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Recently switched over to DuckDuckGo on all my devices. Tried to do the same thing several years ago and found it didn't really work out, but this time around i

Recently switched over to DuckDuckGo on all my devices. Tried to do the same thing several years ago and found it didn't really work out, but this time around it is so much better, both when it comes to speed and results. If anyone has doubts because they tried it years ago, I'd say go for it again.

jstanley 9y ago
Same story here. And since I regularly browse via a Digital Ocean VM, the lack of CAPTCHAs on DuckDuckGo is refreshing as well.
- sethrin 9y ago
  > And since I regularly browse via a Digital Ocean VM If you don't mind my asking, why? And by which method do you usually accomplish this? Edit: Thanks for explaining the CAPTCHA issue.
  - SCHiM 9y ago
    Why? Maybe he/she wants to bypass data collection in his/her country. Or desires more privacy, or something else. How? ssh -D 8080 digital-ocean-vm-here.tld Now port 8080 on your local machine is a socks proxy for your vm. Google is really tor/proxy/anonymous user unfriendly. Requiring users to solve as many as four or five CAPTCHAs (seriously fuck you google).
    - dx034 9y ago
      > Google is really tor/proxy/anonymous user unfriendly. Requiring users to solve as many as four or five CAPTCHAs (seriously fuck you google). They're like this for a reason. They didn't implement complex detection of proxies to annoy users. Just to keep everyone out who's not supposed to use their search.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - striking 9y ago
        Yeah, people like to try and crawl Google. So they're keeping robots out. But it's actually really nice to be able to pull a result or two from ddg by crawling, or to be able to use a VPN without having to solve a zillion captcha.
        Steeeve 9y ago
        I run into those captcha's occasionally and generally reconnecting to a different VPN makes them go away. I always assume they are tied to bot activity coming through the same IP or range. I've scraped google in the past (years and years ago) and from what I recall you end up hitting the captchas after a set number of results in too short a period. Back then it was a pretty standard SEO activity, but it's usefulness was minimized when google started localizing results.
      - kuschku 9y ago
        Which is funny, because those people can easily circumvent these measures, and crawl Google anyway. The only one hurt are the users.
  - r3bl 9y ago
    > And what do the CAPTCHAs have to do with it? Have you ever tried using Google's search over a VPN / Tor / public proxy? They're even worse than Cloudflare was with their CAPTCHAs). > Why? Probably to avoid fuckery by the local ISP and/or government. > And how? I'm assuming he meant OpenVPN or something, but I might be wrong.
- morganvachon 9y ago
  "And since I regularly browse via a Digital Ocean VM" Do you mean using a DO VM as a VPN, or via X11 forwarding to your desktop over SSH, or actually browsing on the DO VM's desktop using VNC? I've done all three in the past as experiments in private browsing, and the latter is too laggy to be comfortable.
  - jstanley 9y ago
    The first one.
NaliSauce 9y ago
Out of interest: what is the reason/are the reasons that made you switch?
- Lifesnoozer 9y ago
  I started feeling like I had all my eggs in the same basket. Google has my email, it knows where I want to go and when (Google Maps), it translates stuff for me, and it knows what I search for. While it doesn't really affect me that Google has all this information, I've become more and more uncomfortable with the fact that they do. So I figured if I had a choice of two search engines, where I get satisfying results in both of them, and one of them doesn't track me, why go for the one that tracks me? I'd gladly do the same switch when it comes to Gmail, but I really really like Gmail's web interface, haven't gotten over that hurdle yet. EDIT: I also switched from Google Chrome for pretty much the same reasons.
  - louhike 9y ago
    You went from Chrome to Firefox?
    - Lifesnoozer 9y ago
      Safari at the moment but thinking about going to Firefox
      - logan5 9y ago
        I switched from Chrome to Brave a few months ago. https://www.brave.com/ https://www.brave.com/
        dreen 9y ago
        Been using Brave on mobile and it's great, but the UI layout on desktop is awkward so I don't use it there.
        MistahKoala 9y ago
mattmanser 9y ago
I've been using it for the last 6 months. The problem is, whenever you can't find something in DDG, you assume it's because it's DDG, and search again with !g. Meaning I end up requerying 40% or so of my searches using !g (prefixing your query with !g redirects your query from DDG to encrypted google) Here's some example queries I ended up !g yesterday that had much better results in google than DDG: reduce kendo javascript file size - For me, the useful result was number 2 in google. In DDG it was number 11 ("Only What You Need | Kendo UI Getting Started"). ptr overwatch - PTR is the test patch of the game overwatch. It's regularly changed. The correct result "Overwatch PTR Now Available - August 29, 2017" is number 1 in google, in DDG the blog post August 12th is not available (well, correct from my perspective) I tend to find anything speculative DDG is fairly terrible at. For example yesterday I was googling about trying to identify the source of some weird animation CPU cycles I was seeing in Chrome Performance Profiler, I didn't really get to the bottom of it, but I ended up ditching DDG and doing all the queries in google because I would otherwise have ended up searching everything twice. I'm also getting quite frustrated with the "instant answer" functionality, it's generally terrible. One of the most annoying ones is the SO instant answer that just utterly sucks, you can't see the code, it usually cuts anything useful in half, and takes up a HUGE amount of space meaning on a laptop you've got to scroll to start seeing the results. I just want to be able to turn it off, but because they don't track you they don't offer that functionality. Also the maps one is really bad. I almost always want directions, but clicking the map takes me to a really nonfunctional, bare-bones map that doesn't have directions and then I have to click another button to actually get the directions. There's a drop down where you can choose your map type, but it definitely doesn't work as expected, I just want it to always embed a google maps instead of whatever they're doing. Basically UX ain't DDG's strong point. Ironically, if you DDG: "turn off certain instant answers duckduckgo" it comes up with terrible search results and no answer. If you "!g turn off certain instant answers duckduckgo", the top result is at least relevant. I also find the entire bang thing to be a gimmick. Who wants to use !r when !g with "reddit" at the end will always get you better search results, reddit's own search is abysmal (as is !so). EDIT: I'm being overly negative, after all, I haven't actually switched back, like I did last time I tried to use DDG. So it's definitely worth a go, but I don't think it's ready for your Mum to use. Also, I have Bing on my phone's Chrome to avoid AMP, and it's actually quite good.
blisterpeanuts 9y ago
Ditto, for the past month or two. I'd love to get off of Gmail and Google drive, as well, but that's a longer term project. Main reason: concerns about tracking and privacy. Secondarily: politics. DDG so far has been acceptable. As long as they keep their political opinions to themselves, the honeymoon will continue. My love affair with Google, on the other hand, is over. :(
- AdamSC1 9y ago
  Email is a tough one, but I've been using FastMail. No advertising, strong privacy policy, based in Australia (a country with a decent privacy track record that we know of). It's $3/month which is a decent price for liberating a lot of data from advertisers. The spam filter is playing catch-up to Google so that's a bit of a shock at first, but you can train it up well or use second layer measures like Sanebox. Disclaimer: DDG staff - but personal opinion.
- Zekio 9y ago
  If you don't send a lot of emails but receive a lot and need many aliases you might wanna check out https://migadu.com https://migadu.com
- criddell 9y ago
  > concerns about tracking and privacy When DDG shows an ad, is there no tracking involved in that? For example, if I were to click on an ad (after turning my ad blocker off), does the destination site not get any information about me or specifically what I searched for?
benbenhu 9y ago
And don't forget to use the bangs that can allow you to check other engines results fast if you need. For people afraid of getting off google, you can always search something like '!g my-search', it works the same for youtube(!yt), google image(!gi), or even hackernews(!hn) And of course the best bang is the 'I am feeling lucky' one (!), i.e.: 'hackernews !'
- Fiaxhs 9y ago
  It's worth noting that the !g bang redirects you to encrypted.google.com, it's more secure but results are often different from a regular www.google.com search. It bugged me for a while not knowing why some queries returned unusual results. ( more here https://duck.co/forum/thread/2880/remove-the-encrypted-subdomain-for-google-bang https://duck.co/forum/thread/2880/remove-the-encrypted-subdo... )
  - sd8dgf8ds8g8dsg 9y ago
    www.google.com uses encryption too these days. You are linking to a ~5 year old thread that is discussing the state of things well before google switched everything over to ssl.
    - thisacctforreal 9y ago
      For a while I believe the difference was specifically that encrypted.google.com exclusively used PFS SSL cipher suites
  - inetknght 9y ago
    > linking to encrypted.google.com not only is not necessary but it prevents local search results from being displayed. e.g. no google.ro search results, only google.com I can only see this as a good thing. If I want local search results, I'll add local qualifiers like "USA", "Texas", "Houston"
    - stefantheard 9y ago
otakucode 9y ago
I've had DDG as my primary search engine for I'd guess at least 5 years if not more. It's extremely rare that I ever need to use anything else. I do wish there was a way to tell Yummly to go to hell whenever I search for recipes, though.
- tqkxzugoaupvwqr 9y ago
  You can exclude keywords by using the minus sign, e.g. “-yummly”. This excludes all search results that contain yummly.
- james_pm 9y ago
  I saw this feature request submitted the other day via the subreddit. Here's hoping! https://www.reddit.com/r/duckduckgo/comments/70rent/enhancement_feature_as_a_user_i_want_to/ https://www.reddit.com/r/duckduckgo/comments/70rent/enhancem...
- SevereOverfl0w 9y ago
  I use this script to hide domains I hate from search results: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/1682-google-hit-hider-by-domain-search-filter-block-sites https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/1682-google-hit-hider-by-d... (Title is google, but works for ddg amongst other things also)
grepthisab 9y ago
Same here. Tried a while back and didn't really take. I found myself Googling most things after DDG'ing them. Tried again recently because I love the mission, and it's working much better. Usually what I want is in the top few results, although Google still does a bit better with search result quality. I see myself using it as my main search engine at this point.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- graphitezepp 9y ago
  I only miss google as a DDG user when DDG doesn't have a tool google has to give you an automatic result, i.e. when trying to look up some unit conversion ratio like lb to kg. But when you know that is what you want there is always !g.
  - AdamSC1 9y ago
    Hey graphitezepp, We do have some of those tools, at DuckDuckGo they are called "Instant Answers." For example the query: "2 lb to kg" will bring you to this results page https://duckduckgo.com/?q=2+lb+to+kg&ia=answer https://duckduckgo.com/?q=2+lb+to+kg&ia=answer You can see all our Instant Answers here: https://duck.co/ia https://duck.co/ia If something isn't triggering for you - let us know with the feedback tool on the site! Disclaimer: DDG staff.
    - thehashrocket 9y ago
      If you could get a "within the past year" search filter it would make me the happiest developer in the world. :)
      - autotypo 9y ago
        And a CC-filtered image search.
      - crusty 9y ago
pingec 9y ago
I would be very interested in reading on how to best do the migration on various devices, for example Chrome on desktop, Chrome on Android etc.
mitja_belak 9y ago
Same here. They used to be fringe back then, now they are quite reliant for everything that isnt really overly specific.
segmondy 9y ago
I did the same too 2 months. If I can't it, I'll give yahoo and bing a chance first before Google. There really hasn't been much that I can't find with the first 3.
mattkevan 9y ago
Recently switched to DDG on my devices and I’m impressed with how much better it is than when I tried a few years ago.
kronos29296 9y ago
It is quite for common things but searching uncommon ones always throws it off. Searching for research publications in a specific domain or just haskell or some thing like just returns 1good result with 10 bad ones. So I use !g for those. Also the autocorrect really throws my search terms off while Google does is right most of the time.
- barrkel 9y ago
  Interesting: autocorrect on Google is almost always wrong for me. Every day, I need to add quotes to maybe 20 of my search queries.
  - kronos29296 9y ago
    Interestingly ddg requires quotes for me atleast twice a day. Still I have to use Google for stuff like Google scholar. So !g is pretty common for me.
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  If you're searching for scholarly material: !scholar <terms>
RUG3Y 9y ago
Same here. Two years ago DDG just wasn't cutting it. Today, I'm just fine with it. I especially like how programming questions usually provide a top result from Stack Overflow, a lot of times I don't even need to click the link to see the answer I'm looking for.
- artem_dev 9y ago
  Actually Google provides the top programming answers from SO, Quora etc places. DDG just uses this.
whataretensors 9y ago
I actually find myself going to DDG after searching on devices that default to Google. The results are much better for a lot of different things. They even have a cryptocurrency tab.
Steeeve 9y ago
I use it as my default, and I find that at least once a day I ad a g! to my query to go to the google results. I started maybe a month and a half ago and at this point I have a decent instinct as to when I'm going to need to go to google. The privacy aspect was the driver for me, but it wasn't enough to make the switch all this time. The privacy aspect coupled with an easy way to get google results when I need them is. While I've known they had the bang queries for a long time, it was actually a youtube search result that finally made me shift. I forget what it was, but I was searching for something for my kids and it looked like my activity had polluted the results. That has been a problem for quite some time and this particular instance was enough for me to make the change. It was a harmless, but I really don't like the idea that my activity will potentially bleed into that of my family, and frankly I get irritated when their activity bleeds into mine. DuckDuckGo doesn't replace youtube search, but it was more of the general principal. I tried working with different accounts over the years, but it's not easy to switch on all platforms and if you've ever tried entering a 60 character password on a playstation, you know why that's a non-starter.
usuallymatt 9y ago
Same here. Had always switched back but this time I'm almost 1 month into using DDG and have no desire to go back.
mattlondon 9y ago
+1 I also tried it a few years ago but was disappointed by the speed - at a time when the google search responses came back "instantly", the latency of DDG was noticeable and not good-enough. Fast forward to 2017 and that appears to have been solved and the results are as fast as google are from what my brain/eyes can tell anyway - I would not be surprised to find out that google was faster if you timed it. In the past 6+ months I've been using DDG, I've only ever found the need to switch back to google once (and that was image search)
SilvaR 9y ago
Have they since reduced their dependency on Bing for search results? I feel that, while that's the case, there is no point in switching.

jstanley 9y ago

Same story here. And since I regularly browse via a Digital Ocean VM, the lack of CAPTCHAs on DuckDuckGo is refreshing as well.

sethrin 9y ago
> And since I regularly browse via a Digital Ocean VM If you don't mind my asking, why? And by which method do you usually accomplish this? Edit: Thanks for explaining the CAPTCHA issue.
- SCHiM 9y ago
  Why? Maybe he/she wants to bypass data collection in his/her country. Or desires more privacy, or something else. How? ssh -D 8080 digital-ocean-vm-here.tld Now port 8080 on your local machine is a socks proxy for your vm. Google is really tor/proxy/anonymous user unfriendly. Requiring users to solve as many as four or five CAPTCHAs (seriously fuck you google).
  - dx034 9y ago
    > Google is really tor/proxy/anonymous user unfriendly. Requiring users to solve as many as four or five CAPTCHAs (seriously fuck you google). They're like this for a reason. They didn't implement complex detection of proxies to annoy users. Just to keep everyone out who's not supposed to use their search.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - striking 9y ago
      Yeah, people like to try and crawl Google. So they're keeping robots out. But it's actually really nice to be able to pull a result or two from ddg by crawling, or to be able to use a VPN without having to solve a zillion captcha.
      - Steeeve 9y ago
        I run into those captcha's occasionally and generally reconnecting to a different VPN makes them go away. I always assume they are tied to bot activity coming through the same IP or range. I've scraped google in the past (years and years ago) and from what I recall you end up hitting the captchas after a set number of results in too short a period. Back then it was a pretty standard SEO activity, but it's usefulness was minimized when google started localizing results.
    - kuschku 9y ago
      Which is funny, because those people can easily circumvent these measures, and crawl Google anyway. The only one hurt are the users.
- r3bl 9y ago
  > And what do the CAPTCHAs have to do with it? Have you ever tried using Google's search over a VPN / Tor / public proxy? They're even worse than Cloudflare was with their CAPTCHAs). > Why? Probably to avoid fuckery by the local ISP and/or government. > And how? I'm assuming he meant OpenVPN or something, but I might be wrong.
morganvachon 9y ago
"And since I regularly browse via a Digital Ocean VM" Do you mean using a DO VM as a VPN, or via X11 forwarding to your desktop over SSH, or actually browsing on the DO VM's desktop using VNC? I've done all three in the past as experiments in private browsing, and the latter is too laggy to be comfortable.
- jstanley 9y ago
  The first one.

NaliSauce 9y ago

Out of interest: what is the reason/are the reasons that made you switch?

Lifesnoozer 9y ago
I started feeling like I had all my eggs in the same basket. Google has my email, it knows where I want to go and when (Google Maps), it translates stuff for me, and it knows what I search for. While it doesn't really affect me that Google has all this information, I've become more and more uncomfortable with the fact that they do. So I figured if I had a choice of two search engines, where I get satisfying results in both of them, and one of them doesn't track me, why go for the one that tracks me? I'd gladly do the same switch when it comes to Gmail, but I really really like Gmail's web interface, haven't gotten over that hurdle yet. EDIT: I also switched from Google Chrome for pretty much the same reasons.
- louhike 9y ago
  You went from Chrome to Firefox?
  - Lifesnoozer 9y ago
    Safari at the moment but thinking about going to Firefox
    - logan5 9y ago
      I switched from Chrome to Brave a few months ago. https://www.brave.com/ https://www.brave.com/
      - dreen 9y ago
        Been using Brave on mobile and it's great, but the UI layout on desktop is awkward so I don't use it there.
      - MistahKoala 9y ago

mattmanser 9y ago

I've been using it for the last 6 months. The problem is, whenever you can't find something in DDG, you assume it's because it's DDG, and search again with !g. Meaning I end up requerying 40% or so of my searches using !g (prefixing your query with !g redirects your query from DDG to encrypted google) Here's some example queries I ended up !g yesterday that had much better results in google than DDG: reduce kendo javascript file size - For me, the useful result was number 2 in google. In DDG it was number 11 ("Only What You Need | Kendo UI Getting Started"). ptr overwatch - PTR is the test patch of the game overwatch. It's regularly changed. The correct result "Overwatch PTR Now Available - August 29, 2017" is number 1 in google, in DDG the blog post August 12th is not available (well, correct from my perspective) I tend to find anything speculative DDG is fairly terrible at. For example yesterday I was googling about trying to identify the source of some weird animation CPU cycles I was seeing in Chrome Performance Profiler, I didn't really get to the bottom of it, but I ended up ditching DDG and doing all the queries in google because I would otherwise have ended up searching everything twice. I'm also getting quite frustrated with the "instant answer" functionality, it's generally terrible. One of the most annoying ones is the SO instant answer that just utterly sucks, you can't see the code, it usually cuts anything useful in half, and takes up a HUGE amount of space meaning on a laptop you've got to scroll to start seeing the results. I just want to be able to turn it off, but because they don't track you they don't offer that functionality. Also the maps one is really bad. I almost always want directions, but clicking the map takes me to a really nonfunctional, bare-bones map that doesn't have directions and then I have to click another button to actually get the directions. There's a drop down where you can choose your map type, but it definitely doesn't work as expected, I just want it to always embed a google maps instead of whatever they're doing. Basically UX ain't DDG's strong point. Ironically, if you DDG: "turn off certain instant answers duckduckgo" it comes up with terrible search results and no answer. If you "!g turn off certain instant answers duckduckgo", the top result is at least relevant. I also find the entire bang thing to be a gimmick. Who wants to use !r when !g with "reddit" at the end will always get you better search results, reddit's own search is abysmal (as is !so). EDIT: I'm being overly negative, after all, I haven't actually switched back, like I did last time I tried to use DDG. So it's definitely worth a go, but I don't think it's ready for your Mum to use. Also, I have Bing on my phone's Chrome to avoid AMP, and it's actually quite good.

blisterpeanuts 9y ago

Ditto, for the past month or two. I'd love to get off of Gmail and Google drive, as well, but that's a longer term project. Main reason: concerns about tracking and privacy. Secondarily: politics. DDG so far has been acceptable. As long as they keep their political opinions to themselves, the honeymoon will continue. My love affair with Google, on the other hand, is over. :(

AdamSC1 9y ago
Email is a tough one, but I've been using FastMail. No advertising, strong privacy policy, based in Australia (a country with a decent privacy track record that we know of). It's $3/month which is a decent price for liberating a lot of data from advertisers. The spam filter is playing catch-up to Google so that's a bit of a shock at first, but you can train it up well or use second layer measures like Sanebox. Disclaimer: DDG staff - but personal opinion.
Zekio 9y ago
If you don't send a lot of emails but receive a lot and need many aliases you might wanna check out https://migadu.com https://migadu.com
criddell 9y ago
> concerns about tracking and privacy When DDG shows an ad, is there no tracking involved in that? For example, if I were to click on an ad (after turning my ad blocker off), does the destination site not get any information about me or specifically what I searched for?

benbenhu 9y ago

And don't forget to use the bangs that can allow you to check other engines results fast if you need. For people afraid of getting off google, you can always search something like '!g my-search', it works the same for youtube(!yt), google image(!gi), or even hackernews(!hn) And of course the best bang is the 'I am feeling lucky' one (!), i.e.: 'hackernews !'

Fiaxhs 9y ago
It's worth noting that the !g bang redirects you to encrypted.google.com, it's more secure but results are often different from a regular www.google.com search. It bugged me for a while not knowing why some queries returned unusual results. ( more here https://duck.co/forum/thread/2880/remove-the-encrypted-subdomain-for-google-bang https://duck.co/forum/thread/2880/remove-the-encrypted-subdo... )
- sd8dgf8ds8g8dsg 9y ago
  www.google.com uses encryption too these days. You are linking to a ~5 year old thread that is discussing the state of things well before google switched everything over to ssl.
  - thisacctforreal 9y ago
    For a while I believe the difference was specifically that encrypted.google.com exclusively used PFS SSL cipher suites
- inetknght 9y ago
  > linking to encrypted.google.com not only is not necessary but it prevents local search results from being displayed. e.g. no google.ro search results, only google.com I can only see this as a good thing. If I want local search results, I'll add local qualifiers like "USA", "Texas", "Houston"
  - stefantheard 9y ago

otakucode 9y ago

I've had DDG as my primary search engine for I'd guess at least 5 years if not more. It's extremely rare that I ever need to use anything else. I do wish there was a way to tell Yummly to go to hell whenever I search for recipes, though.

tqkxzugoaupvwqr 9y ago
You can exclude keywords by using the minus sign, e.g. “-yummly”. This excludes all search results that contain yummly.
james_pm 9y ago
I saw this feature request submitted the other day via the subreddit. Here's hoping! https://www.reddit.com/r/duckduckgo/comments/70rent/enhancement_feature_as_a_user_i_want_to/ https://www.reddit.com/r/duckduckgo/comments/70rent/enhancem...
SevereOverfl0w 9y ago
I use this script to hide domains I hate from search results: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/1682-google-hit-hider-by-domain-search-filter-block-sites https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/1682-google-hit-hider-by-d... (Title is google, but works for ddg amongst other things also)

grepthisab 9y ago

Same here. Tried a while back and didn't really take. I found myself Googling most things after DDG'ing them. Tried again recently because I love the mission, and it's working much better. Usually what I want is in the top few results, although Google still does a bit better with search result quality. I see myself using it as my main search engine at this point.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
graphitezepp 9y ago
I only miss google as a DDG user when DDG doesn't have a tool google has to give you an automatic result, i.e. when trying to look up some unit conversion ratio like lb to kg. But when you know that is what you want there is always !g.
- AdamSC1 9y ago
  Hey graphitezepp, We do have some of those tools, at DuckDuckGo they are called "Instant Answers." For example the query: "2 lb to kg" will bring you to this results page https://duckduckgo.com/?q=2+lb+to+kg&ia=answer https://duckduckgo.com/?q=2+lb+to+kg&ia=answer You can see all our Instant Answers here: https://duck.co/ia https://duck.co/ia If something isn't triggering for you - let us know with the feedback tool on the site! Disclaimer: DDG staff.
  - thehashrocket 9y ago
    If you could get a "within the past year" search filter it would make me the happiest developer in the world. :)
    - autotypo 9y ago
      And a CC-filtered image search.
    - crusty 9y ago

pingec 9y ago

I would be very interested in reading on how to best do the migration on various devices, for example Chrome on desktop, Chrome on Android etc.

mitja_belak 9y ago

Same here. They used to be fringe back then, now they are quite reliant for everything that isnt really overly specific.

segmondy 9y ago

I did the same too 2 months. If I can't it, I'll give yahoo and bing a chance first before Google. There really hasn't been much that I can't find with the first 3.

mattkevan 9y ago

Recently switched to DDG on my devices and I’m impressed with how much better it is than when I tried a few years ago.

kronos29296 9y ago

It is quite for common things but searching uncommon ones always throws it off. Searching for research publications in a specific domain or just haskell or some thing like just returns 1good result with 10 bad ones. So I use !g for those. Also the autocorrect really throws my search terms off while Google does is right most of the time.

barrkel 9y ago
Interesting: autocorrect on Google is almost always wrong for me. Every day, I need to add quotes to maybe 20 of my search queries.
- kronos29296 9y ago
  Interestingly ddg requires quotes for me atleast twice a day. Still I have to use Google for stuff like Google scholar. So !g is pretty common for me.
dredmorbius 9y ago
If you're searching for scholarly material: !scholar <terms>

RUG3Y 9y ago

Same here. Two years ago DDG just wasn't cutting it. Today, I'm just fine with it. I especially like how programming questions usually provide a top result from Stack Overflow, a lot of times I don't even need to click the link to see the answer I'm looking for.

artem_dev 9y ago
Actually Google provides the top programming answers from SO, Quora etc places. DDG just uses this.

whataretensors 9y ago

I actually find myself going to DDG after searching on devices that default to Google. The results are much better for a lot of different things. They even have a cryptocurrency tab.

Steeeve 9y ago

I use it as my default, and I find that at least once a day I ad a g! to my query to go to the google results. I started maybe a month and a half ago and at this point I have a decent instinct as to when I'm going to need to go to google. The privacy aspect was the driver for me, but it wasn't enough to make the switch all this time. The privacy aspect coupled with an easy way to get google results when I need them is. While I've known they had the bang queries for a long time, it was actually a youtube search result that finally made me shift. I forget what it was, but I was searching for something for my kids and it looked like my activity had polluted the results. That has been a problem for quite some time and this particular instance was enough for me to make the change. It was a harmless, but I really don't like the idea that my activity will potentially bleed into that of my family, and frankly I get irritated when their activity bleeds into mine. DuckDuckGo doesn't replace youtube search, but it was more of the general principal. I tried working with different accounts over the years, but it's not easy to switch on all platforms and if you've ever tried entering a 60 character password on a playstation, you know why that's a non-starter.

usuallymatt 9y ago

Same here. Had always switched back but this time I'm almost 1 month into using DDG and have no desire to go back.

mattlondon 9y ago

+1 I also tried it a few years ago but was disappointed by the speed - at a time when the google search responses came back "instantly", the latency of DDG was noticeable and not good-enough. Fast forward to 2017 and that appears to have been solved and the results are as fast as google are from what my brain/eyes can tell anyway - I would not be surprised to find out that google was faster if you timed it. In the past 6+ months I've been using DDG, I've only ever found the need to switch back to google once (and that was image search)

SilvaR 9y ago

Have they since reduced their dependency on Bing for search results? I feel that, while that's the case, there is no point in switching.