
Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often - rms_returns
I&#x27;d made a similarly titled post[1] a couple years back and I seriously don&#x27;t know what kind of usage DuckDuckGo has right now. But I&#x27;d like to think that it is extensively used, at least in the developer community. And I strongly believe that people should start degoogling their lives at least slowly and gradually if its not possible to do it at once. If more people start using DDG, the search engine will improve and that least that one aspect of degoogling could be achieved to a certain extent.<p>[1] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=13284917
======
phatfish
I have used it as a default for at least 2 years. I'd estimate drop back to
Google for 20-25% of specific "subject matter" searches, mostly around
technology. Probably a bit less than that for general searches.

Most of the time I run the same search on Google the results are very similar
for the top hits. But Google does seem to produce helpful results that are not
exactly what I searched for more often.

DDG also skews heavily to US results which is a pain. Any Amazon links are
always to .com and not the regional site. Just a general understanding of
region specific results seems to be missing, and I end up qualifying searches
with the country or town.

~~~
neltnerb
By a huge margin the most frequent time I drop back to Google is because they
have unit conversions built in. So I can send duckduckgo a query like "!g
speed of light / 400nm in terahertz" and I get the calculated unit-correct
answer immediately.

It's basically replaced my TI-89 for years, I hate doing calculations with
units by hand and it's super error prone to not include them in the
calculations.

For everything else, duckduckgo has consistently provided a suitable result to
answer my question for 90%+ of stuff, no worse than Google. It's super rare
for me to check if Google has better results for normal things. I see them as
a different ordering rather than superior ordering, so I think of Google more
as an alternative than a fallback. They clearly both interpret whether a site
is a good match using different algorithms but I don't know I'd say one is
strictly superior.

~~~
divbzero
DuckDuckGo does do unit conversions “100 JPY in EUR” [1] and unit-less
calculations “2^32 - 1” [2].

[1]:
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=100+JPY+in+EUR](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=100+JPY+in+EUR)

[2]: [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=2%5E32-1](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=2%5E32-1)

But like you I drop back for unit-aware calculations. For those an alternative
to Google is Wolfram Alpha “!wa speed of light / 400nm in terahertz” [3] which
also allows for symbolic computation “!wa integral of 2x” [4].

[3]:
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=!wa+speed+of+light+%2F+400nm+in+te...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=!wa+speed+of+light+%2F+400nm+in+terahertz)

[4]:
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=!wa+integral+of+2x](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=!wa+integral+of+2x)

~~~
dontbenebby
When DDG fails for a conversion I usually append !wa and Wolfram Alpha parses
it easily

------
lucb1e
Going one step further, I removed my websites from the Google index:
[https://lucb1e.com/?p=post&id=130](https://lucb1e.com/?p=post&id=130)

If you want to find my stuff, you now have to use DDG or some other search
engine. Hopefully we can signal to Google that we are not okay with
monopolistic behaviour (that's why I blocked them, not just for being the
biggest or monopolist, but for also behaving like it -- see the blog post for
details).

~~~
appleflaxen
that's an awesome idea!

how do you determine which IPs are the google webcrawler, though?

~~~
lucb1e
I match the user agent string on containing "Google". It seems that Google
Chrome only includes "Chrome", so I don't block users this way. Here is an
overview of all Google crawlers' user agent strings:
[https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1061943](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1061943)
As you can see, they all include Google (capitalized).

I don't use robots.txt because they say that doesn't stop them from including
the site in search results:
[https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6062608](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6062608)
I don't know if returning a HTTP 403 error will, but it seems like it's worth
a try.

I also looked into banning IP ranges (that would have been my preferred
option), but if I remember correctly they were subject to change and it seems
overkill to write a scraper for that page that would then have to generate a
config file and reload a service.

~~~
tonfa
The documented way is the noindex tag (in html or http headers):
[https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93710?hl=en](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93710?hl=en)

~~~
lucb1e
Not all resources are HTML so I couldn't use the meta tag, but the header
looks interesting! Reading up on it, it seems to achieve pretty much the same
thing as my current solution. Would you say this is better for some reason?
Nobody should encounter my server's 403 response except those with a Google
user agent anyway.

The page doesn't say whether this works the same as the robots.txt disallow,
where you may still appear in results because other pages link to you. The 403
might be more effective, but I can't really tell either way.

------
jplayer01
DDG's search results seem consistently terrible whenever I try to use it for
an extended period of time. It's fine for really basic searches, but anything
more specialized or niche is terrible (considering my interests, that's all of
my searches). I mostly use Startpage nowadays instead, which seems to give me
good enough results most of the time.

~~~
Timucin
I believe having privacy puts the user at disadvantage since DDG doesn't keep
your history or track who you are. i.e. Google knows definitely knows I am a
developer and shows the tech related things first even when I search for super
generic words. That's why people think DDG doesn't do a good job but I think
it does if you can be more specific.

Yet I agree it's not better than or equal to Google when it comes to image
search. I guess Google is doing a better job on classifying images.

~~~
mosselman
I believe privacy, to me as a user, is a huge advantage. I have been using
DuckDuckGo for years now and I when I run into something I can’t find on it,
which happens sporadically, I use !s to jump to anonymous google results on
start page and it turns out I can’t find it with google either. So either
DuckDuckGo has gotten better or I have gotten better at telling it what I
want, or both. Either way, I don’t feel that privacy puts me at a
disadvantage.

~~~
Timucin
Oh, no. Don't get me wrong. I wasn't trying to say privacy is bad, I was
trying to say Google has a clear advantage since it knows more about the user.
Don't think it's worth to compromise your privacy though.

Another advantage of Google is having the vast resources they have but again,
it works because they know who you are.

I also agree with what you said. People just need to be more specific with
their search and yes, DDG is going better by the day.

------
octosphere
I like DuckDuckGo if it wasn't for their data centers being in the U.S. My
problem lies in the fact that they could have an intelligence agency like the
NSA in their data centers and they could attribute specific queries to
specific users by looking at the originating IP. I'm not even sure they have a
canary[0] [1] implemented. This is why combining DDG with an anonymous mixer
network like Tor is useful (or even a VPN). You're probably wondering why my
threat model includes the likes of the NSA. Well I just don't want spying,
simple as that.

Sure, Tor might seem like overkill, but over time all those single, isolated
queries start to build an elaborate dossier on you and the contents of your
mind.

[0] [https://duck.co/forum/thread/15228/would-you-adopt-a-
canary](https://duck.co/forum/thread/15228/would-you-adopt-a-canary)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary)

~~~
skellera
What search engine do you use then?

~~~
octosphere
I use a few. Putting all my eggs in one basket is a bad idea in general. If
you must know, I _do_ use DDG, but strictly with Tor and sometimes a VPN. In
no order:

[https://eu.startpage.com](https://eu.startpage.com)

[https://www.searx.me/](https://www.searx.me/)

[https://www.ecosia.org/](https://www.ecosia.org/)

[https://millionshort.com/](https://millionshort.com/)

[https://www.mojeek.com/](https://www.mojeek.com/)

[https://www.qwant.com](https://www.qwant.com)

(All used with Tor and sometimes a VPN)

------
lkj
\- "python remove from list": Google has the Python docs on the first page.
DDG does not.

\- "site:news.ycombinator.com rms_returns duckduckgo": At first the DDG
results looked better but multiple results had no mention of "rms_returns" at
all.

\- "archlinux dmesg audit": Both nice.

\- "lange nacht der museen berlin": Wow, unexpectedly relevant results on DDG,
did they improve their local results?

I think I should indeed try again. Previous times it was full of spam for
local results.

~~~
FabHK
Thanks for providing examples, I'm always baffled by those that claim that
Google results are so much better.

\- "python remove from list": DDG returns the stack overflow answer
(mentioning `del`). If I wanted the docs, I'd put in the !py3 bang, which uses
the python 3 documentation search.

\- "site:news.ycombinator.com rms_returns duckduckgo": yeah, DDG is fuzzing
the search terms annoyingly, though I've heard that complaint about google as
well? I've had more luck adding a plus, "site:news.ycombinator.com
+rms_returns duckduckgo"

------
0xcde4c3db
I use DDG regularly. It's fine for casual "was that company's domain a .net or
.com" kinds of searches, but it struggles for more specific or obscure
content. My biggest problem with it is that the "advanced" operators are
extremely buggy. Quotes and minus sometimes seem to be treated more as
suggestions than requirements. Other times they return no results when
omitting them returns results that should match. Sometimes a term with a minus
is instead treated like there's no minus, i.e. ranking results with that word
higher. This seems to have gotten worse over time. I don't have examples for
this because the behavior is not consistent at all. The "inurl" and "intitle"
operators exist but seem to only work for a single word/instance (e.g.
"functional intitle:Haskell" works as expected but "functional intitle:Haskell
intitle:reactive" returns a bunch of results without either of those words in
the title).

~~~
WarOnPrivacy
> "My biggest problem with it is that the "advanced" operators are extremely
> buggy. Quotes and minus sometimes seem to be treated more as suggestions
> than requirements. Other times they return no results when omitting them
> returns results that should match. Sometimes a term with a minus is instead
> treated like there's no minus, i.e. ranking results with that word higher.
> This seems to have gotten worse over time."

This is the exact explanation of why I moved away from Google.

My searching trends toward very specific terms. >2 years ago, Google started
ignoring my boolean operands. It became increasingly difficult to craft a
boolean search that Google would actually respect.

I finally bailed 6 months ago. By that time, using a minus sign often returned
nothing but the results I was trying to avoid.

------
hjek
DDG is just a proxy for Bing. Yes, let's degoogle our lives, but why not start
using a free/libre metasearch engine (like Searx[0]), while you're at it?

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

~~~
kitotik
Citation needed.

They use Bing Ads, but I’m not sure if their actual search results are just
proxied Bing results.

~~~
hjek
I think nowadays they mix in some results from other search engines, but it
started out as just Bing results. Doesn't change the point about it being just
a proprietary interface to other proprietary search engines.

> We do use results from Bing. Our zero-click info and some other stuff we do,
> however, uses results from all over.[0]

[0]:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20180910181021/https://duck.co/f...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180910181021/https://duck.co/forum/comment/27893)

------
makecheck
It’s still my default but results are becoming noticeably worse. For instance,
I used to be able to search for uncommon names and have them surface; now DDG
seems to try _really_ hard to assume I meant some dictionary word (frankly, a
search engine clearly ignoring your actual search term becomes useless really
quickly).

A critical feature though is that “g!” to Google will never return AMP pages;
as long as that’s true I will always start from DDG.

~~~
FabHK
> DDG seems to try really hard to assume I meant some dictionary word
> (frankly, a search engine clearly ignoring your actual search term becomes
> useless really quickly)

I wonder whether that's due to users using mobile more and more, where typos
are much more frequent. It is very annoying indeed, and coaxing it with quotes
and/or plusses doesn't seem to yield consistent results.

------
topherPedersen
I launched BuckBuckMoose.org recently so I could start using DuckDuckGo more
often. The idea with BuckBuckMoose is that you can search DuckDuckGo without
fear of missing out on Google. How it works is you simply enter your search
query, and then a two split screen windows pop up with Google search results
on the left and DuckDuckGo results on the right. If you want to try it out as
your default search engine you can use Tom Schuster's "Add Custom Search
Engine" extension for Firefox to add it (BuckBuckMoose) as your default search
engine. (I don't actually expect anyone else to use it). Anyway, having used
this tool daily for the past few months I feel that I'm somewhat of an expert*
on DuckDuckGo's search results. One interesting thing I've noticed is how
similar their results are. It's almost as if Bing is trying to mimic Google's
results on purpose? It's a little odd. The results are pretty good tho.
However, I have noticed that Google is always a little bit faster.

~~~
octosphere
Hmm, I went to [http://buckbuckmoose.org](http://buckbuckmoose.org) and
noticed no TLS. Perhaps it doesn't need crypto because the popups themselves
utilize crypto.

------
spookybones
I've been using DuckDuckGo for about a year now. I must admit, when doing
research, I often g! the search as well to see what I'm missing out on,
especially with images. I also don't know why they don't offer a year
parameter for the advance time search. It's a pretty good engine nonetheless.
I use wikipedia a lot, so w! proves useful.

~~~
FabHK
And, btw, !wxx, where xx is the two letter ISO language code (!wde, !wes,
!wla...).

------
fareesh
For the uninitiated, !bang is a pretty great feature:

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

~~~
lucb1e
Am I the only one who really doesn't like having to prefix that symbol and
never types bangs? I type faster than most other tech people but putting my
whole left hand on the left side of the keyboard to press Shift with my pinky
and 1 with my ring finger is more trouble than adding a keyword for the search
in Firefox
([http://kb.mozillazine.org/Using_keyword_searches](http://kb.mozillazine.org/Using_keyword_searches)).
Especially because I type the G, Y, and W (google, google-images, youtube,
wikipedia... the thing you use this for) with my left hand as well.

Bangs are recommended almost every time ddg comes up, and I see people like my
brother using them, so it seems like nobody else minds and the choice of
symbol will never change. Am I alone in thinking it's one of the worst
possible prefix characters?

~~~
epicide
> putting my whole left hand on the left side of the keyboard to press Shift
> with my pinky and 1 with my ring finger

Try using your right pinky to press shift when typing a bang.

If you want to just use one hand, try holding shift with pinky and hitting 1
with your middle finger. Slightly less stretching.

~~~
lucb1e
I might try the right shift, that's not a bad idea. Still the delay of a
redirect, but might be useful when on mobile or when not using my own
computer. Thanks for the suggestion!

------
owlrobot
I would but one of the biggest problems I have with it is how I can't look up
info. in certain areas like Reddit which I use a lot because it only gives one
link even if I include the word "reddit".

~~~
gpm
I use "site:reddit.com" all the time on ddg, no problems whatsoever with the
results.

------
utopcell
I find it mind-boggling that privacy-conscious folks go for DDG. This is a
company that hides in their FAQ that their results are also backed by Yandex
[1], and the first thing they ask you to do when you go to their home page is
install a Chrome extension, giving them full access to your machine, let alone
your searches.

[1] [https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-
pages/results/so...](https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-
pages/results/sources/)

------
newscracker
I have degoogled myself heavily and don’t use anything other than Maps once in
a while, but DDG is not the best answer as a replacement for people who just
want to get things done. Instead of telling people to use DDG alone, it’s
better to tell people to use DDG, Searx, and others so that there’s choice and
freedom.

I use DDG as my primary search engine, but the quality of search results and
the rate of improvement leave much to be desired. So I tend to go to !s
(search in startpage) or !g (search on Google). DDG would have to improve by
leaps and bounds if it has to be the only search engine that I have to use (or
rather, the only search engine who’s direct results I have to use).

Apart from poorer search results, instant answers aren’t great either. DDG has
currency conversions as well as stock quotes as instant answers. But both
these are so highly hit or miss that I end up going to some other site anyway.
For currency conversion, depending on where you put the currency symbol or
code (as a prefix or suffix) or if you don’t leave a space between the
currency and the numerical value, you may or may not get instant answers. For
stock quotes, there are many symbols where, if you just type the symbol, you
wouldn’t get instant answers. You’d have to type “<stock symbol> stock”. For
some stocks just typing the stock symbol is enough.

------
jypepin
The main thing that made me go back to google is the smart results they offer.
I search enough for things like "champions league", "PSG vs Inter",
"Warriors", "US Open" expecting the smart result at the top (the little widget
that embeds the info I want). Switching to DDG I missed that too much and
decided to go back to google.

~~~
jraby3
But you can always just add a !g and still get the smart results.

------
benbristow
The thing with Google is that, like it or not, their analytics and their
knowledge of you as an individual helps produce better search results for you.
Google will always be the better search engine.

That being said DuckDuckGo is definitely getting much better nowadays. Still
end up going back to Google after a few days though.

~~~
robertAngst
I'm a nerd with pretty mild porn usage and no terrorist habits.

I have 0 reason to not use google. I really don't care if they find out my
obsession with electronics and that I have the hots for tall girls.

Out of every company, I'd give Google the nod as most helpful company of my
lifetime.

Can someone tell me why I'm wrong?

~~~
StevePerkins
Because Bing is surprisingly better for porn related searches.

Otherwise... no, I don't think you are. The people who turn out for threads
like these are hardly representative. You shouldn't sweat not passing muster
with them too much.

------
AriaMinaei
I've had a very different experience. In most queries, I see better or equal
results in DDG compared to Google, especially since DDG digs up less SEO heavy
pages. But occasionally for certain queries, Google returns better results
then DDG. I use the !g clause perhaps once a day.

------
anoncake
The fact that Google tends to ignore half the query does make that choice
easier.

~~~
akvadrako
DDG also ignores half the query, so that's a weird thing to say. At least
Google has verbatim mode.

~~~
anoncake
It does, but boycotting a search engine that returns garbage in favor of
another search engine that returns garbage is easier than if the former
actually worked properly.

------
klingonopera
I've been on DDG since about November/December last year.

I thought I'd probably change back to the Gman within a few days, but I still
use it.

And I only today found out about "!g" (I was literally typing
"google.com/search?q=terms" into my address bar everytime).

Averaging about 1 in 5 searches I need to go to Google to get my results.
Mostly stuff regarding popularity and currentness, like memes e.g., or
(admittingly bad and lazy) natural language queries where Google also has an
edge.

------
moneytide1
The privacy aspect isn't necessarily what draws me in, but rather the simple
arrow key search result parsing. Google used to have it but I cannot get it to
work anymore. Allows me to very quickly skim many results using arrow down ->
enter -> Alt+left -> repeat.

Also the ! command is amazing, no more wasted seconds on the homepages of
youtube, amazon, ebay (!yt, !a, !e). Now if only we can add arrow key
selection to those sites :)

------
PorterDuff
I've been using startpage lately and seem to prefer it to DDG, but they both
can give inferior search.

At the risk of being repetitious, I think what I'd like is a completely
private search engine that uses only a self-curated list of websites. A year
or two of googling and using the good results from that would probably fix me
for some time. As usual, switch to google if the results aren't good.

Getting rid of the cruft would be a nice thing.

------
szatkus
I use Duck on my desktop for about a year, I think. I noticed that Google got
worse during that period to the point I switched default engine on my phone to
DDG.

The only drawback I see that DDG sometimes returns strange results for local
searches. Even with Poland switch. For example if I typed some restaurant's
name I most likely would get some restaurant in Warsaw with the same or
similar name.

------
herodotus
My biggest beef with ddg is that they do not localize my searches. If I search
for "Ferry Schedule" for example, I want the nearest Ferry, not San Francisco.
My tech related searches are probably fine on DDG, but my personal life
searches (movies, transit, theatre, music, events.....) should all use the
best available location information.

~~~
truculent
I used to feel this too, but once I started getting back into the habit of
stating the location I'm interested in in the search it became a non-issue

------
quickthrower2
I’ve started the process:

* move google analytics to stat counter. Might consider their no cookie option.

* moved email to domain based plus zoho. Keeping web inbox zeroed so I’m not to dependent on web mail or zoho

* did a google takeout so I access to old emails of my acc gets shut down.

* Firefox/safari for home browsers

* duck duck go default SE

* ublock origin

In the other direction:

* using material design for a new side project!

------
ravenstine
Does anyone know how to donate to DDG? It doesn't say on their site, but I
want to contribute to their success.

~~~
StevePerkins
Just disable your ad blocker for their site. They're not a philanthropy, they
have a profitable ad-based business model.

~~~
DougN7
They use Bing ads. It’s really unfortunate - I’d love to help them and
advertise with them, but 99% of my ads will show on Bing and its other
properties, which is not what I want to support.

~~~
takeda
Won't try to justify that Microsoft is no longer as bad as it was in 90s, but
IMO Google needs competition.

TBH I miss 90s and early 00s when we had many search engines to choose from.
They were only helping using the Internet instead changing it to make it more
profitable for themselves.

------
tlack
I've been working on a search engine as well. It's screen shot based. That's
how frustrated I am using Goog!

Very buggy and can't take much load, but check it out:
[https://glorp.co/Search/Hacker%20News](https://glorp.co/Search/Hacker%20News)

------
helph67
I have been using DDG instead of Google but recently became aware of StartPage
[https://www.startpage.com/](https://www.startpage.com/) They state they pay
Google for their searches but don't track you.

------
sizzle
DDG loads painfully slow on Android chrome browser compared to Google search
for me. Does anyone know if this is deliberate on Google part? Is there a way
to speed up DDG search? I'm using a vpn ad blocker, I wonder if it's something
in my host file...

~~~
HeadsUpHigh
Works fine on me. Might be device specific.

------
Normal_gaussian
I've been using DDG for a year on my desktop, 6 mo. on phone and laptop, 1 mo.
at work.

I don't get the people that are claiming worse results from DDG than google -
the only thing I can think is that we write our searches differently. But that
seems a long shot.

~~~
thebigspacefuck
I've never noticed an issue with it except for things where Google has a
specific app for the results, like Google Maps, flights, or reviews. Yelp and
Apple Maps are no contest for Google Maps. I can type !g but that's not
intuitive to most users. I'm also not sure I get as much benefit since I'm
using Google for those things anyway.

------
hi41
There are some queries that governments would be very interested in knowing
who did it. As an example could be the query how to make bomb. Does DuckDuckGo
hand over this information to government agencies? Information such as ip
address, user if etc?

~~~
stjohnswarts
they don't keep logs so it's impossible for them to turn over your search
history and ip address

------
tagawa
> I seriously don't know what kind of usage DuckDuckGo has right now

Still growing, thankfully. We make our search traffic public here:

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

------
rmtech
Anecdotally I tried DuckDuckGo and found it really irritating. It is just a
bad search engine and seems to not be very good at finding what you need
unless what you need is something very common.

Surprisingly, Google seems to listen to what you actually type.

------
akarki15
"You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain"

100% sure any Google alternative is going to be equally "morally bad" if not
worse once it gets even 1% of Google's traffic.

------
viach
Do you know that DDG is just a sophisticated proxy to another search engine
under the hood, which probably has even lower standards for privacy than
Google and using DDG you indirectly support it?

~~~
StevePerkins
Well, yeah... hence the point of a proxy.

------
omerh
My default search engine for more than a year. Mobile and desktop, rarely I
use !g bang.

Also, dns are 1.1.1.1 / 1.1.0.0 Browsers are ff and safari. Email is
ProtonMail.

------
temp
If it offered results that even began to resemble relevance, I would, but
Google's the only one covering my country's market with good results.

------
cpv
Aside from DDG, can anyone say anything about other available alternatives,
like startpage.com, lite.qwant.com or searchencrypt.com?

------
akvadrako
I can't stand DDG because it doesn't have a verbatim mode; I end up having to
wrap every word in quotes.

------
toncontact
Let’s start using DuckDuckGo all the time.

------
jeromegv
Started last week. So far so good.

------
ddffre
I started using it recently, but it doesn't feel as comfortable as google for
me.

------
linuxlizard
I switched to DDG a few months ago. I've found it to meet my needs quite well.

------
maverickmax90
startpage.com

Way better in search and privacy

~~~
detaro
In what way is it better in privacy?

~~~
octosphere
[https://www.startpage.com/en/search/privacy-
policy.html](https://www.startpage.com/en/search/privacy-policy.html)

~~~
kitotik
They use AdWords. This seems like a lateral jump from DDG.

------
cvnyw
I've been using it for a few months and I find myself using !g for like 4 out
of 5 requests. Also image search is VERY slow, images load like in a
slideshow. I'll end up going back to Google.

I like the idea of DDG and I have a strong dislike for Google but DDG is
simply not there yet. Having said that it's better than it was five years ago,
when it was simply insufferable. So, maybe in five years? ;)

~~~
pseudoramble
In my experience, I've been using it for a few years now and I've maybe used
!g 4 or 5 times total in the past couple of years. I find the performance of
image searches just fine myself. So it's always fascinating to see that people
report such different experiences with DDG.

It's hard to know for sure what's happening though. Maybe my searches are just
very simple and don't need anything complex? Maybe I'm luckier and always have
fast internet connections? Maybe it's some other factor I'm not thinking of?
Who knows without trying to come up with a more systematic way to compare
things.

~~~
ravenstine
I alsmost never need !s or !g, and I tend to find what I'm looking for. Most
of my searches tend to be related to coding, so it just could be that DDG is
particularly good at those queries, but I still wonder what exactly it is that
people are finding on Google that isn't on DDG. And I used to be one of those
people who thought DDG was lousy.

~~~
takeda
Same, I think it might be something psychological like being used to the
Google page.

------
haunter
Is the moral basis enough to use an inferior product? So just because Google
is "bad" does it make ok to use an inferior product? How does that help me as
an end user?

OP's only argument (Google is bad so use DDG) is not really convincing tbh

~~~
takeda
I guess it depends on someone's morals.

If a company does something you disagree with, but you still support them,
because it's inconvenient not to it means you are ok with it.

Sorry for getting politics into it, but I see people complaining about current
situation, but also don't want to move their assess to protest, because it is
inconvenient to do so. Well duh, if you don't want to put an effort, because
it would inconvenience you, then you deserve what you are getting.

