
Why should I use DuckDuckGo instead of Google? - berkeleyjunk
https://www.quora.com/Why-should-I-use-DuckDuckGo-instead-of-Google?share=1
======
growt
No offense to Gabriel or DDG, but this kind of question on quora always looks
a bit set-up.

If you take DDG out it reads like "Why should I use <specific product>?", to
which the creator/CEO/Owner of <specific product> can now answer with the
complete marketing blurb he/she has ready, without guilt.

I also have seen that about some obscure AI-Algorithm and a question like "Why
is <obscure algorithm> so superior?". To which the inventor of said algorithm
had a few pages as a reply.

~~~
bad_user
I don't understand what the problem is.

It's irrelevant if the question is being set-up or not for people wanting to
know the difference between a search engine marketing itself for privacy, like
DuckDuckGo, versus Google.

~~~
Woberto
I think OP is making a distinction between a question like "what are the
differences between DDG and Google" and the more subjective question that was
actually posted. With a subjective question, the marketing team can come tout
all the positive attributes as reasons why one should switch without giving
equal time to discuss what might be lacking.

~~~
justinpombrio
In other words, the bottom line was already written.

[https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/34XxbRFe54FycoCDw/the-
bottom...](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/34XxbRFe54FycoCDw/the-bottom-line)

------
vntok
> You may realize they also track you on YouTube, Gmail, Chrome, Android,
> Gmaps, and all the other services they run. Yes, you can live Google-free.
> I’ve been doing it for many years.

You can, however all these alternatives are measurably worse in terms of
features and ease-of-use, so much so that switching to them is both painful at
first and frustrating on a daily basis. Consider the sheer number of people
who in every DDG thread keep on saying "well yes DDG results are worse than
Google's, but you can use Google from DDG so it's okay". Well it's not okay
for most people.

Also, bangs seem like a great idea at first, until you realise that Google
simply does not need them to return relevant results! Then they suddenly seem
way less differenciating and more like an acknowledgement of the inferiority
of DDG compared to Google. And as a user, I'd much rather type "duckduckgo"
and get the official site at first then the wikipedia entry (with a
complimentary knowledge box on the side) than have to decide first where I
want to look and then type "!w duckduckgo".

Even in this very thread, we can read stuff like

> "I've been using DuckDuckGo for years now. It's not perfect but if you think
> carefully about your query it will work fine.

> For me the killer feature is DDG's bang commands
> ([https://duckduckgo.com/bang](https://duckduckgo.com/bang)) prepend "!w"
> for wikipedia, "!imdb" for movie trivia stuff, etc."

Well, Google will achieve the same or better results without this need to
mentally switch context. This is a feature, and a key differentiator.

~~~
StavrosK
I've been using DDG for years now, and the results are exactly as good as
Google. I've never had a case where going to Google returned better results
for me. Maybe it's because I tend to search for programming/hardware
questions, but that's my experience.

Also, I don't use bangs, I use the browser's built-in searches. So, for
example, "i <movie name>" will take me to IMDB (actually Rotten Tomatoes
nowadays) by searching for "site:imdb.com ! <movie name>" on DDG.

~~~
TylerE
With respect - how you possible state that? If you are not searching on google
most of the google magic isn't going to work?

For instance - when I google "python" google knows I mean the programming
language. For another user, they may mean the snake.

~~~
StavrosK
What do you mean? I search for <x> on DDG, results are unsatisfactory, I
search for <x> on Google, results are equally unsatisfactory. Sure, Google may
know I mean the language, not the snake, but I never search for "python", I
always search for something like "python regex", which clarifies it for almost
all cases.

------
bad_user
I've been a long time Google Search user that used to complain about
DuckDuckGo's results. That changed and I'm now a full time DuckDuckGo user, on
desktop and mobile.

For one I became aware of privacy implications, so went to my Google account
and deleted all apps history I had. To their credit they let you delete your
data (although under GDPR companies now no longer have a choice). I did this
because looking back I was amazed at how many things they could infer from my
searches over the last decade at least (my Google account is from 2004).

Without that history Google's results became visibly worse than before, worse
than DuckDuckGo!

Also once you become privacy aware you end up being concerned with the actual
searches. For example I'm now following a ketogenic diet for weight loss and I
also have hypothyroidism issues, so lately I ended up doing a lot of searches
on weight loss, diabetes, ketosis, hyperinsulinemia, heart disease,
interpretation of cholesterol results, high uric acid and gout, etc... some of
these issues have been for my own education, but I cannot in good conscience
let Google know of my potential health issues. I was careless enough to join a
local T2 diabetes group on Facebook and now I'm getting ads for diabetics.

Whenever I searched for a subject on DuckDuckGo, I never noticed subsequent
"relevant" ads following me around the web ... although you can get them via
Google/Facebook enabled tracking planted on the landing pages themselves, but
I'm armored with an ad-blocker, Privacy Badger, plus Firefox's FB Multi-
account Containers.

I cannot investigate DuckDuckGo's implementation of course. This is not open
source. So there's always the risk of betrayal. But the difference is I
already know what Google is doing and I want none of it.

And as far as quality is concerned, I got used to it, plus I now have better
peace of mind, coupled with the blocking of trackers and with a good VPN of
course. Once the privacy mindset infects you, it's really hard to go back
unfortunately :-)

BTW, I don't know if DuckDuckGo is the best choice. For European users, it's
still hosted in the US which might be a concern. Here are 2 other
alternatives:

1\. [https://about.qwant.com/](https://about.qwant.com/)

2\. [https://www.startpage.com/](https://www.startpage.com/)

~~~
maxxxxx
I don't understand why DDG is not open source. I don't think it would hurt
them business wise and it would be much easier to trust them.

~~~
bad_user
It's a web interface linked to a service in the cloud. You can't secure a web
interface, since the changes going on the backend are invisible to the user
and even if you have a system that makes use of end to end cryptography (which
doesn't apply here), you can always be targeted with a special version of the
client that tracks you.

This is why online password managers that allow you to insert your password in
a web form are inherently insecure.

So it would be cool if DDG open sourced their code, but it wouldn't help for
doing reviews of how well they respect their privacy policy.

In such cases you just have to trust them. Well, for companies such as DDG, if
they broke their privacy policy and word got out, the company would go out of
business fast. Since a good reputation is all they have.

------
clubm8
I've been using DuckDuckGo for years now. It's not perfect but if you think
carefully about your query it will work fine.

For me the killer feature is DDG's bang commands
([https://duckduckgo.com/bang](https://duckduckgo.com/bang))

prepend "!w" for wikipedia, "!imdb" for movie trivia stuff, etc.

And if you don't find what you're looking for "!s" will search with Startpage
(a site that proxies Google searches for you)

~~~
kxyvr
Quick question: What's the advantage of bangs over adding a custom search
engine to something like Firefox? In Firefox, we can right click any search
bar and add a keyword for the search, so we could just type something like "w
topic" to search Wikipedia for some topic. Anyway, maybe there's something I'm
missing, but I am curious.

~~~
majewsky
There are some bangs that do not directly correspond to search boxes. For
example, "!rfc 2616" expands into
[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616)

~~~
vntok
"Rfc 2616" typed into google works just as well and saves you a click.

~~~
majewsky
Which click? DDG just redirects without even showing a SERP.

------
void_starer
Besides the privacy issues, the single most frustrating thing is it's dropping
of keywords that are critical to the query so it can pretend that it always
has search results ready for you (here are zillion results found in 0.0000001
seconds!)

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
My Search: SPC58C72 Nexus Datasheet

Results: Datasheet

~~~
ferongr
Ironically, you are the sole result for "spc58c72" Nexus Datasheet

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
I don't even remember if the C72 is a chip. Might have been a C74? To further
complicate, iirc the C-series is customer specific version with limited data
released on it.

ALTHOUGH Nexus is a trace interface, basically Ethernet 10G trimmed down to
communicate to a micro directly. And there is pretty much no information on it
outside the ultra expensive tools you need to buy.

EDIT: LOL downvotes for Nexus and an obscure STM chip :D Oh Hackernews... be
less Reddit.

------
acheron
I've been using DDG for many years now. I rarely resort to !g anymore, and
when I do it doesn't help. (That is, if I don't find anything good in the DDG
results, I don't find anything any better in the !g results.)

(That said, my Google account is purposefully pretty clean of
"personalization", so if you've let Google track you for many years then maybe
it will still return better results for you.)

------
izietto
When I visit duckduckgo.com, uBlock reports blocking a tracking image from the
domain improving.duckduckgo.com whose url includes my browser user agent. That
doesn't seem fair to me.

~~~
fiiv
I think a company or a maker does have the right to measure how many people
are using their product. As long as they constrain their collection to that, I
think it's reasonable.

The payload (sent via query param) seems to include locale, OS and browser
(among with a couple other pieces of info that may or may not be related to
the user vs. the page).

~~~
izietto
My concern is about the params. If you use Chrome on Windows at San Francisco
user agent is dispersive, but if you connect from a little country using an
exotic browser and an exotic OS the user agent data could be enough to
identify you.

------
bla2
DDG is an ok skin on bing search results, but their pushy and misleading
marketing is a huge turn-off to me. And I'm very very sympathetic to the "we
don't track you" cause in general.

~~~
josefresco
I got downvoted the last time I posted this (love you HNers) but DDG states
they're more than just a skinned Bing:
[https://duck.co/help/results/sources](https://duck.co/help/results/sources)

~~~
bla2
That links "more than 400 sources" to [https://duck.co/ia](https://duck.co/ia)
which in turn links to [https://docs.duckduckhack.com/#improve-a-live-instant-
answer](https://docs.duckduckhack.com/#improve-a-live-instant-answer) saying
"DuckDuckHack is in Maintenance Mode". But
[https://docs.duckduckhack.com/welcome/how-ias-
work.html](https://docs.duckduckhack.com/welcome/how-ias-work.html) suggests
that these sources are for things displayed at the top, which I see super
rarely. So this is in fact a nice example of misleading DDG PR.

~~~
josefresco
Maybe. I just thought it makes sense to share what the "official" DDG position
is when calling them out for being a simple "skin".

~~~
Kiro
The 400 sources are just for instant answers. The "normal" search results are
all from Bing, Yahoo and Yandex.

------
ljf
I want to love DDG - but for local search in the UK - it is terrible. I can be
in a small town, searching for that small town, and it will give me a whole
bunch of American results.

It is still my default search on my phone (plus I use Brave as the browser) -
but I find myself popping back to google when I want a 'proper' search (and by
that I mean the way that I've conditioned myself to thinking search should
work with the last X years of googling - sure DDG will feel more natural one
day)

------
sdegutis
> _" When you search, you expect unbiased results, but that’s not what you get
> on Google. On Google, you get results tailored to what they think you’re
> likely to click on, based on the data profile they’ve built on you over time
> from all that tracking I described above."_

That explains why I get much more helpful results for technical questions on
Google than when I tried DDG. Granted, that was 3-4 years ago, maybe I should
give DDG another try.

~~~
Spooky23
The quote that you citied is bizarre. When I search for my keys at home, I
don't want a fair search pattern of the house -- I want the answer... the
location of my keys. Bias isn't always bad.

Think about how annoying it would be as a non-tech person to google or
acronyms, for example. Google is amazing at what it does in this space.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
The problem there is when the personalization interferes with what you're
searching for. It's easy to create a more precise search term to clarify
things when you get a large set of data, but at times it's not so easy to
escape the confines of a bubble that a site locks you into based on an opaque
profiling of you.

YouTube is a good example of this. I find the experience of visiting YouTube
when not in incognito mode to be just obnoxious. A huge chunk of all
recommendations are basically other things I've watched, when more often I
just want things related to what I'm currently watching.

------
fabricexpert
I've been using DDG for a while now.

It's taken some time, but I am now finding that DDG is giving me more relevant
results than Google. The only time it doesn't is for breaking news, which is
something I rarely search for.

Occasionally if I can't find something I'll put !g before it and get Google's
results, it's getting very rare now that Google has a better result. Earlier
today I started to reflex type ! into Google and then realised there was
nowhere to search and google doesn't even have bangs for other sites.

Honestly if I was banned from Google Search I wouldn't miss it now. Couldn't
say that 6 months ago.

------
bitL
Did anyone notice that DDG recently stopped treating prefix - as a way to
remove search results that contain the prefixed term, i.e. -news would remove
all pages with "news"? It is now instead highlighting "news" as the term you
searched for... I hope this is just a bug they are going to fix, otherwise I'd
have no choice but to migrate elsewhere, as without it search results are
mostly useless.

~~~
yorwba
Maybe your keyboard is not actually inserting an ASCII "-"? Compare

[https://duckduckgo.com/html?q=hacker%20ycombinator%20%CB%97n...](https://duckduckgo.com/html?q=hacker%20ycombinator%20%CB%97news)

and

[https://duckduckgo.com/html?q=hacker%20ycombinator%20%2Dnews](https://duckduckgo.com/html?q=hacker%20ycombinator%20%2Dnews)

~~~
bitL
Hmm, that's scary. On Linux Mint it inserts the first one, on macOS the second
one...

~~~
yorwba
There are a whole bunch of similar-looking Unicode characters: - ˗ ֊ ‒ – — ― −

Something between your keyboard and the input box is probably trying to be
helpful by not inserting a hyphen at the beginning of a word. You might be
able to trick it by typing "x-news" then inserting a space or deleting the
"x".

Alternatively, file a bug report against your input method or tell DuckDuckGo
about it so they can undo the transformation.

------
sdfjkl
Because DDG doesn't bloody geolocate you and then shove some dreadful
localized content in your face, in a language you do not understand. If you
travel, you'll know what I'm talking about.

------
utopcell
Instead of advertising that their quality is better in some way, they employ
FUD to say that Google is bad because they tailor their results to the user.

Notice how it's always Google that is under attack and never Bing, which has
20% of the US desktop market share and, incidentally, provides their web
results.

What a pathetic way to market a product.

~~~
Lio
It's not FUD to say that Google track you across the internet and that if you
don't want Google to do that you can use DuckDuckGo.

I have no problem with DDG using Bing or Google for search results so long as
tracking information about me isn't sent to them as part of the process.

~~~
utopcell
My point is: Bing also personalizes results and has 20% of the US desktop
traffic. Did you ever see DDG advertizing that Bing is tracking you ?

------
edoo
I use DuckDuckGo regularly now and Google only when the results aren't up to
par (often with technical stuff). I do this in protest of Google becoming the
opposite of their motto.

It is faster than google for some things. For example it is nice to be able to
type xxxx !octo and auto search at octopart.

------
BeetleB
Since DuckDuckGo always seems to get the most publicity, I feel compelled to
point out two other search engines:

[http://www.startpage.com](http://www.startpage.com)

Searx ([https://asciimoo.github.io/searx/](https://asciimoo.github.io/searx/))

You can install searx on your own host/PC, or use one of the public instances
like [http://searx.me](http://searx.me) (although no one can guarantee that
the public instance isn't tracking you). Searx has apparently been around for
quite a few years. I installed it recently on my machine and the results are
decent enough that I continue to use it.

~~~
qwerty456127
I actually use startpage.com now. Searx seems curious, thanks - the idea of a
self-hosted meta search engine seems curious, I hope it is going to get more
steam, perhaps it also could leverage strong personalization and access to my
browsing history and bookmarks (which I certainly don't want 3-rd parties like
Google or any to have).

------
jordhy
DDG is a better search engine for developers for a number of reasons:

\- Infinite scroll allows you to find information faster, even from not so
notable sources

\- Privacy means you can search freely and do research on issues that will
probably not be found out on a civil case (patents, papers, dev articles etc).

\- Bangs allow for a streamlined, faster search experience if you use certain
services massively.

\- Search results are very simple. No knowledge graph boxes, etc. So you can
just get the content you want.

\- Less (irrelevant) advertisements when you leave the search engine. You will
be tagged by the content you consume and not the one you search due to privacy
settings.

\- Your personal data will be safe in case of a Google hack.

* Disclosure: Some years ago I was a DDG ambassador.

~~~
tuxlifan
> \- Infinite scroll allows you to find information faster, even from not so
> notable sources

That is the opposite of my experience. I used to be able to skip, say, 5 or 8
pages of results to ignore the automated botsites and mainstream nonsense on
some searches and get less popular but in some contexts more helpful results.
Now I'm stuck with torturing my mouse wheel or use some specialist search
engine like [https://millionshort.com/](https://millionshort.com/). Especially
since "-" and "+" don't seem to work reliably anymore.

> \- Bangs allow for a streamlined, faster search experience if you use
> certain services massively.

Yes! I _love_ !wa for time zone conversions that understand most appointments
copied from somewhere

------
breitling
I've seriously given it a shot, but it's just not the same. I really want DDG
to succeed, but don't think it's fully-there, yet. I get significantly more
relevant results with google.

~~~
Kiro
> I really want DDG to succeed, but don't think it's fully-there, yet.

You should root for Microsoft then and for Bing to succeed. Also in some
regards Yahoo and Yandex (the two other search engines that DDG aggregates
results from).

~~~
vezycash
>You should root for Microsoft Bing to succeed.

Those paying attention would notice a difference in Google's attitude to the
AOSP since WP died. IOS's a slight threat.

For search, Bing's the only "real" competition. If it dies, Google will at
best, force DGG, startpage... to include tracking and Adsense. Or simply,
track through Chrome.

A few billions in the right pocket will shut EU up. So don't count on their
intervention.

Let's Bing at least twice in a year.

------
MarkusAllen
I am blown away that DuckDuckDuck.com continues to claim no tracking after
being exposed for tracking here:

[https://archive.is/qntuk](https://archive.is/qntuk)

~~~
sergiosgc
Tracking they removed when called up on it. I'm willing to give it a pass for
incompetence, instead of flagging the tracking as malevolence (an application
of Hanlon's razor).

------
_Donny
Even though it is a 'minor' feature, I find the !bangs feature incredibly
useful and time-saving. They even make searching on Google faster!

~~~
move-on-by
In the rare case that I'm unable to find something in DDG and want to compare
with google, I always use the !s bang to use StartPage - which is a proxy of
google. Its much slower then DDG or google, but its nice to have that firewall
between google and my searches

------
rudolph9
I’ve switched to DuckDuckGo on my mobile device and it’s great but I found it
difficult to commit to on my work machine and switched back to Google.

When conducting searched pertinent to software development the results on
DuckDuckGo tended to be too generic, often missing the stackoverflow posts
discussing exactly what I’m looking for.

~~~
frereubu
Interesting to read this, because my subjective experience has been exactly
the opposite - DDG tends to turn up a bunch of relevant SO posts at the top,
while being a bit shaky for more general queries.

------
jccalhoun
> #1 — Google tracks you. We don’t.

I'm not convinced this is a problem. I have commented before that even after 9
years on facebook they still suggest totally irrelevant groups for me to join
(for example, facebook recently suggested I join a group for progressive
asian-american christians. I am not asian or a christian)

>#3 — Get unbiased results, outside the Filter Bubble.

I read Eli Pariser's book and it was terrible. Full of "might" and "could" and
little hard data. I am highly skeptical of the effect of a filter bubble.

>#8 — Our search results aren’t loaded up with ads.

>For many Google searches, most of the entire first page is ads. On mobile it
can be even worse.

Really? I have not encountered that many ads on google searches.

>#9 — Search without fear.

Being afraid isn't really a good reason to switch in my mind.

More power to DuckDuckGo but the main thing that will make me use it is if it
has good search results.

------
xte
IMVHO you shoudn't. They are both companies that run proprietary service
outside user control.

If you want a different approach you should use something like YaCy witch is a
FOSS, distributed, search engine, based on solr. So something you can know
(have the code) and that does not run on a single company server.

~~~
brentadamson
I agree and don't like the proprietary nature of DDG and others. YaCy has no
!bangs, no instant answers and you have to install it.

I've made an open source version of DDG with !bangs, instant answers, etc. We
are hosted on Digital Ocean but feel free to run it on your own server or even
locally. [https://jivesearch.com](https://jivesearch.com)

------
nobody271
They still filter and curate search results though.

For example if you ddg "crimes committed by the fbi" you get a whitewashed and
filtered response. So what other responses are modified?

Another good litmus test is to ddg something politically incorrect. Most of
the time the response does not match the query.

~~~
mmt
Presumably, this is because their results are really just from someone else's
index (e.g. Bing). If that's the case, then it's not really DDG doing the
curating or filtering.

The real test will come if they ever switch over to their own crawl and
search.

------
yotoyo
I feel like I'm having DDG shoved down my throat atm with all the cheesy
twitter advertising and spontaneous HN posts. Clearly what happens when you
take VC money.

To me - not tracking searches (or, "not doing anything") is not protecting my
privacy - It's just not doing anything. Privacy is just a commercial narrative
to reinforce a weak service IMO when it comes to DDG.

It's pretty hard to believe there is a big team behind this website. It
doesn't feel like it has changed in many years - what are all the employees
doing. Clearly lacks leadership on all levels. Probably need better people

I genuinely fear the biggest contribution DDG makes to privacy is their yearly
contributions to companies / products that actually product privacy of
everyday people

------
olivermarks
I think it's important to use multiple search engines in order to see
different results and disparities. DDG, Google & Bing are the 3 I mainly use
and there is quite a disparity on every given search.

~~~
stcredzero
I have DDG set up on my home machine. However, I keep on switching back to
Google for the difficult searches.

~~~
olivermarks
I have an old imac set up with no accounts on it, fascinating to see 'raw'
google and how it learns from my searches...

------
brentadamson
Shameless plug: I've tried DDG in the past and didn't like that they weren't
completely open source. I've been developing
[https://jivesearch.com](https://jivesearch.com) and it is similar to DDG with
all the !bangs and tons of instant answers. It offers better privacy IMO
because it is 100% open source and you can run it on your own server or even
locally. Plus, we aren't hosted on AWS.

~~~
fiveFeet
Thank you!

------
ta3435353535
I've been using DDG for quite a few years now, and it's been great, but I wish
they would stop with the Yummly recipe results when I search for recipes.

Yummly is a cancer on the Internet, they're just an aggregator as far as I can
tell, that gets in the way. We didn't need a recipe site aggregator, search
engines work fine. Awful UI/UX while they try and advertise to you and shove
things down your throat. DDG, banish Yummly please.

------
lhball
The irony of this linking to Quora is painful. Spen 0.5 on the page; get a
request for notifications permissions.

------
y-c-o-m-b
> Even less well known is they also enable advertisers like airlines to charge
> you different prices based upon your personal information.

I hate this with a passion and it highlights why privacy is valuable to every
individual whether or not they think they have "nothing to hide"

------
philamonster
Been missing Scroogle just about as long as I've been a DDG user....

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_concerns_regarding_Goo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_concerns_regarding_Google#Scroogle)

------
netman21
I have switched to DDG as my default. It answers the many daily questions I
have. Have to switch to maps.google for directions though. For research I
actually use Yippy. Great filters and easier to set dates.

------
xjia
Slightly related: in the linked article from the answer, iOS is proposed as
the privacy preserving alternative to Android. But I am having a hard time to
agree to that. Are there anything else?

------
looperhacks
As much as I like using DDG, the search results rarely feel on par with Google
- But I'm mostly searching for German results or specific technical stuff.

~~~
posedge
I second this. Tried to switch for a while but, especially with the technical
stuff, it always feels like you might be missing out on something. Maybe I
will try again in a few years or find some sort of mixed solution with both
search engines depending on what I'm searching for...

------
moneytide1
An very simple reason I use it: being able to push the arrow keys to cycle
through search hits. Google used to have it, but it's gone now.

------
tempswdf
DDG is known to be backed by Yandex search engine. This means that your
request's metadata is already reported to Russian government services.

[https://www.quora.com/How-does-the-partnership-between-
Yande...](https://www.quora.com/How-does-the-partnership-between-Yandex-and-
DuckDuckGo-work) [https://duck.co/forum/thread/2725/yandex-
partnership](https://duck.co/forum/thread/2725/yandex-partnership)

~~~
fiiv
There seems to be no direct link between DDG and Yandex besides these two
links that lack any evidence. Yandex merely appears to be one of DDG's content
sources.

~~~
batat
I'm pretty sure there may be some. Please check my comment in previous post
about DDG
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17868117](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17868117)

~~~
fiiv
Read your original post. As far as I understand you are saying these two
things:

1\. Yandex search results very closely match DDG's in Ukrainian (or did) as
opposed to Google/Bing

2\. When Yandex could no longer operate in Ukraine, DDG's region for Ukraine
disappeared

I am reminded of Hanlon's Razor in this situation, that perhaps in Ukraine
they simply did not fix their search after their top index provider was
blocked.

------
gesman
Large employers fake GOOG certificates and spy on employee's search queries.

They usually won't do that for DDG and smaller portals.

~~~
mattlondon
News to me! Interesting - do you have a source for that? Surely browsers will
be flagging up HTTPS warnings for this?

~~~
xfitm3
Commercial products like BlueCoat proxies do this. You won't see a warning
because the CA of the proxy will be trusted on your system by your
administrator.

Certificate pinning with HSTS/HPKP isn't effective as the proxy can strip
those headers in the response.

[https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/33976/man-in-
th...](https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/33976/man-in-the-middle-
blue-coat-proxy-ssl-or-what)

~~~
move-on-by
There is a fantastic paper on how these proxies often lower security: "The
Security Impact of HTTPS Interception" [1]. The paper also provides some
interesting ways of detecting this type of proxy on the server (and client too
- although a client should know if they have custom trusted certs). mitm.watch
has implemented the details of the paper.

[1] [https://jhalderm.com/pub/papers/interception-
ndss17.pdf](https://jhalderm.com/pub/papers/interception-ndss17.pdf)

[2] [https://mitm.watch/](https://mitm.watch/)

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the_arun
It is not just about Google Search vs DDG. If you use DDG via Google Chrome,
google can still track you.

------
the_clarence
I use it for streaming movies, Google has managed to clean its results from a
lot of these websites.

------
known
DDG should display Google results side-by-side

~~~
utopcell
it is probably illegal for them to do so.

------
rufio1
Use Brave instead of Chrome (:

------
sfohohoho
Will they make me use AMP? I don't want to use AMP.

~~~
move-on-by
I've been using DDG pretty exclusively for about a year now. I've never seen
an AMP domain/link in any of my search results

