
Why I Switched to Duck Duck Go Permanently - NathanKP
http://www.bookflavor.com/blog/2010/12/duck-duck-go-has-added-bookflavor-bang-syntax/
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NathanKP
Just for everyone's notification Bookflavor is currently not delivering any
book results. I am aware of this. Unfortunately it is because this post
received considerably more attention than I originally expected and the API
usage limits of 2000 requests per hour have been reached.

Edit: The service is back now. I'm working on a better caching solution to
lower the number of hits on the API.

Edit #2: Okay, I have a more permanent solution. Bookflavor now serializes and
caches API responses locally, then hits the cache and unserializes them if
possible rather than hitting the Amazon API. Hopefully it won't exceed the
limits this hour. Another advantage is that hitting the local disk cache is
much faster than communicating with Amazon's servers.

Thanks for helping me load test Bookflavor everyone!

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burgerbrain
I really wish I could do this, but Duck Duck Go really just seems subpar when
it comes to anything I actually still use a search engine for these days
(technical searches).

A better solution for my use case is to 1) avoid search engines where possible
(far easier than you might initially think) and 2) just use googlesharing with
ssl to provide myself with some anonymity while using google.

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epi0Bauqu
That's curious because I really have been working hard to get it much better
for technical searches, and I often get the opposite report (that it's better
for those with integrated SO , less content farms, other zero-click &
goodies). I guess it varies by specific type though. In any case, I'd really
appreciate specific examples so I can improve!

~~~
burgerbrain
Specifically I generally search error strings, and expect to get relevant
links to archived mailing lists.

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epi0Bauqu
Gotcha. I would love to do more with 0-click there. Does anyone know of any
good/great listings or search engines for error strings?

~~~
faboo
I occasionally use <http://www.errorhelp.com/> \- it's a database of error
messages and (hopefully) their fixes.

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duck
_Permanently_ \- is that still a word on the Internet?

~~~
wwortiz
For short periods of time.

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SageRaven
As much as I love DDG, I personally find it a hard pill to swallow knowing
that it's not truly an independent search engine and just an API relay of
Google's stuff. I do take comfort that Google isn't getting data from 90% of
my online searches, but it would be awesome to know that DDG was truly its own
entity and won't be cut off for some reason in the future, like we've seen
with Scroogle (which, I believe, was mostly due to API changes, not ToS
violations).

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streety
My understanding is that duckduckgo uses Bing rather than google (mentioned in
the comments at [http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2009/03/duck-duck-go-
arc...](http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2009/03/duck-duck-go-
architecture.html)). Although that doesn't alter the validity of your concern.

~~~
SageRaven
My bad, then. All this time I thought Google was the back end.

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jesusabdullah
I love DDG. I will point out one thing, though: Searching for LaTeX stuff
works better in The Google atm.

For example, compare these results for something I looked into recently:

<http://duckduckgo.com/?q=latex+flipbook>

[http://www.google.com/search?sclient=psy&hl=en&site=...](http://www.google.com/search?sclient=psy&hl=en&site=&source=hp&q=latex+flipbook&btnG=Google+Search)

(Oh, if only I wanted fetish gear...)

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inovica
I would love to make the switch as I love their philosophy and have been a
follower since they started, however the results I get when I search are below
par to what I receive with Google (for example). I keep trying and I will
continue to keep trying.

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util
"I prefer to uses dashes rather than %20 as it looks cleaner and is more
easily understood by the non-technically versed visitor."

Isn't "+" the standard alternative, also pretty readable?

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johanhil
Yes, + is definitely more common. Do non-technically versed visitors know
and/or care about the different parts of a URL?

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jawee
If you glance up at a URL and see a bunch of %20 it's going to just look like
a mess, whereas seeing a short and relevant URL makes sense.

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bcrawl
DDG and Blekko definitely have a place besides google, bing and yahoo. One
must appreciate Gabriel for his commitment to include BookFlavor. But on the
other hand, I thought the article was pretty lame. Author did not give any
convincing reason why he switched. Except, Gabriel was kind to him. Maybe he
should investigate what DDG really has to offer and how it can maybe help him
in his daily searches before committing to something as important as his daily
to go knowledge resource. I use DDG and google to search for specific
technical info. Google for obviously everything else. Simple as that.

~~~
kayhi
Perhaps this post reveals a different point:

Treat People Well > Do No Evil

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JoeAltmaier
I also switched. Its cleaner, maybe quicker, and not obnoxious.

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Tycho
I wonder, if DuckDuckGo really hit the bigtime, could it usher in a new age of
'verbose' or 'wordy' startups/.coms?

There's only so many flickrs, twittrs, readrs, peckrs, etc. that can be
registered as domain names. But a nonsense phrase of several words? Endless
opportunity

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jawee
I was trying to show somebody DuckDuckGo today and I could not even find it
with Google as the name had escaped me. In fact, all I could think of was Go
Dog Go. It has its disadvantages too.

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Tycho
i'm not so sure, i mean i once spent half an hour trying to find Joomla after
somebody told me about it. I was searching for similar words like doopla,
dupla, doopler, joomler, jumla. At least if you could remember 'DuckDuckGo'
you wouldn't have any trouble spelling it. Also when I think of TV adverts,
it's often the catchphrase i remember over the company/brand itself

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ianbishop
I have duck duck go integrated into my Chrome. Being able to do things like
type '? md5 blabla' and have it spit out a hash has been helpful. Other things
like integrated SO and Wikipedia help a lot too.

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kin
I use DDG strictly for technical searches. I've found that it makes
programming much faster vs Googling.

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gcb
ironically that was the reason i started using google back then.

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beefman
You can do this with just about any site you want* right from the address bar
of any modern browser.

* Dict.org, sadly not.

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sid0
Why I don't use DuckDuckGo: it's slow as hell for me. Google has servers here
in India, so its latency is less than 60ms. DuckDuckGo doesn't, so it takes
well above 350ms to respond.

