g. how
strings are being DER encoded, I google "DER string" and am getting results
for G-string underwear and some duden.de website but nothing about ASN.1 DER
strings on the first page :/. At least when you google for "DER integer" a
post about ASN.1 values is the fourth result.

[1]: [https://github.com/est31/rcgen](https://github.com/est31/rcgen)

------
tombert
I started using DDG as my default search engine about 6 months ago, and for
95% of the searches I do it's totally fine.

I don't know why people think that DDG needs to "stop" Google; did people
think that Lycos and Infoseek and Yahoo couldn't coexist back in the 90's? I
think it's good that both companies have some competition from each other.

~~~
kojeovo
95% just isn't good enough.

~~~
musha68k
Search result quality is not a clear-cut issue. In my experience DDG/Bing even
yield subjectively _better_ results sometimes.

~~~
thisisweirdok
Same, there's some personal preference too. I don't always want to be shoved
into the extreme bubble that Google builds for people.

DDG is much better for searches that I don't want personalized results for.

------
SpikeDad
Why must everything be a "company" killer? There's room in markets for
choices. I think DDG is providing a good choice for folks. And having Apple
data behind them isn't just potatoes.

~~~
verelo
I recently switched my homepage to be ddg. Most of the time it’s pure
annoyance, returning unrelated results and never giving nice top of page
summaries. I really didn’t want it to be this way, but most of the time (I’m
pretty sure 2/3 at least) i have to revert back to google.

~~~
thejohnconway
I've been using DDG for a couple of years now, and have a different
experience. Usually when I'm frustrated by the the result in DDG, I try the
same search in Google, and find that the results are no better!

Google image search and and local results are still better, but DDGs ! system
makes it easy to switch search engines when you need to.

~~~
jvzr
To further your point (I have switched a couple years ago, if not more; don't
remember), I also found that the new Google layout (with this sort of bubbly
cards) is really distracting and I cannot scan the results as fast as before,
or as fast as DDG's. UX definitely took a beating with this iteration of
Google's results UI.

~~~
verelo
I think this is a fair point but a major part of my complaint. The other day i
tried looking up the hours of a hardware store and kept getting unrelated
results. Today i tried to check the hours of a bar, and google returned what i
thought were the wrong results, but in fact the bar had just changed its
name...things like that are the polish that really makes the difference
between one search and a mess of keyword mashing to get the result you’re
after.

------
Theizestooke
There's an unusual amount of pro-DDG articles on Hacker News, half of them are
PR fluff, and I don't understand why they keep getting upvoted.

~~~
walkingolof
People like underdogs ?

~~~
macintux
And privacy.

------
fareesh
I use DDG by default. If I am not satisifed I simply prepend !g to my query.

The bangs feature is really useful to me personally since it supports so many
sites.

[https://duckduckgo.com/bang](https://duckduckgo.com/bang)

My only complaint is that it's noticeably slower than Google

~~~
thinkingemote
id imagine speed isn't a current priority for Google as Gmail, calendar and
maps have shown. It's probably a hold over from before, I'd give it a year
before they roll out some improvement that allows it down.

~~~
pnloyd
This couldn't be farther from the truth. More speed means more page views
means more ads seen means more revenue. Walmart Amazon plus others have done
studies showing faster load times translates directly into increased revenue
in there retail.

~~~
darkpuma
Yet gmail and maps are slower than warm asphalt.

~~~
yzb
You can't escape Gmail because you'd lose your address, and you can't escape
Maps because the alternatives suck.

On the other hand if I don't like Supermarket-X, I can go to Supermarket-Y

~~~
the_duke
Or your were lucky enough to start using Gmail with your own domain, when
Google Apps was still free for up to 10 users, and can still use it for free.

~~~
cenal
Google Apps with a custom domain was once free for as many email accounts as
you were approved for. There are a handful out there with lots more than 10
free accounts. They don’t get support, have less space provided, and can’t use
the outlook connector so it’s not an equal comparison. It’s nice that google
hasn’t changed this on their users.

Zoho recently restricted their free custom domain service for email. Not sure
who is the best free option out there now.

------
birksherty
Lot of people here are using DuckDuckGO. I tried that and some others that
respect privacy. I like them but there is only one reason why I still use
google.

Convenience. I do lots of movie, tv show, sports and Famous People search.
Almost always I find what I am looking for directly on the google result page.
If I have to open those links, I will have to go through all that js tracking
and bloated sites. Google is fast. I keep track of sports scores and schedule
through google search. Bing also does all of these.

------
RileyJames
I use DDG now, and have been for about a year.

I still !g a lot, but I’m alright with that. I wish it were a shortcut to add
!g to a query.

One of the key things I’ve realised in the switching is that I actually LIKE a
lot of the changes google has made from initial “just show the 10 results”
like DDG does today.

I like the news carousel, when I’m searching for a news related article.

I like all the local info on a cafe / store, when I’m searching for it. The
google implementation is WAY better than Yelp listings (constantly nagging me
to install an app, Yelp seems to satisfy no one, it’s a middle man resource no
one needs)

But overall I’m happy using DDG for a first crack, knowing my privacy is
valued, and moving onto google when I need to.

It feels like I’m supporting a more private future, now, without hindering
myself severely in the process. I’m happy with that compromise. Hopefully one
day google will not be necessary.

Again, my one wish. Give me the !g tag in one click, one swipe, what ever.
Don’t make me type it into the query box and search again!

------
taf2
Isn't DDG just bing with a different interface? Or do they actually build
their own index now or am I just completely confused and totally wrong about
my assumptions?

------
zubspace
I'm glad DDG exists and it's my main search engine. But I'm using g! in about
50% of my queries.

For very technical queries I somehow already know that google gives me better
results at the top. DDG results feel more like a dice roll.

Two things I also miss are "site:url" filters (dont know if ddg provides this)
and date ranges, for example results within the last 3 years.

Well, maybe it's possible but I have other things to do than to browse around
ddg or learn a bunch of bangs. In my opinion this is the main barrier to
entry. Provide me all the possibilities on a single screen or behind a menu
and don't expect user to dig around the docs. There's a lot of potential which
will never be uncovered by alot of users, so they stick to google.

~~~
isostatic
> Two things I also miss are "site:url" filters (dont know if ddg provides
> this)

How can you miss it when you haven't tried it?

Yes, ddg supports it [0]

It also supports limited date ranges, like last week, last month etc [1]

[0]
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+duckdu...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+duckduckgo&t=ffab&atb=v109-1&ia=web)
[1]
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=php+json+site%3Astackoverflow.com&...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=php+json+site%3Astackoverflow.com&atb=v109-1&df=w&ia=web)

~~~
zubspace
Well stupid me. Thanks.

site: doesn't work in my browser url bar at the start so I got used to prepend
!g... I know, a terrible workaround..

Could not find a way to search within specific years which is very useful for
overloaded terms. It says, they are working on it..

~~~
mpranjic
You can start your searches with a space :)

------
bstar77
As long as DDG is not traded publicly it will do just fine. Investors would
inevitably be screaming for more growth and ultimately force them to comprise
their current values.

~~~
onesmalluser
They're still beholden by their VC's, who most likely forced them to purge a
lot of their !bangs not too long ago.

~~~
albertgoeswoof
Why? The !bang is a referral, if you get enough traffic you can charge the
site you’re sending traffic to

------
jackfoxy
Bing gives me points I can cash in for Amazon gift cards. I rarely fall back
to G, and when I do it seems like the sponsored search results are much more
intrusive than even those on Bing. What I'd really like is a meta-search
engine incorporating Bing, G, and DDG...but I have never gotten around to
doing this myself and don't know of any OSS project that does this. What's
most disappointing about Bing is the lack of good search results from
Microsoft tech documentation.

------
vxNsr
I really wanted to use DDG but I found for most searches I ended up just using
the !g bang anyway, so finally I just took out the middleman.

------
tonyjstark
Google doesn't need to be stopped, a lot of innovation is happening there. It
just has to be more profitable to care about the users of the services than
about the business-clients of Google. If privacy of end users would be a core
business instead of selling data there would be no problem. Sadly I don't have
any glimpse of an idea how that could be happening. The world is complicated
and every little piece that makes interacting with the world more convenient
is welcome. Google is convenient, so nobody[1] gives a damn about their data.

I use DDG for 90% of my searches, no complaints from my side.

[1] some do, but since many people Diabetes 2 can't be convinced for a more
healthy life style, what do you really expect from others if consequences of
habits are not even directly visible...

------
debacle
DDG is my default search. It's good for 85% of my searches. Its video and maps
search clearly lag behind Google (mostly from a UI standpoint). It needs to
find a better balance between shepherding privacy and UX. Most local search is
weak, even if I enter in my city/state.

~~~
tyfon
Once place they are long ahead on UI is the image search. You can actually
"view file" and not "view site" as google had to do after that lawsuit from
getty [1]

But having said that, it is very annoying that they put a large nagging
notification on the top right of the screen asking to switch to it as it's
default.

If I want to do that I will do it myself thank you. I never figured out why
webpages do this kind of thing (i.e. pop up a newsletter subscription form
blocking the whole article). It just pisses off the users. It's actually the
main reason DDG is not my default search engine.

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/02/internet-rages-
after...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/02/internet-rages-after-google-
removes-view-image-button-bowing-to-getty/)

------
phaedryx
I use DDG primarily now. I've noticed that I often get better results for my
programming queries than from Google and there's always `!g` if I don't find
what I'm looking for.

On a side note: anyone else think Apple will eventually buy DDG?

~~~
Kiro
Previous "Will Apple buy DDG?" discussions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18816748](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18816748)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18913336](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18913336)

------
valarauca1
I've switched to DDG and I've hardly looked back. Google's search has been
seriously declined in quality. Most search operators [1] are no longer
supported. Even those directly in the "tools" menu don't work.

For example if you search "Nothing Can Stop Google. DuckDuckGo Is Trying
Anyways site:medium.com", and set a custom date range to sometime last year.
You'll see results which state this blog post was posted in 2018-October-31
for example, or which every date you prefer because I assume they just fuzzily
fit the post date -into- that range. You can make google tell you this blog
post is 2+ years old.

The Google.com I found useful in the early 00's even had document qualifiers
so I could search for strings, but filter to just PDF's, or HTML, or JPG's.
Now I have to pay for these features via a Google App-Engine private search
instance. It just feels like having somebody spit in your face. When features
were free, but they quietly became pay-to-play without zero warning.

[1] [https://bynd.com/news-ideas/google-advanced-search-
comprehen...](https://bynd.com/news-ideas/google-advanced-search-
comprehensive-list-google-search-operators)

~~~
vatueil
Searching by filetype seems to still work fine, e.g.:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=linux+filetype:pdf](https://www.google.com/search?q=linux+filetype:pdf)

~~~
r3bl
I find it to be an awesome way of finding a document that's actually a few
page long list of random document titles, one of which happen to be the one
you're searching for.

------
russley
Reminder that DDG actually has an extension (FF & Chrome) and their own
Android browser available on Google Play Store and F-Droid!

~~~
dwighttk
and iOS browser in the App Store

------
cpeterso
Given the size and increasingly walled gardens of the web, is it even possible
for a new search engine to launch in 2019 and compete with Google? Consider
how much time and money Microsoft sunk into Bing. If Microsoft turned off its
Bing API, could DDG spin up its own crawlers?

------
ignoramous
It's not just duckduckgo that's privacy focused.

[https://startpage.com](https://startpage.com) is rad [0]. I've moved to using
it from duckduckgo and haven't felt I've missed Google, at all. They pay
Google to proxy their non-personalized search results, and let you view
webpages "anonymously" [1], as well.

[0] [https://www.startpage.com/en/search/download-startpage-
plugi...](https://www.startpage.com/en/search/download-startpage-plugin.html)

[1] [https://www.startpage.com/en/search/proxy-
help.html](https://www.startpage.com/en/search/proxy-help.html)

~~~
zavi
And more importantly startpage.com is a European service while DDG is an
American service. It's extremely important for us in HN community to keep
promoting European services regardless of product considerations because
anything American is by definition toxic and should not exist.

------
piyush_soni
I don't think a lot of us here realize DDG is Bing. And also that it's heavy
on marketing.

------
gator-io
For what it's worth, DuckDuckGo has .25% global market share on desktops:
[https://netmarketshare.com/search-engine-market-
share.aspx](https://netmarketshare.com/search-engine-market-share.aspx)

In the US, it's .66%.

------
jeromebaek
Why are people worrying about Bing shutting down? Bing brings in billions, and
it's bigger than Twitter. Not to mention that Microsoft needs a search stack
for the rest of the company.

------
agumonkey
I stopped using chrome lately, memory usage of firefox is 4x less, sometimes
8x..

I also have ddg as homepage for ages. For most quick queries it's useful. For
google worthy queries you have bangs.

------
Gitnumb
DDG can win by becoming the king of porn searches. Bing and pornhub are the
competition, not Google.

Porn brings massive traffic, then they'll use the site for other things.

~~~
mda
DDG = Bing anyways.

------
tpaschalis
Quick question, if you Google 'ddg' in incognito mode, do you get any results
regarding DuckDuckGo? In the first 10 pages of Google Search I only get two
'relevant' results; one in the bottom of the first page, and a second one of
an article mentioning DuckDuckGo in page 8 or something. (Not trying to start
a war here, just asking).

~~~
zrobotics
Android smartphone, Chrome isn't my default browser but I used Chrome (it's
set to Google default, mostly for local search & YouTube). "ddg" doesn't
return duckduckgo until page 4, but typing "duck" returns duckduckgo as
suggested result 4, and searching "duck" returns duckduckgo on the first page.

------
hackermeows
I stopped using Google due to intrusive ads, if you have someone in your
family that have a chronic disease and you've ever googled it, get ready to be
blasted with ads reminding of that every-time you watch youtube/browse the
web. There are just some things I don't want to be reminded of Google !

------
misiti3780
I switch my default search from Google to DDG a few months ago (In the chrome
address bar). I like DDG but two things i have noticed

1\. DDG image search is far far inferior to Google's

2\. DDG response time is slower than Google's

Other than that, I love it and all of the little tools they add for developers
(color wheel etc)

------
rixrax
I wish they got domain like ddg.io|ai|... [that appear to be available too].
It would be so much easier to quickly type that in when DDG doesn't happen to
be a default search engine somewhere. Instead of typoing it in a hurry to demo
it to someone.

~~~
m-ou-se
They have duck.com and ddg.gg. Both Firefox and Chromium make <ctrl-enter>
wrap the url in 'www.' and '.com', so 'duck<ctrl-enter>' works.

~~~
rixrax
Thanks for this! I wasn't aware of either.

------
nsomaru
If anyone from DDG is reading this please make the site faster from South
Africa. Thanks.

------
luis8
I wonder how feasible it will be for duckduckgo to release a desktop program
that will store all our searches and do some machine learning "magic" locally.
We would get custom made searches and privacy as well.

------
JeremyBanks
:s/DuckDuckGo/Bing

~~~
godshatter
They do have their own web crawler. I don't have any idea what percentage of
their results come from it, but presumably as they grow their own search
results will take an ever-increasing slice of the pie.

~~~
JeremyBanks
There doesn't seem to be any evidence that it's used for indexing _at all_ ;
it seems more like it's just used to scrape additional info from sites that
they index via real search engines like Bing, Yandex, and Yahoo.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4851680](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4851680)

------
thrifter
For anyone interested in useful, tested !bangs, I made a dedicated website of
my favorites: [https://duckgobang.com/](https://duckgobang.com/)

------
ryekg
I have always used DuckDuckGo instead of Google and to be fair, they both
perform the same way except DuckDuckGo provides more privacy which is
something that is important to people anyways.

------
DigiMortal
I use DDG as my main search engine. Though sometimes frustrated with the
results that it pulls, then I go to Google. I'm sure DDG can only improve, I
will continue to use them.

~~~
WilliamEdward
Google's search engine provides good results for precisely the reason DDG will
never be able to: They sacrifice privacy to collect data that improves search
results.

------
cabaalis
Google seems to have a strong hold on up-to-date news sources. I find myself
going to !g when trying to find information on a current event.

------
lioeters
Nothing can stop DuckDuckGo. At least I hope so, I've been using it regularly
for some years now and I love the Google-free experience.

------
xj9
stop google? why? i don't even care about google. they are 100% irrelevant to
me. i'm sure some of the email i send touches their servers, but i self host
all of my services _including search_. i do some of my own indexing, but
metasearch works well for me right now.

[https://null.media](https://null.media)

------
siproprio
It is not even trying, considering how slow DuckDuckGo is to load compared to
Google and Bing.

At least it is slow in my country anyway.

------
alientida
So if I wanted to slowly start moving away from Google, what would you
recommend for an email provider?

------
darepublic
I've had more success finding TV shows on ddg. Google still a bit better for
coding questions

------
syphilis2
(Are there/what are some) objective metrics used to measure search engine
quality?

------
GeekyBear
For some us, cutting ties with companies that have surveillance capitalism as
their business model has already occurred.

Ad supported services are fine, targeted ads that require ever more invasive
spying on your users on behalf of your advertising customers are not.

------
porpoisely
It's clickbait hyperbole to say nothing can stop google. Google will fall once
something usurps their dominant platform advantage ( chrome/search/android ).

People said the same thing about Microsoft/IE when microsoft leveraged their
dominant OS position to take over the browser market. But once google search
became just as important or even more important than the Windows itself, they
leveraged their search platform to take over the browser market with chrome.

For now, google is cleverly leveraging it's search/android/chrome platforms to
block competition and maintain it's dominant position. But eventually, another
product/platform will arise that will knock google off its pedestal. Maybe
even anti-trust lawsuits will help like it did with ending the Windows-IE
monopoly.

~~~
rcMgD2BwE72F
Please tell me how to use a smartphone without being locked in the Apple
platform or Google's. I'm well aware of LineageOS (and other ROM) and of
F-Droid (and Yalp and others) but in reality, it's impossible not to supply
Google with vast amount of personal data.

So for now, it's true that "nothing can stop google". Unless we change the
situation (e.g legal/political actions), this won't change. But of course, if
we collectively admit nothing can stop Google _now_ , then we'll do something
that makes it possible to stop Google and have some real competitors.

------
Zecar
Google is at it's core an ad company, not a search company. So they have
backed off crawling the entire internet and only crawl what has a business
return for them. Combine that with carefully curating the results they
publish, it can barely even be called a search engine at this point. I get
more relevant results from DDG at this point.

~~~
natex
> So they have backed off crawling the entire internet and only crawl what has
> a business return for them.

What's the difference between Google's web crawler and DuckDuckGo's web
crawler?

> Combine that with carefully curating the results they publish,

Google carefully curates? I thought that Google's search results is based on
the users behavior? Are they carefully manipulating everyone's results?

~~~
Zecar
> Are they carefully manipulating everyone's results?

100%

------
harveywi
DuckDuckGo is a heel.

~~~
viivaux
I'd just like to encourage people to think a little longer about what you
might be saying, before reactively downvoting.

~~~
isostatic
It's hardly a common idiom, does he mean ddg is close behind google, does he
mean it's run down? Does he mean it's keeping people down?

------
enraged_camel
No company lives forever.

Google will have its comeuppance one day too. It may not look like that right
now, but back in the day Sears, too, had everything, and look at them today.

~~~
simias
Not a very good comparison I'm afraid, Sears didn't lose to an other company
who was offering the same service, they lost to a series of companies that
offered the same utility but in a very different way.

DDG is mostly just offering the same service as Google (really, only a
fraction of the service because Google is a lot more than Search these days).
As such I expect that at this point if a Google-killer appears it's also be a
DDG killer as collateral damage.

~~~
em-bee
is he making that comparison? i read it as, ddg may not bring down google, but
something eventually will, which seems exactly what you are saying too...

------
ouid
As has been mentioned probably millions of times in the last decade, "to
google" is synonymous with, "to search the internet for". As long as this
remains true, and google search remains free, their monopoly position _cannot_
be challenged. they have the trademark on the shortest sequence of syllables
which means "to search the internet for" which means that in the vast majority
of cases, when people describe searching the internet for something, they will
do so with the word "google".

~~~
anomie31
Isn't "Kodak moment" a counterexample?

~~~
ouid
No, because Kodak is not a free service. Xerox or Kleenex are closer,
obviously, but neither of them is free to use, so there's always room to come
along with something cheaper, moreover, Xerox and Kleenex at least have
unbranded, one word synonyms for the commodity they produce, photocopy and
tissue respectively. Google has "search the internet for", which you will
never convince the average person to say, so dethroning google in "search" is
at least as difficult as getting the word for "to google" changed.

Furthermore, no one can compete with Google on price, since it's free, and
it's very unlikely that anyone will be able to compete on quality, unless they
start disallowing adblock somehow.

The best you can hope for as a competitor is to carve out a niche of
conscientious objectors, and google doesn't really care about those people
either, because they are intrinsically difficult to monetize.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Furthermore, no one can compete with Google on price, since it's free

Google is free because they are deriving revenue from ads. Another service
monetizing with ads or by some other method not directly from users could
share revenue with users, thus competing favorably on price with Google's free
service.

