5 ms·

Switch your default search engine to Google

40 points by bgaluszka 12y ago

bgaluszka 12y ago
I've been getting this only when redirected from DDG via !g in FF (and not Chrome for example). I've this even if Google is set as my default search engine.
coding4all 12y ago
I only see this if coming from DuckDuckGo. It's interesting to see Google copy DuckDuckGo!
ynak 12y ago
I've started to use DuckDuckGo as my default search engine in Firefox recently, but accuracy of results often falls short of my expectations. So I end up entering the same query again at Google especially when searching for technically detailed Q&A. Is there anyone who only use DDG in everyday life?
- charlieegan3 12y ago
  Same here, I tried really hard to use DuckDuckGo and lasted with it as my default for around a month. I started using !google a lot and had to switch back in the end as I found it was just slowing me down. It's fine for basic searches but the results really lack when it comes to any kind of technical query.
  - mitchell209 12y ago
    This is exactly what happened to me. DDG is good for my basic searches, but anything more complex often results in me having to fall back to Google. Unrelated: I hate that DDG doesn't show dates, which I find invaluable for many of my searches. Is there any way to show those in DDG?
- blablablaat 12y ago
  Add !g to search on google. Or !gi for google images, !gn for google news, !w for wikipedia, etcetera. See https://duck.co/help/results/syntax https://duck.co/help/results/syntax for more tricks. And yes I'm using it in daily life.
- fyarebox 12y ago
  Just coming up on four months, here. Enter!g in your query to automatically redirect it to Google. I do this for about 50% of my searches (mainly looking for docs) !yt for youtube is useful too, as is just ! for I'm Feeling Lucky and !wiki,!define. This is the main reason I began DDG, so useful, faster than using a drop down or looking for the relevant site on Google. Not sure if other search providers do this, but I also appreciate the privacy aspect of using DDG.
  - blfr 12y ago
    If you're doing that, you may as well define keyword searches in your browser. Which is the ultimate privacy because redirection to the appropriate search engine happens locally. I have g for Google, gl for feeling lucky in Google, w for Wikipedia, imdb, yt, and many more I never use.
    - chongli 12y ago
      I was doing that for a long time in Chrome. Eventually I switched to Firefox and found out that I can't do it on every site and that I often lost all the shortcuts I had created when upgrading browsers or switching machines. Now with DDG I have don't need to worry about it.
      - blfr 12y ago
        I do it on Firefox. It's just a bookmark, so you only need to synchronize bookmarks.
- syoc 12y ago
  I have used startpage for about a year now. I like it but it's not as good as google.
- jackwz 12y ago
  Using DDG in daily life with the !g or !g+cc (country code, quite useful) and with FF. So this new Google "ad" gets really bothering everyday and a quick "block element" with uBlock fixed it !
- joosters 12y ago
  Been using it for over two years now. It works just fine for me, it seems to match my way of writing search queries well. I rarely have to try elsewhere to find what I'm looking for. (Hint: Add !sp to search google without much of google's tracking). DDG is definitely not for everyone. My parents tend to search Google by entering questions into the search box, and Google does a great job at working out what they mean and want, while DDG is IMO a much more literal search (as in, are the words you typed in the page results).
- etiam 12y ago
  Sure. DuckDuckGo handles most of my searches perfectly adequately. For the cases when it doesn't, consider !sp for Startpage: "the world's most private search engine. (enhanced by Google [results through proxy])" or !iq for "Ixquick"
  - 0942v8653 12y ago
    !s works too. Quite nice. I'm building my own "search engine" to use in place of DDG[0]... we'll see how far that gets. [0]: As in, it impersonates DDG so I can use it on my phone when I am on local wifi, but DDG when I'm not—my raspberry pi is both a DNS and HTTP(S) server.
- walkingolof 12y ago
  Its unlikely that anyone _can_ get as good as google since what others have searched on previously is one of the major paramters in their search algorithm, more people that search on google, the better it becomes...
  - crdoconnor 12y ago
    Theoretically yes, but Google are crippling their own search results to drive traffic to adwords.
- agumonkey 12y ago
  For all things mainstream ddg is perfect. As soon as you dig on the sides it's very frustrating.
- mrweasel 12y ago
  I don't use DuckDuckGo exclusively, but I switch to it as my default over a year ago. Initially I used the !g for a large number of searches, but now I rarely feel the need. As DuckDuckGo has become better, it also seems that Google is becoming increasingly worse, at least with general searches. Interestingly enough where Google shines is finding pages that I sort of know exists. Queries where "I know I saw this on Stack Overflow" or "I've seen this exact text somewhere" and localized searches (Although DuckDuckGo have become a lot better recently).
  - ptaipale 12y ago
    > Interestingly enough where Google shines is finding pages that I sort of know exists. Well, they are in your browsing history, and Google knows it?
    - mrweasel 12y ago
      I only ever use private browsing mode. Firefox delete my history, cookies and cache every time I close my browser. So unless Google have started to do browser fingerprinting, which I don't think they have, that shouldn't be the answer. At some level I believe that Google is just better at understanding my request, regardless of how poorly I formulated it, while DuckDuckGo just returns pages where some of the word match. Given that I don't know how any of the two search engines work I may be completely of.
      - pdkl95 12y ago
        Private browsing mode and deleting your local history doesn't stop Google from keeping its own log of your searches (and any other Google services (gmail, youtube), and pages with google-analytics, and any page with AdSense, etc) Google clearly uses these logs to "customize" your search results, even when you check the placebo button to "disable" your history in the google account options. Not having an account (or deleting local history) doesn't matter much, as they reconstruct a PK from all the entropy your browser leaks. (see their recent "we already ID your browser" reCAPTCHA update that no longer shows a scrambled image)
- awalGarg 12y ago
  I use DDG in everyday life, and it has been about 3 months since I am doing so. Most of my searches are very narrow, in which case both DDG, and Google perform pretty much the same. Consider a "wide scope" search: "how to write a modular app in ruby". In such cases, most of the times the results in the both the search engines are very different. See DDG: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=how+to+write+a+modular+app+in+ruby&t=canonical https://duckduckgo.com/?q=how+to+write+a+modular+app+in+ruby... and Google: https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+create+a+modular+app+in+ruby https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+create+a+modular+app+... Also, for images, you will have to go back to Google. DDG image search is simply not good enough. And DDG often pops up images in search results when they are not called for (and those images are mostly useless), which is kinda annoying.
- pXMzR2A 12y ago
  > Is there anyone who only use DDG in everyday life? Using DDG. I pretty much always forget that Google is an option nowadays.
evook 12y ago
I am quite satisfied with ixquick[0]. It forwards google results over a Proxy, utilizing TLS and it relinquishes cookies. Pretty neat if you ask me. [0] https://www.ixquick.de/eng/ https://www.ixquick.de/eng/?
- 0942v8653 12y ago
  Startpage (https://startpage.com https://startpage.com) does the Google proxying, not Ixquick. If you like the results of Ixquick though, that's even better than sending things to Google. Also, their redesign is the first in a while that I actually prefer over the old one. Aside from the hamburger menu (and, yecch, sort-of-half-floating title bar) it's much better,
  - tonymon 12y ago
    Actually they are both the same company: https://startpage.com/eng/company.html https://startpage.com/eng/company.html (also look at the logo here) https://www.ixquick.de/eng/company.html https://www.ixquick.de/eng/company.html And both introducing new redesign
icantthinkofone 12y ago
So they're promoting Google. So does Bing. Is this a problem? When you visit a Microsoft site with any browser but Chrome, you get an ad pushing IE. Is that a problem, too?
eliben 12y ago
Browsers have been doing this for at least 15 years. Is there anything especially strange here you wanted to point out?
TheLoneWolfling 12y ago
The bigger question is: how does Google know what your default search engine is? Are they tracking referrers from DDG, or what?
- 0942v8653 12y ago
  Or anything else it seems. As in, I'm making my own search engine that can redirect to Google and http://10.0.1.42/?q=google+whatever http://10.0.1.42/?q=google+whatever will do it too. What really confuses me is that people will still try to link to Google results in forums and it might say that (which could get really confusing). Quick test of that: https://www.google.com/search?q=google https://www.google.com/search?q=google Yeah, the box shows up if I click that in Firefox, even in private browsing. You'd think they could make it show up on the homepage when clicked from Yahoo, which most Firefox people would probably do if their default got changed. But anyone who uses DDG probably did it on purpose.
  - 0942v8653 12y ago
    Err wait, this might be just me as I disabled cross-site referer header in about:config.
- legrandkay 12y ago
  I do not think what your default search engine is really matters. I see that Ad all the time even when Google is set as my default search engine.
MindTooth 12y ago
DDG-user for about two years now. With the latest iterations of Apple-updates, I'm using it on my iPhone as well. Using the terminal-like style :-)
macu 12y ago
Reminds me of my attitude on banks. I would never recommend a bank to someone unless they asked. I barely know anything about banks, even my own, and I'm in no position to determine another's decisions.
- OoTheNigerian 12y ago
  You might want to take a look at the link. It is not waht you are assuming.
omaranto 12y ago
My default search engine is Google and for the last couple of weeks I've seen that box several times. It hasn't bothered me enough yet to try figure out what is going wrong, but it does feel pretty silly.
mikhailt 12y ago
I use DDG by default on all of my devices and the main reason is because DDG makes it easy to switch to any search engine I need. So, if I can't find anything in DDG (usually very specific), I'll just type !g at the end, and it'll take me to Google's search engine (encrypted version). If I want images, I use !bi or !gi. The bang ! is pretty much the most powerful feature that DDG has.

40 points by bgaluszka 12y ago

I've been getting this only when redirected from DDG via !g in FF (and not Chrome for example). I've this even if Google is set as my default search engine.

coding4all 12y ago

I only see this if coming from DuckDuckGo. It's interesting to see Google copy DuckDuckGo!

ynak 12y ago

I've started to use DuckDuckGo as my default search engine in Firefox recently, but accuracy of results often falls short of my expectations. So I end up entering the same query again at Google especially when searching for technically detailed Q&A. Is there anyone who only use DDG in everyday life?

charlieegan3 12y ago
Same here, I tried really hard to use DuckDuckGo and lasted with it as my default for around a month. I started using !google a lot and had to switch back in the end as I found it was just slowing me down. It's fine for basic searches but the results really lack when it comes to any kind of technical query.
- mitchell209 12y ago
  This is exactly what happened to me. DDG is good for my basic searches, but anything more complex often results in me having to fall back to Google. Unrelated: I hate that DDG doesn't show dates, which I find invaluable for many of my searches. Is there any way to show those in DDG?
blablablaat 12y ago
Add !g to search on google. Or !gi for google images, !gn for google news, !w for wikipedia, etcetera. See https://duck.co/help/results/syntax https://duck.co/help/results/syntax for more tricks. And yes I'm using it in daily life.
fyarebox 12y ago
Just coming up on four months, here. Enter!g in your query to automatically redirect it to Google. I do this for about 50% of my searches (mainly looking for docs) !yt for youtube is useful too, as is just ! for I'm Feeling Lucky and !wiki,!define. This is the main reason I began DDG, so useful, faster than using a drop down or looking for the relevant site on Google. Not sure if other search providers do this, but I also appreciate the privacy aspect of using DDG.
- blfr 12y ago
  If you're doing that, you may as well define keyword searches in your browser. Which is the ultimate privacy because redirection to the appropriate search engine happens locally. I have g for Google, gl for feeling lucky in Google, w for Wikipedia, imdb, yt, and many more I never use.
  - chongli 12y ago
    I was doing that for a long time in Chrome. Eventually I switched to Firefox and found out that I can't do it on every site and that I often lost all the shortcuts I had created when upgrading browsers or switching machines. Now with DDG I have don't need to worry about it.
    - blfr 12y ago
      I do it on Firefox. It's just a bookmark, so you only need to synchronize bookmarks.
syoc 12y ago
I have used startpage for about a year now. I like it but it's not as good as google.
jackwz 12y ago
Using DDG in daily life with the !g or !g+cc (country code, quite useful) and with FF. So this new Google "ad" gets really bothering everyday and a quick "block element" with uBlock fixed it !
joosters 12y ago
Been using it for over two years now. It works just fine for me, it seems to match my way of writing search queries well. I rarely have to try elsewhere to find what I'm looking for. (Hint: Add !sp to search google without much of google's tracking). DDG is definitely not for everyone. My parents tend to search Google by entering questions into the search box, and Google does a great job at working out what they mean and want, while DDG is IMO a much more literal search (as in, are the words you typed in the page results).
etiam 12y ago
Sure. DuckDuckGo handles most of my searches perfectly adequately. For the cases when it doesn't, consider !sp for Startpage: "the world's most private search engine. (enhanced by Google [results through proxy])" or !iq for "Ixquick"
- 0942v8653 12y ago
  !s works too. Quite nice. I'm building my own "search engine" to use in place of DDG[0]... we'll see how far that gets. [0]: As in, it impersonates DDG so I can use it on my phone when I am on local wifi, but DDG when I'm not—my raspberry pi is both a DNS and HTTP(S) server.
walkingolof 12y ago
Its unlikely that anyone _can_ get as good as google since what others have searched on previously is one of the major paramters in their search algorithm, more people that search on google, the better it becomes...
- crdoconnor 12y ago
  Theoretically yes, but Google are crippling their own search results to drive traffic to adwords.
agumonkey 12y ago
For all things mainstream ddg is perfect. As soon as you dig on the sides it's very frustrating.
mrweasel 12y ago
I don't use DuckDuckGo exclusively, but I switch to it as my default over a year ago. Initially I used the !g for a large number of searches, but now I rarely feel the need. As DuckDuckGo has become better, it also seems that Google is becoming increasingly worse, at least with general searches. Interestingly enough where Google shines is finding pages that I sort of know exists. Queries where "I know I saw this on Stack Overflow" or "I've seen this exact text somewhere" and localized searches (Although DuckDuckGo have become a lot better recently).
- ptaipale 12y ago
  > Interestingly enough where Google shines is finding pages that I sort of know exists. Well, they are in your browsing history, and Google knows it?
  - mrweasel 12y ago
    I only ever use private browsing mode. Firefox delete my history, cookies and cache every time I close my browser. So unless Google have started to do browser fingerprinting, which I don't think they have, that shouldn't be the answer. At some level I believe that Google is just better at understanding my request, regardless of how poorly I formulated it, while DuckDuckGo just returns pages where some of the word match. Given that I don't know how any of the two search engines work I may be completely of.
    - pdkl95 12y ago
      Private browsing mode and deleting your local history doesn't stop Google from keeping its own log of your searches (and any other Google services (gmail, youtube), and pages with google-analytics, and any page with AdSense, etc) Google clearly uses these logs to "customize" your search results, even when you check the placebo button to "disable" your history in the google account options. Not having an account (or deleting local history) doesn't matter much, as they reconstruct a PK from all the entropy your browser leaks. (see their recent "we already ID your browser" reCAPTCHA update that no longer shows a scrambled image)
awalGarg 12y ago
I use DDG in everyday life, and it has been about 3 months since I am doing so. Most of my searches are very narrow, in which case both DDG, and Google perform pretty much the same. Consider a "wide scope" search: "how to write a modular app in ruby". In such cases, most of the times the results in the both the search engines are very different. See DDG: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=how+to+write+a+modular+app+in+ruby&t=canonical https://duckduckgo.com/?q=how+to+write+a+modular+app+in+ruby... and Google: https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+create+a+modular+app+in+ruby https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+create+a+modular+app+... Also, for images, you will have to go back to Google. DDG image search is simply not good enough. And DDG often pops up images in search results when they are not called for (and those images are mostly useless), which is kinda annoying.
pXMzR2A 12y ago
> Is there anyone who only use DDG in everyday life? Using DDG. I pretty much always forget that Google is an option nowadays.

evook 12y ago

I am quite satisfied with ixquick[0]. It forwards google results over a Proxy, utilizing TLS and it relinquishes cookies. Pretty neat if you ask me. [0] https://www.ixquick.de/eng/ https://www.ixquick.de/eng/?

0942v8653 12y ago
Startpage (https://startpage.com https://startpage.com) does the Google proxying, not Ixquick. If you like the results of Ixquick though, that's even better than sending things to Google. Also, their redesign is the first in a while that I actually prefer over the old one. Aside from the hamburger menu (and, yecch, sort-of-half-floating title bar) it's much better,
- tonymon 12y ago
  Actually they are both the same company: https://startpage.com/eng/company.html https://startpage.com/eng/company.html (also look at the logo here) https://www.ixquick.de/eng/company.html https://www.ixquick.de/eng/company.html And both introducing new redesign

icantthinkofone 12y ago

So they're promoting Google. So does Bing. Is this a problem? When you visit a Microsoft site with any browser but Chrome, you get an ad pushing IE. Is that a problem, too?

eliben 12y ago

Browsers have been doing this for at least 15 years. Is there anything especially strange here you wanted to point out?

TheLoneWolfling 12y ago

The bigger question is: how does Google know what your default search engine is? Are they tracking referrers from DDG, or what?

0942v8653 12y ago
Or anything else it seems. As in, I'm making my own search engine that can redirect to Google and http://10.0.1.42/?q=google+whatever http://10.0.1.42/?q=google+whatever will do it too. What really confuses me is that people will still try to link to Google results in forums and it might say that (which could get really confusing). Quick test of that: https://www.google.com/search?q=google https://www.google.com/search?q=google Yeah, the box shows up if I click that in Firefox, even in private browsing. You'd think they could make it show up on the homepage when clicked from Yahoo, which most Firefox people would probably do if their default got changed. But anyone who uses DDG probably did it on purpose.
- 0942v8653 12y ago
  Err wait, this might be just me as I disabled cross-site referer header in about:config.
legrandkay 12y ago
I do not think what your default search engine is really matters. I see that Ad all the time even when Google is set as my default search engine.

MindTooth 12y ago

DDG-user for about two years now. With the latest iterations of Apple-updates, I'm using it on my iPhone as well. Using the terminal-like style :-)

macu 12y ago

Reminds me of my attitude on banks. I would never recommend a bank to someone unless they asked. I barely know anything about banks, even my own, and I'm in no position to determine another's decisions.

OoTheNigerian 12y ago
You might want to take a look at the link. It is not waht you are assuming.

omaranto 12y ago

My default search engine is Google and for the last couple of weeks I've seen that box several times. It hasn't bothered me enough yet to try figure out what is going wrong, but it does feel pretty silly.

mikhailt 12y ago

I use DDG by default on all of my devices and the main reason is because DDG makes it easy to switch to any search engine I need. So, if I can't find anything in DDG (usually very specific), I'll just type !g at the end, and it'll take me to Google's search engine (encrypted version). If I want images, I use !bi or !gi. The bang ! is pretty much the most powerful feature that DDG has.