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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
I've been a user of the Duck Duck Go search engine for around a year now. The switch from Google was motivated partly by the quasy feeling I got when considering all the information Google would have on me through my searches, but also by Duck Duck Go's convenient ! bang shortcut feature. I'd say the ratio was about 7:3. Sometimes I have to fall back to Google using the !g option (especially since Duck Duck Go doesn't seem to support non-English queries for the time being), but overall I'm happy using it as my default search engine.
There have always been people who have taken the contrarian position to Google services, and had "opted out" of using any of them. I've given this some passing consideration, but haven't taken the leap (I certainly can't imagine ditching GMail at this moment). Of course there are some who have.
Originally, I think much of this opt-out motivation stemmed from their aversion to Google having control over all actions and information passing through their services. The earliest traces of this reaction can be traced to ads being served on GMail pages (meaning that Google was parsing our email to serve contextual ads).
This group was joined later by a camp of ex-users who were incensed at their favorite Google services being given the axe, Google Reader being the latest and most prominent example. If they couldn't count on Google continuing to support the varying products through good times then bad, these folks preferred to look for another option.
The latest wave of defectors has been catalyzed by the leak of the PRISM surveillance program run by the NSA. It's one thing for our friendly neighbors at Google to have access to all of our prized kitten photos, but having the NSA dog lovers hunt you down for your feline loving way of life would put things in a whole different level. Sites like PRISM Break have made it easy for us to take the first few steps in reducing the amount of surveillance hoisted upon our digital lives. Now of course, if various governments around the world are tapping into the backbone infrastructure of the Internet and are recording everything, this may all just be a drop in the bucket in extricating ourselves from this predicament. Maybe we all need to go take a few courses on cryptography.
I'm not sure where I stand in all of this. I happen to use many of the services recommended in PRISM Break (Ububtu OS, Thunderbird, Firefox, etc.), but that's because I am a fan and supporter of Open Source Software, not because I have a heightened sense of alarm against the NSA's activities. Google shutting down some of its products has been an annoyance from time to time (I'm definitely not satisfied with Feedly's UX compared to that of Google Reader), but I completely understand their decisions from a business perspective. Living a stone's throw away from their HQ tends to make you sympathetic to their cause (not unlike the Bay Area's rather absurd affection for Barry Bonds, of which I am certainly guilty).
My guess is that I'll start slowly moving away from Google and other 3rd party services as the years go on. Paying $20 a month for a Linode VPS has lowered my resistance towards paying for software services, so I can definitely see myself paying for any number of Google service replacements in the future (and besides, I like supporting smaller software dev shops, including indie game studios). I don't feel any rush at this moment though, and the only change I've made is in my choice of search engine.
It's good to have alternatives, if only for the reason that a non trivial secondary of tertiary player will keep the market leader a bit more honest than otherwise. At least in terms of Geek mindshare, Duck Duck Go seems to have captured our imagination much more than Bing ever did, by positioning itself as the search engine that won't track you no matter what. It currently handles about 3 million queries per day, which is nothing to scoff at. Its growth has been phenomenal.
Google has established its place within our lexicon and is now synonymous with online search. That grip it has on our minds through those 6 letters is a powerful force. It rolls off the tongue and pronouncing it is almost as easy as "search" itself. This sort of linguistic accessibility and cultural congealment shouldn't be seen lightly. It's a potent barrier for any competitors to gain a foothold in the battle for our minds in the search space.
"Duck Duck Go" isn't the tongue-friendliest phrase out there (though its childhood playground image probably helps give it an approachable and friendly air), but with just 3 syllables, it's manageable in speech. But the same cannot be said for keyboard friendliness. So I think I'll just abbreviate it to "DDG" when I write online. Who knows, maybe it'll catch on.
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Crossposted from here
 
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I like DDG but it its results are often not as good as Google's or even completely irrelevant which is why I'm really not able to make it my default engine yet.
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How much time did you lose configuring and getting used to the new software/sites? Would a weaker computer have a harder time running all of it together (that is my experience with FireFox and security addons alone), thus losing even more time?
I like to "power research", and frankly I just want all the information I just clicked on asap so I can finish it and read the next part asap. Is Ubuntu fast? Chrome is fast; google is fast. But a bunch of proxies and redirecting addons filtering running scripts and stopping scripts etc... That's not fast. I'm pretty sure all of this noticeably slows down "good" computers with "good" connections (even by today's standards).. right?
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I wouldn't worry about surveillance. Logistics says 99.99999999999999999% of what you put on the internet won't be tracked (granted you aren't a terrorist), scanned momentarily maybe but not tracked. If everything everybody did on the internet was tracked then NSA and such would need exabytes of storage for a days worth of tracking.
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What services (paid or not) are catching your eye that would replace their respective Google counterpart?
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I started using DDG when google stopped the "+" operator working as "AND" in searches. I still use google. Probably works out at about 50/50. Google scholar still comes in very handy for me, but I actually find it easier to use the "!scholar" bang in DDG than go to google and select a "scholar" search, even though google is still my default search engine (I never bothered to change it).
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On July 14 2013 02:38 Melliflue wrote:
I started using DDG when google stopped the "+" operator working as "AND" in searches.
..it doesn't do this anymore? What does it do then?
I feel so betrayed.
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GRAND OLD AMERICA16375 Posts
the best part of DDG is the ! feature, allowing you to filter searches efficiently
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On July 13 2013 22:19 ven wrote:
I like DDG but it its results are often not as good as Google's or even completely irrelevant which is why I'm really not able to make it my default engine yet.
you can !google to get encrypted google results, OR just use Startpage.com.
DuckDuckGo uses Bing and Startpage uses google
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On July 13 2013 22:23 Mr. PotatoHead wrote:
How much time did you lose configuring and getting used to the new software/sites? Would a weaker computer have a harder time running all of it together (that is my experience with FireFox and security addons alone), thus losing even more time?
I like to "power research", and frankly I just want all the information I just clicked on asap so I can finish it and read the next part asap. Is Ubuntu fast? Chrome is fast; google is fast. But a bunch of proxies and redirecting addons filtering running scripts and stopping scripts etc... That's not fast. I'm pretty sure all of this noticeably slows down "good" computers with "good" connections (even by today's standards).. right?
Yes it's nothing for the average user. But there is alot of missinformation and fear of something that is not windows. Firefox outperforms chrome atm, Startpage.com is doing what duckduckgo is doing, but with google results. the list goes on, most of the time you dont need to learn anything new.
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On July 14 2013 06:21 Dagobert wrote:
Duck it.
Let me duck that for you.
Ubuntu is way better than it used to be. I wouldn't bother playing games on it, but for everything else it's cool and if you do any programing you kind of need it.
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On July 14 2013 09:11 Chef wrote:Let me duck that for you. Ubuntu is way better than it used to be. I wouldn't bother playing games on it, but for everything else it's cool and if you do any programing you kind of need it.
Why would i need ubuntu for programming?
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I never google while being logged in. And about saving history related to my IP(s), any other search engine could do that and no matter what they declare you can't know if they don't do that.
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I would just like to note I tried DDG for a search because of this article, and the first thing that came to my mind was "Banana Party," and this was the first result:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Banana Party
when men pull down their pants and wiggle around their penises, usually in a group
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Well, i decided to try it out, and as i did, I almosted "googled" duck duck go out of habit... Makes me think i need to switch or something!
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"Duck It" has a much nicer ring to it than Dee Dee Gee It
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Real question is; what is deadhaji looking up that he doesn't want google knowing?
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On July 14 2013 08:18 green.at wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2013 22:19 ven wrote:
I like DDG but it its results are often not as good as Google's or even completely irrelevant which is why I'm really not able to make it my default engine yet. you can !google to get encrypted google results, OR just use Startpage.com. DuckDuckGo uses Bing and Startpage uses google
Startpage.com is a proxy service in front of Google basically, not a real search engine.
It's also good at not giving you results based on the ip/country you're in which is pretty cool. How many times did i get redirected from google.com to google.com.hk and ended up with results i couldn't even read. My browser is setup to request en-us for those wondering, but they don't care. Bing does the same.
[edit] i checked google and there's a link to switch it to english now, at least on the HK version. still a pain to load from China (except with a vpn)
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On July 14 2013 18:35 ulan-bat wrote:Show nested quote +On July 14 2013 08:18 green.at wrote:On July 13 2013 22:19 ven wrote:
I like DDG but it its results are often not as good as Google's or even completely irrelevant which is why I'm really not able to make it my default engine yet. you can !google to get encrypted google results, OR just use Startpage.com. DuckDuckGo uses Bing and Startpage uses google Startpage.com is a proxy service in front of Google basically, not a real search engine. It's also good at not giving you results based on the ip/country you're in which is pretty cool. How many times did i get redirected from google.com to google.com.hk and ended up with results i couldn't even read. My browser is setup to request en-us for those wondering, but they don't care. Bing does the same. [edit] i checked google and there's a link to switch it to english now, at least on the HK version. still a pain to load from China (except with a vpn)
Yes, and DuckDuckGo is doing the same with Bing, thats why a lot of people complain about "inferior results".
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On July 14 2013 03:56 gillon wrote:Show nested quote +On July 14 2013 02:38 Melliflue wrote:
I started using DDG when google stopped the "+" operator working as "AND" in searches. ..it doesn't do this anymore? What does it do then? I feel so betrayed.
It may have changed again but about the time Google+ was released/announced (I forget which) they stopped the "+" operator from working, it would just ignore the "+" symbol. It only really made a difference when I was trying to search for something specific and obscure, because google would put up less relevant but more popular results first, and I couldn't tell google which words were necessary and which were only helpful in trying to find what I wanted.
The rumour was that Google wanted to keep "+" for its Google+ stuff and so didn't want it used as "AND". Apparently the way to do +word now is to put it in quotation marks. Eg if you wanted to search for
+black +white
you would now have to search for
"black" "white"
which is somewhat cumbersome. It also means that anything in quotation marks is deemed necessary in the search results, whereas I am sure it used to be just that it would look for the term and not the individual words, but you would still be able to make it necessary by doing +"some expression".
But I got used to DuckDuckGo so I don't remember how to use google search operators properly.
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I prefer startpage a lot over DDG. You can view webpages by the builtin ixquick proxy, and you can utilize the useful google search engine without any worries since it's not based in USA like DDG is.
The bang features of DDG are useful though. Just not enough for me to switch from startpage :p
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
On July 14 2013 03:56 gillon wrote:Show nested quote +On July 14 2013 02:38 Melliflue wrote:
I started using DDG when google stopped the "+" operator working as "AND" in searches. ..it doesn't do this anymore? What does it do then? I feel so betrayed.
It was replaced for some Google+ bs
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meh. The government can have all my porn. Its a good stash. I hope they enjoy it.
I just can't be bothered to worry about uncle sam spying on me. Not a good attitude to have, but from the logistics side of it... one of the best things about the internet is that its so open. Double edged sword yeah?
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EPT
