
Pro-privacy search engine DuckDuckGo hits 30M daily searches, up 50% in a year - AiaMD13
https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/11/pro-privacy-search-engine-duckduckgo-hits-30m-daily-searches-up-50-in-a-year/
======
dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18100243](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18100243)

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stevenjohns
After everything that has happened in the last few weeks I've completely moved
away from Google.

1\. I retired my ~15 year old Gmail account and registered with Fastmail

2\. I moved away from Chrome to Firefox on both my laptop and phone

3\. I stopped using Chrome's password manager on iOS in favor of 1Password and
Firefox Lockbox

4\. I've mostly stopped using the Google search engine and now using DDG and
Bing if I have to.

Part of what helped me transition away from Google to DDG was skinning DDG to
look like Google[0]. The first few days were really tough and I kept finding
myself going back to Google about 80% of the time. I thought that the search
results were remarkably poorer. I considered that it might just be anxiety of
_not_ using Google affecting my view, so as an experiment I decided to theme
DDG to look like Google... and it worked. I stopped going back to Google and
suddenly the searches became better.

I still use the !g bang for about 20% of my searches, and there are things
that Google does so much better that I use quite often (for example searching
a store name and it brings up all the local ones with information on what time
they close etc, or if you were to write "tengo dolor de estomago en ingles" it
would bring up an interactive translation box and so on) but for general
searches I've more or less completely moved away.

[0]
[https://userstyles.org/styles/153678/duckduckgooglymoogly](https://userstyles.org/styles/153678/duckduckgooglymoogly)

~~~
projektir
> 1\. I retired my ~15 year old Gmail account and registered with Fastmail

I'm looking to switch my email. Any thoughts on Fastmail vs ProtonMail? Do you
feel secure with Fastmail?

~~~
newscracker
Assuming you're looking at paid services, I wouldn't recommend either of them
as the first choice. Take a look at Posteo.de, Runbox, Mailfence and
Mailbox.org before you decide. At least browse through their websites and see
what they offer. All these services are a lot cheaper than Fastmail or
Protonmail (more so if you need multiple mailboxes, not just aliases). All of
them offer IMAP access on all platforms, which isn't available directly in
ProtonMail and requires a "bridge" application to be installed and setup on
computers.

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seibelj
The average tech person has been switching away from Google products, and this
filters down to their social networks, and then their networks, and so on.
It's a big deal when the tech people decide to switch.

For me, it was Chrome making me log-in to my account. Now I use Firefox, DDG,
ublock, privacy badger, etc. I think society writ large will begin to take
privacy more seriously in the coming years.

Edit FYI: If you want google results, add '!g' to the end of a DDG query and
it will route to google. I use it sometimes, but not that often given that DDG
is usually good.

~~~
ColanR
There's all kinds of awesome 'bangs'. I realized it's actually easier to use
the variety of google/bing search engines from ddg.

google scholar: !gsc

google images: !gi

bing: !b

~~~
kgwxd
Bing should have been !bing and !b should have been reserved from something
more useful, like butternut squash recipes.

~~~
kryogen1c
Not only is this funny, it's very true.

I work in IT, and even the most computer illiterate people generally can't get
tricked into using Bing.

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anders_p
Bing's video search is actually surprisingly good. Some of my friends have
told me that it's a lot better for porn than Google.

~~~
_emacsomancer_
That's the only (positive) thing I ever hear about Bing.

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Jedi72
Google isnt even a good search engine any more. I tried finding my friends
website, www.catbartlett.com.au, with the terms "Freelance graphic designer
Cat Bartlett Perth Western Australia" \- pretty specific, but the first page
is nothing but LinkedIn profile links and random mentions of her in
testimonials. If it takes thousands of $$ in SEO to get found, how is that a
useful search engine? We might as well go back to human-submitted catalogues.

I think the Google vision is to become internet gatekeepers, not to be a
useful tool for finding things. That's why they need to die.

~~~
tmerr
This is most likely a WiX configuration issue. The HTML source for
[https://www.catbartlett.com.au/](https://www.catbartlett.com.au/) contains

    
    
      <meta name="robots" content="noindex"/>
    

Maybe try [https://support.wix.com/en/article/enabling-search-
engines-e...](https://support.wix.com/en/article/enabling-search-engines-eg-
google-to-find-your-site) ?

~~~
dmix
The website also gets a 0/100 pagescore [1] because of "noindex". Plus the
<title> tag has a single word "design"...nothing about the contents of the
site. It only's mention of "Cat Bartlett Graphic Design" 1x and is in an <h5>
tag halfway down the page (not repeat anywhere nor in an H1 tag.

No wonder google can't find it. This is SEO 101 that Google will tell you how
to fix for free.

[1] [https://sitechecker.pro/seo-
report/https://www.catbartlett.c...](https://sitechecker.pro/seo-
report/https://www.catbartlett.com.au/)

~~~
nitrogen
Ironically for a site seemingly dedicated to checking other sites, it's
unusable on mobile (especially after the over-wide and unscrollable "create an
account" modal takes over)

~~~
gremlinsinc
On google mobile is actually a factor in page ranking, if you're not mobile
friendly you won't rank. Obviously this person needs some help w/ their
website, if they were on wordpress with a good mobile theme, and good page
load they'd definitely be ranked first for that serp.

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benjaminjackman
Am I the only one that finds that the DDG’s bang commands actually make
DuckDuckGo more useable than google, even for googles own products? E.g. it’s
faster to type in a location and append !gm after (which will cause DuckDuckGo
to redirect immediately to searching within google maps itself) than it is to
click around on google to bring the maps up? (Likewise for google express !ge
google images !gi and especially YouTube !yt)

My only wish would be some way to customize them and add new ones as they
almost make web browsing into using a command line (and what that would be
like with aliases and adding scripts to PATH).

~~~
jvolkman
I just use Chrome's address bar. "map<TAB>" enters a maps-only search. Same
for "you<TAB>" for youtube, etc.

~~~
dmix
On mobile that's not possible though. !gi for image search is one I use often
on mobile.

But otherwise that's very true, I also use desktop Chrome's search engines as
a keyword system (typing "ny" to launch
[https://nytimes.com](https://nytimes.com)), regardless if the URL actually
includes a search query.

~~~
nyolfen
ffx also has this feature, you can right click in a search field and 'add
keyword'. i distinctly remember thinking 'this would be a really cool feature'
maybe 10 years ago and discovering that it was already there.

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regnerba
Does anyone know of a recent-ish description of the DDG infrastructure? Only
posts I can find are 5 or 6 years old.

~~~
towndrunk
I would be interested in this as well.

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kardos
So is privacy at last becoming mainstream? I look forward to the end of people
saying "nobody cares about privacy".

~~~
ravenstine
That saying does seem to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, so I look forward in
the same way.

I predict that a large swath of the population still won't care much about
privacy, or at least take action to protect theirs, but I'm seeing an
awakening of people coming to realize how dangerous big tech can become.
What's funny to me is if Google wasn't so brazen in ditching their old "don't
be evil" pretense, we probably wouldn't be having this discussion as often as
we are.

~~~
swlkr
Yeah I think this is the key, privacy online is very abstract. But the
sentiment of a large, evil corporation out to get you is somehow less
abstract.

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ricardonunez
I switched earlier this year. It takes some time to get used to it. I used to
!g often. It doesn't feel as intuitive at knowing what you are looking like
Google. Addresses and map integration is not that good either and does not
come even close to Google. It is a good enough. I have their app on my phone
as my search tool, which I miss Google maps more often.

~~~
dc_gregory
!gm <address> will push you back to google maps if you need it!

~~~
almostgce
!maps also works for google maps, !osm will use OpenStreetMap instead.

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Tomminn
I had no idea how good ddg had gotten these days. Being from NZ, I thought I'd
give it a good challenge. I entered !maori love, thinking it was impossible it
would have a bang pattern for that, and it automatically brought me here
[https://maoridictionary.co.nz/search?idiom=&phrase=&proverb=...](https://maoridictionary.co.nz/search?idiom=&phrase=&proverb=&loan=&histLoanWords=&keywords=love).

~~~
brentadamson
The !bangs aren't too hard to implement. It's basically just a very large
config file. You can see that in our code:
[https://github.com/jivesearch/jivesearch](https://github.com/jivesearch/jivesearch).
I run the project, btw. And, yes, we have that same !bang as well as all of
DDG's !bangs.

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justfor1comment
Using it as my default on my personal gadgets. Practically the same as Google
for generic searches.

~~~
gutnor
I haven't been so lucky, maybe that's because of searches in the UK ?

Google manages to find more locally relevant information (the most annoying
one is the stuff from amazon.com instead of amazon.co.uk). You can easily turn
"UK search" in DDG, but when you do it, but in turn that's less relevant for
technical search.

Probably will wait a few more months to give it another go.

~~~
justfor1comment
Yes, it's not good for the use case you described. That's what I intended to
say with my comment on "generic searches". If you are looking for something
very specific like a piece of code that resolves your OOM error or a uk seller
of a xkcd hoodie then it's better to add !g to your search.

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mabbo
I installed a DDG Chrome extension and said I'd try it for a week.

That was a month ago. Haven't found a need to switch to Google yet.

~~~
sambull
Same here, and I had done this same experiment last year and switched back
quickly. DDG is better than google often, I find relevant things quickly. For
most of my searches it takes the cake, Google has a heads up on relevant
recent (last hour) sort of info at the moment

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eljimmy
I'm curious to know if DuckDuckGo promotes itself using privacy-invasive
platforms. How much do they truly value privacy if they're willing to let
others invade for them?

Reason I ask is because strangely enough, after reading this article, I hopped
on Reddit and saw a promoted ad for DuckDuckGo. That can't have been a
coincidence...

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Theodores
This is still very slow growth, 30M is still less than 1% of the amount of
searches Google gets in a day.

If you add in the searches you don't see, i.e. those little titbits of travel
and other information Google decides to search for you without you even
asking, then the DDG search volume is really small.

Has anyone here tried 'Ecosia', the save-the-planet search engine that gives
you 'Bing!' results? They don't exactly advertise where their search results
come from. I wonder how their share of the search engine pie compares to DDG
given that 'Ecosia' do advertise whereas DDG don't.

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dna_polymerase
A search engine that has nothing more to offer than "privacy" isn't really
worth my time.

Whenever I use DDG I get inferior search results. If privacy is your concern
with Google use Startpage. That Bing/Yahoo mashup that DDG want to sell simply
doesn't cut it for me (or any of my friends/colleagues).

~~~
dcow
You are not concerned with privacy, obviously. What’s your name, address,
favorite food, latest medical issue?

~~~
dna_polymerase
That's not at all what I wrote.

------
graeme
At a 50% growth rate, it would take DDG 12 years to surpass Google's 2015
volume of 3 billion searches, correct?

Not that DDG has to catch up to google to be a success. But it's interesting
to consider the scale.

~~~
craftyguy
The cynical side of me wonders how long DDG will continue before they sell
out. You can only live so long off of angel investors and random grants. Some
organizations have been able to survive (wikipedia) this way, but it's
definitely not easy.

~~~
Cyclone_
I believe they have revenue through ads. Don't know if they're profitable or
not, my guess would be no.

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evilturnip
The main reason I use DuckDuckGo is when I want to search for more
controversial topics that Google decides to filter how they want.

When I search on DuckDuckGo I know I'm not having that filter imposed on me.

~~~
forapurpose
What kinds of searches are you referring to? I would guess DDG has the same
legal requirements as Google. And do they not also filter violent hate groups
and similar things?

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fenwick67
many examples but non-illegal sites like antipolygraph.org

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arenaninja
The only place I still use google on is my phone because I haven't care enough
to change the default browser. Even on desktop when I don't find what I want
from DuckDuckGo I find myself using !b (bing) instead of !g (google)

On mobile it's another story. The intrusive ads from content creators (think
auto playing video, full screen popup, etc.) ruin the experience and it's
easier to just look at the google-provided snippets and stop visiting these
sites altogether

~~~
ObsoleteNerd
I think a mobile browser that basically puts everything in a Reader-mode style
format all the time, would be truly awesome.

The web is an absolute mess. I don't even like browsing stuff anymore because
I know i'm going to be overwhelmed by horrible heavy designs, endless external
scripts, autoplay video on every news site, and more ads than content.

I use adblockers, no-script (on desktop), etc, but there's definitely a market
for browsers that take this on and give us a cleaner experience akin to the
old-web.

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bordercases
Can anyone comment on the security of StartPage/IxQuick?

As far as I know, they proxy Google results and avoid storing them in the
browser via either a URL rewrite or a POST call. I find Google to return
superior search data than DDG, particularly if it's not giving you recommended
or personally ranked results (that alone makes it feel worthwhile to switch to
SP/IxQuick). But it kind of feels like a free lunch.

~~~
brentadamson
Beyond what you pointed out, it's hard to really know what's going on with
something closed source. Disclosure: I run jivesearch.com (basically, an open
source version of DDG). FYI, we've got an open issue on GitHub to add POST
requests in addition to a proxy.

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eezurr
This is great, and congrats! I have also moved away from a google eyes.

Just for comparison though, Google is serving about 3.5 billion searches a
day.

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Cyclone_
One thing I was surprised about DDG was that most of their code is written in
Perl. Curious how well this will actually scale.

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ma2rten
This metric is meaningless, for all we know DDG could have become less helpful
and people have to rephrase their queries more often than before.

EDIT: I'm not saying that is the case, but I hope that this example
illustrates why this metrics is not a good substitute for standard metrics
like DAU, MAU, revenue.

~~~
ndnxhs
If the results were less helpful than people would stop using it

~~~
kgwxd
It's very helpful:
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=then+vs+than&t=canonical&ia=web](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=then+vs+than&t=canonical&ia=web)

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dmix
A big part of this is probably Brave. I wasn't using DDG on mobile until I
replaced Chrome with Brave (and I love Brave).

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nyolfen
i really want to switch to ddg, but despite seeing many comments to the
contrary, the results for a lot of searches i do have noticeably inferior
results. i know i shouldn't expect the world and i'll likely gradually switch,
but google can be exceptionally useful for eg open-ended questions phrased in
natural language.

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joering2
Honest questions:

1) isn't it somewhat unlawful these days not to log anything on the people
that are using your website? I'm all in favor of DDG, but can't they be liable
if it would ever come up someone build and detonated bomb thanks to finding
info via their search engine?

2) How do we know they haven't been served with NSL ? With NSA capable of
breaking SSL, how do we know using DDG != using Google ?

~~~
shopkins
1\. No, services in the US like DDG largely aren't liable for what users post
(or do) on their sites, mostly because of Section 230 of the Communications
Decency Act of 1996 [0].

2\. We don't know they haven't been served with a national security letter.
DDG's protection scope doesn't cover you needing protection from the
government, though. So we know using DDG != Google because that's the
surveillance threat vector they're concerned with: literally not being Google
(which they aren't).

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Decency_Act#Sec...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Decency_Act#Section_230)

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kmlx
is it possible to get personalized search results when using duck duck go?

~~~
gregorygoc
The whole point of DDG is that they don’t personalize results.

~~~
kmlx
I would love to try out a search engine that would be able to offer
personalised results while still being relatively private. Otherwise the
feeling I get from DDG is a step back both in user experience, and from a
general tech point of view.

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sonnyblarney
Add reverse image search and I'm there.

