

DuckDuckGo implements HTTPS Everywhere - ecaron
http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/09/duckduckgo-implements-https-everywhere.html

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mgkimsal
"rubbish. I thought maybe it would "quack" whilst searching, but it does
nothing (other than find what I'm looking for)."

My wife's reaction to duckduckgo.

Just wanted to get it out there for posterity :)

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pavs
I think the name is the only thing that is wrong with DDG.

Another thing, I personally don't feel quite right about using a search engine
that relies quite heavily on other search engines to give results. From what I
understand DDG is not a search engine in the same sense Google or Bing is a
search engine (pls correct me if I am wrong).

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epi0Bauqu
It's a hybrid engine. I do my own crawling and indexing in addition to relying
on external APIs. For the APIs I use, I've built a lot of relevancy and other
logic on top of them so they often don't look the same as if you'd query them
directly.

I started out exclusively with my own stuff, and then started using BOSS when
it came out so I could focus on what I think are my value-adds. Now I use a
bunch of stuff (including my own). My approach is to just be a better search
engine. If an API does something awesome, e.g. WolframAlpha or embed.ly, I
figure why not use it.

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pavs
Do you think in the future you might exclusively use your own index and not be
depended on others?

Let's say hypothetically tomorrow, all the search API you rely on, decides to
cut you off, what then? How good is your own index by itself?

Just to be clear, I am not dissing on you, it takes a lot of gutso to take on
search engine market alone, I applaud you for that, I don't see myself having
that much guts to do it. I am trying to be realist about the meta-hybrid-
search engine.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
I treat the deep Web search APIs as essentially commodities of the link graph.
I was able to seamlessly switch between BOSS and Bing without anyone noticing.
And there are several others I can use as well. So I don't feel much danger
here. And now that BOSS is going to charge, I feel even less danger because it
is turning into a real product.

My index is not usable in this fashion. I've re-purposed it mainly for 0-click
and for spam removal.

Frankly though, I don't see why this comes up so much. Infospace is a public
company that relies on other indexes pretty much exclusively. In other
verticals, people routinely use more exclusive platforms, e.g. Twitter or
Facebook or banking stuff.

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aantix
I tried DDG for a week as my search engine. The search result quality was
definitely on par with Google, the two biggest factors for switching back :

1) Google's "Did you mean?" appears to be a bit smarter and corrected more of
my obscure searches than DDG. Wish I had recorded a couple of concrete
examples to pass on, but they escape me at the moment.

2) Speed. Google returns results faster (at least on the days I was using
DDG). Apparently my brain is use to sub-second search results because anything
longer than that can feel like an eternity.

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epi0Bauqu
Thx. Recently I've made a lot of improvements to #1. Of course, specific
examples are always super helpful to improve it further.

#2 varies a lot depending on location and network. Unfortunately I still don't
have a lot of geographically distributed servers.

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_delirium
For me at least, #2 seems most often to have something to do with fetching the
results themselves, rather than the network between me and DDG delaying the
initial pageload. The results _page_ will load very quickly (the
header/sidebar, sometimes the zero-click results or disambiguation results),
but then there's a very noticeable delay before the regular results get AJAX-
loaded.

(It is true that the the better DDG is at getting me the zero-click kinds of
results, the less of a problem this is.)

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MikeCapone
DDG is currently my main search engine. I've tried it for a few days a couple
times in the past, but now I'm trying to give it more time - at least a couple
weeks - to see if it grows enough on me to replace Google.

I'm finding myself using the "!g" command a lot to double-check results on
Google, and I'm definitely noticing the speed difference with Google. But
overall, I'd say that it's almost on par with Google for my searches.

Some things that would make me like it more:

-A bit more speed.

-A way in the settings to decide between using Yahoo News or Google News (that link in the sidebar on the right), same thing for images (google images or bing images) and maps.

-Some way to highlight the most likely or most popular result when the disambiguation page is very long (maybe just subtly point out which result is clicked on more often?).

-A way to personalize the DDG homepage with a couple of personal links (for those who use it as a browser homepage -- you could add a link to GMail or whatever, so that it even more seamlessly replaces Google).

I can see some pros and cons to all these suggestions (except more speed), but
I figured I'd just throw them out there.

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epi0Bauqu
Thx for the ideas--some really good stuff in here. Some quick responses to
your 1-4.

#1 always working on more speed--it's been a priority and will continue to be
so.

#2 planning on ditching that sidebar. Check out <http://duck.co/topic/new-ddg-
header> \-- would love your thoughts.

#3 this is definitely needed and in process. It's half implemented now but is
hit or miss for sure.

#4 many people have requested different variations of this, e.g. as far as
iGoogle, but a few links would be cool.

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MikeCapone
#2 I might be missing something, but is there a way to do a quick image or
news or map search with that new format without the sidebar? If there is, I
couldn't find it quickly.

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epi0Bauqu
Yup, the new format (idea) would have a drop down right next to the search
button where you would be able to select maps or images (just not in that
prototype). You could still of course also precede or end your search with !m
or !i for maps or images. What do you think?

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wazoox
DuckDuckGo is absolutely awesome. The only annoyance is that it completely
sucks at non-english searches, but for programming related stuff it's really
cool.

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bcl
I continue to be impressed both by DDG's search results and by its dedication
to privacy and security. Seems like a great way to celebrate their 2nd
anniversary.

