Haven't used GS in years. In many cases, substring-matching is a far superior search tool. Multiple reasons it might not be available (cycles for one), but it'd be great to have a second, 'advanced search' layer (like e.g. archive.org and worldcat have) available.
Agreed that DDG's 'helpful guesses about what you're looking for' generate about 50% bad results when you know EXACTLY what you want, and so you're stuck shaping your terms with pluses, quotes and minuses. Price to pay to avoid Google worth it to me.
You know what, you nailed it. I do not want helpful guesses from a machine. :) I liked them better when garbage in made garbage out and people knew not to trust the machine blindly.
Wow. I didn't notice it happening, but I've become previous-gen tech...
Agreed that DDG's 'helpful guesses about what you're looking for' generate about 50% bad results when you know EXACTLY what you want, and so you're stuck shaping your terms with pluses, quotes and minuses. Price to pay to avoid Google worth it to me.