After using DDG for years, I sometimes try Google when DDG does not seem to deliver. Every time I am disgusted by the sheer amount of crap it shows me. Videos, shopping, news etc. I'll take DDGs clean result list over that any time! (And usually, Google has the same results as DDG anyway)
I made the exact same experience. Sometimes when I can't get satisfying results I try to use google, but in most cases the results are even worse. Googles search results just don't make any sense to me by now.
There is one feature that google has which I can't find a good alternative for: Reverse search of images. Hands down, that's a good one, Google.
We've done this song and dance 1000 times: Someone says "DDG is bad" or "DDG is good" and all of the replies are basically "No, DDG is <opposite>".
Let's try something new: Let's give examples. I'll go first:
Let's say I have a nebulous recollection that there is a wifi module with "NRF" in the model number. If I search for `nrf wifi` on both Google and DDG, which do you think provides better results?
Let's look at the top URL hits from both (this is in an incognito window, with ublock origin on!):
Google:
1) nordicsemi.com (the manufacturer) homepage
2) <manufacturer website> press release
3) <manufacturer website> random Q & A page
4) arduino.stackoverflow.com (question about how to use it)
5) Some blog (someone's guide to using it)
6) nrf.com (National Retail Federation) conference category: wifi and bluetooth analytics (unrelated result, but I can imagine someone going to this conference might google the exact same thing, good thing Google knows to show it...
--- A random box showing questions relevant to the device ---
7) arduino.cc (question about how to use it)
8) <electronics blog site A> (someone's guide to using it)
9) <electronics blog site A> (another page on using it)
10) <electronic parts retail site A> (sells it)
DDG:
1) <electronics blog site A> (someone's guide to using it)
2) <electronics blog site B> (someone's guide to using it)
3) <electronic parts retail site C> (someone's guide to using it)
4) <electronics blog site D> (someone's guide to using it)
5) <electronics blog site E> (someone's guide to using it)
6) <electronics blog site F> (another guide to using it)
7) <electronics blog site G> (someone's guide to using it)
8) arduino.cc (question about how to use it)
9) <manufacturer website> random Q & A page
10) <manufacturer website> another random Q & A page
As you can see, Google seems to prefer authoritative sources (the manufacturer, the conference that coincidentally has the same name and category), while DDG seems to prefer blogs and how-to guides. I won't say which is better, that's entirely subjective.
So here is an interesting one, I’d just searched import plugins for Wordpress, and the top result from Google is a 5 year old review website, while DDG gives me one from this year. The latter being more relevant to my search.
I've fully switched to DDG. I still bounce over to google maybe 5-10% of the time, but to me that's a pretty big win. 90-95% of the time I avoid being tracked by google at the cost of 5-10% of the time wasting a few seconds skimming results on ddg before jumping to google.
Not only has DDG become better, especially for regional/localized searches, Google has become worse.
What Google has done is to prioritize mainstream sources over correct matches. In the old days you could get a match for small unknown blog on the first page, today it is very rare for me that I get that. It is usually mainstream sources on the first page, except when the search is very technical like programming.
This becomes even more apparent for Google’s affiliate YouTube where you can search for the exact title and it doesn’t show up on the first page. Related videos is also broken.
What drives clicks on YouTube today is the very curated home page for a user. This was not how YouTube used to work.
These factors has changed how we, at least for me, consume content. In the old days you found small independent sources much more easily, which meant that it was up to you to make a judgment if that source was interesting or not. Today it is the opposite, "here is a clip that has been viewed 20 millions times before you, enjoy!". This has made the web much worse.
One thing that Google do better is grouping result from same source, like here is all matches from Reddit, this has two main benefits. First it easy to view that group separately. Second is that you can view more matches on the first search page.
I have had the polar opposite experience. After many unsuccessful trials of DDG in past years, I recently switched my default engine to DDG about 2 months ago on all devices (desktops and mobile). Since then, I have been pleasantly surprised. I would say I end up prefixing !g (to redirect to a Google search) once every 200-500 queries. For the remainder, the DDG results page is such a welcome change from Google’s, which basically has gradually morphed from its original 10 links only into a glorified link farm run by a surveillance megacorp.
A year ago StartPage sold a majority stake to, what essentially is, an advertising and marketing company - System 1 Group.
Not necessarily a bad thing, but I have zero trust that these new owners will not succumb to some common and oh-so-effective shenanigans to improve their ad performance in the StartPage search results. That's like selling a rehab facility to a drug cartel. A match made in heaven.
I really like Bing these days. Google has sanitized it's results so much that anything interesting is gone. Things off the top of my head: finding technical docs via searhing pds, "Index Of" listings, adult content (not even meaning porn, per se) - NSFW forums to come to mind (just look at how many subreddits are set to nsfw now), forums, etc etc
Have you tried the comparison within the last year? You will probably find that while DDG Search is still just as bad as you remember, Google Search is no longer much better. I use Bing quite a bit, too, which is even closer in quality to Google Search.
My problem with bing, and I could be wrong for it, is I’m not looking to replace one data mining company with another. I’d much rather give a smaller, up and coming, company my searches.
I totally agree. Depending on which field I'm working on I know right away when to skip DDG entirely. Makes me sad I wish I could skip google but unfortunately there are a lot of topics where DDG misses the mark.
This is so weird to me. I use DDG on my home computer, but Google at work, so I have experience with both.... and they're basically indistinguishable to me.
I use DDG as my default and it gets me 90% of the way there. Sometimes when I search for programming syntax and I know there is one canonical answer that should be the top link, DDG doesn't show up but google does. My !g bangs have become rare now. Becoming used to a new search engine was worth the trade in privacy in my opinion.
You can use Google Search and tell Google not to log your search history or use the data for advertising purposes. See my comment [1] for how to turn on these privacy controls.
> not to log your search history or use the data for advertising purposes
People already know/feel that when Google states that it will not do something with people’s information but it does not say what it does... well, that doesn’t feel very comfortable. In fact, it’s so uncomfortable, that people avoid asking what does Google do with that not logged or not for advertising data. On mobile, being the only alternative a device that costs about 5 months of my work, I may not what to know the answer for that questions too and just hope for the best
I have the exact opposite experience. I find DDG's searching to be much better than Google's - which has turned to garbage. Having said that, I've noticed the quality of DDG's search results have dropped quite a bit in the past couple of months. Don't know what could be causing that.
One problem with most of the comments here that are claiming one is better than the other is that the "quality" of search results is still a very subjective term. I wish just like DxOMark Score for mobile cameras, there is a Search result quality index that makes us take more informative decisions (not sure how feasible is that though).
P.S. - I realize even DxOMark scores and ranks may be disputed, but that's still one (close to objective) index and it's used just as an example here.
>But DDG is bad.
not necessarily. Depending what you searching. I do find looking for tech documentation, google performs better. Then use something like startpage.com (google proxy) for that. Something I find that google is censoring them, and I can find it on DDG more.
In the end it is all about having good search engine options.
What I don't like about DDG is that they use bing. Hope they start using their own search now that they are getting big.
This is so weird to me to read. I've DDG for years, and I'm not sure whether their results have gotten much better, or I've trained myself to "search the DDG way," or both, but I find what I want in almost all cases. When I (rarely) don't, I try a !g search, and have never gotten better results. Not in years.
I believe you, I'm just saying that's not my experience at all.
Meanwhile, I struggle to give up GDocs and remind myself to use Zoho instead.
I got into the Neeva alpha recently and within the first few days I've noticed it is on-par with Google for what I search and need information for. Check it out here https://neeva.co
They can't expose such a feature, at least until they're sure that their results are better than Google's in most cases (otherwise it'll be like shooting themselves on the foot).
Besides, a userscript that does what you want could be written very easily I guess.
Do you (or anyone else who finds Google significantly better than DDG) search Google as a logged-in user, and is perhaps this the reason you find their results to be better?
I never log in, since I mainly use the only sign-in-mandatory service, Gmail, on my phone. DDG and Bing suck balls compared to Google, sadly. Google has been worse too over the years .
The past few years, I'm sure I've wasted a lot of time searching on the net, looking for relevant articles while Google spouts out BS.
DuckDuckGo's results are a compilation of "over 400" sources,[8] including Yahoo! Search BOSS, Wolfram Alpha, Bing, Yandex, its own web crawler (the DuckDuckBot) and others.[3][8][9][10] It also uses data from crowdsourced sites, including Wikipedia, to populate knowledge panel boxes to the right of the results.[10][11]
That adds more time since the query is sent to DDG and then bounces the browser to Google. For searches where one prefers Google, using it directly (which is easier in Firefox for me) is a better option.
I wonder if they log those searches. To be clear: in a privacy-friendly way. It would be a treasure trove to them as they basically get statistics on which searches do bad on their engine. Focus on the most '!g'd search term, and then just work down the list.
I'm actually confused if this site was created ironically.
* "Google search is malicious, send the same data to Russia with Yandex instead."
* Apparently Google Chrome is a search engine.
* "Google doesn’t care about users’ privacy that much. It collects your data and uses it for their own purposes." Might just be me, but this reads like a throwaway essay written by an 8th grader.
* The site uses Google Analytics.
Despite the clear lack of quality in this article, it seems like this type of post does well on HN simply because "Google == bad" is such low-hanging fruit.
It perplexes me that people are more worried about a foreign power with little direct interest in you and no meaningful control over your life having a small chunk of their data than the government they live under.
It isn't really surprising when those foreign powers are actively hostile not only to your country, but to fundamental moral principles you hold dear.
To be clear, it's definitely not at all better in any meaningful sense for Google/the US government to have your data. But sometimes it's about the principle of the thing.
Sometimes I wonder how some random low quality article gets bumped up so fast, and then I think it's about keywords, but that doesn't explain the upvotes. Are people upvoting articles without reading both the article and the comments? I get the no-article part where you skip to the comments but if the comments shit on the article, why upvote?
> Are people upvoting articles without reading both the article and the comments
Absolutely. It is much less of an issue here than on, say, Reddit. But lots of people upvote posts because it sounds interesting, not because they have gone through it and determined it to be high quality.
I can't believe when sites are doing this. Dogfooding, or leading by example, is the bare minimum I expect, when someone is trying to show an alternative or a moral highground.
If you want to keep using Google services, here are some Google Alternatives Alternatives:
1/ Google Search, YouTube, Maps: visit https://myactivity.google.com/activitycontrols to turn on auto-deletion or turn off search history, location history or YouTube watch history. This page also allows you to turn off ads personalization. There are many security and privacy controls on https://myaccount.google.com/, turn them on however you see fit.
2/ Chrome: visit chrome://settings/syncSetup to turn off Chromesync, disallow Chrome sign-in, disable automcomplete searches and URLs, etc. You can also change the default search engine to something else, but see point 1/ if you want to use Google Search. Use Incognito mode more often.
3/ Gmail, Photos, Calendar, Drive, Docs: "we don’t use information in apps where you primarily store personal content—such as Gmail, Drive, Calendar and Photos—for advertising purposes, period." [1] In other words, Gmail, YouTube or Search ads are not targeted or personalized using your emails, photos, events, docs, etc.
Disclosure: I'm a Google's security engineer, advocating for and contributing to some of the aforementioned security/privacy controls.
For point 2/ if you are unwilling to switch to Firefox and want to keep using Chromium based browsers take a look at Ungoogled Chromium.
I switched from Firefox to Ungoogled Chromium after a long time because of atrocious UI/UX on macOS. However I am stuck with Google pushing Manifest v3
it's unfortunate that the webpage is so misleading. for example, about email, it says:
" Google and its partners have access to all your information and they can collect data, they can display ads inside your inbox, and the contents of your inbox are shared with random third parties. "
the proof they link to is an article about cases where the gmail-user gave permission to those third-party apps to read their gmail-email. so, no "random third parties", no "partners". if you remove those parts from the argument, what remains is an email provider that also displays ads next to your email.
All in all a decent effort at providing some Google alternatives. However, if the focus is on privacy I would not even recommend any services that are not specifically privacy-focused (IMO), even with a disclaimer. I would encourage anyone to self-review any services listed.
Godaddy is offered as a domain and website host, when they have been known to inject JavaScript tracking code unbeknownst to the user [0].
I really like keyword searches in Firefox's navigation bar. They are like lower latency and faster DDG "bangs". What I found is that most of my searches are better served by direct searches on Wikipedia and Stack Overflow. For Linux and software trouble shooting, using Google is better, but at least there's less "privacy surface area" than doing everything through Google.
There's also so much SEO-spam on Google/Bing that I find it easier to just do site:reddit.com or look up the top rated posts/comments on HN from Algolia. The latter works really well, so thank you all committed HN users! :)
Sadly, keyword searches are being deprecated in Firefox Desktop, and are already not implemented in latest Firefox for android.
There is a plan to extend custom search engines with that functionality, but it is not clear if it can be a full replacement.
I tried to find a link to the discussion where Mozilla took this decision, but apparently the decision process at Mozilla is not very open, or it’s documentation is scattered among too many systems.
From that it looks like bookmark keyword searches will be auto-migrated to a new user interface in about:preferences that will allow users to create their own "custom search engine", which seems to imply it will have all the features necessary to do what bookmark keyword searches can currently do. Without knowing anything about this change prior to reading your comment, on the surface this seems like a good thing to me since it sounds like it will be a lot more discoverable and usable to your average user than bookmark keyword searches currently are.
it's mind boggling how many features they keep removing. vivaldi has the same search feature but i liked how firefox let you add/edit directly from the bookmark and also how the same shortcuts would work on the mobile browser.
the only thing stopping me from going back to vivaldi at this point if the containers feature
Readit News
1) trying duck duck go and then immediately re-searching in google to actually get relevant answers.
2) skipping the search bar and going immediately to google when I know DDG just isn't going to work.
Feels like back in the olden days when you had to try Altavista, Lycos and Yahoo to find what you're looking for.
I can live without chrome, calendars, gmail, maps and all the others. But they're still the best at search by a lot.
That said, in general DDG results seems to be improving incrementally, while I can’t say the same for Google.
There is one feature that google has which I can't find a good alternative for: Reverse search of images. Hands down, that's a good one, Google.
Deleted Comment
Let's try something new: Let's give examples. I'll go first:
Let's say I have a nebulous recollection that there is a wifi module with "NRF" in the model number. If I search for `nrf wifi` on both Google and DDG, which do you think provides better results?
Let's look at the top URL hits from both (this is in an incognito window, with ublock origin on!):
Google:
1) nordicsemi.com (the manufacturer) homepage
2) <manufacturer website> press release
3) <manufacturer website> random Q & A page
4) arduino.stackoverflow.com (question about how to use it)
5) Some blog (someone's guide to using it)
6) nrf.com (National Retail Federation) conference category: wifi and bluetooth analytics (unrelated result, but I can imagine someone going to this conference might google the exact same thing, good thing Google knows to show it...
--- A random box showing questions relevant to the device ---
7) arduino.cc (question about how to use it)
8) <electronics blog site A> (someone's guide to using it)
9) <electronics blog site A> (another page on using it)
10) <electronic parts retail site A> (sells it)
DDG:
1) <electronics blog site A> (someone's guide to using it)
2) <electronics blog site B> (someone's guide to using it)
3) <electronic parts retail site C> (someone's guide to using it)
4) <electronics blog site D> (someone's guide to using it)
5) <electronics blog site E> (someone's guide to using it)
6) <electronics blog site F> (another guide to using it)
7) <electronics blog site G> (someone's guide to using it)
8) arduino.cc (question about how to use it)
9) <manufacturer website> random Q & A page
10) <manufacturer website> another random Q & A page
As you can see, Google seems to prefer authoritative sources (the manufacturer, the conference that coincidentally has the same name and category), while DDG seems to prefer blogs and how-to guides. I won't say which is better, that's entirely subjective.
DDG: /r/conspiracy at the top of the list - first result
Google: nowhere to be seen
Makes me wonder what else they are not showing.
Maybe better: Let's make (or find) a benchmark for web search.
I try to continue to work at it until I get a result I’m looking for in the hopes that it helps improve the search results for myself and others.
I can say that the ddg results today are good enough that I can actually use it as my default, but this was not true several years ago.
What Google has done is to prioritize mainstream sources over correct matches. In the old days you could get a match for small unknown blog on the first page, today it is very rare for me that I get that. It is usually mainstream sources on the first page, except when the search is very technical like programming.
This becomes even more apparent for Google’s affiliate YouTube where you can search for the exact title and it doesn’t show up on the first page. Related videos is also broken.
What drives clicks on YouTube today is the very curated home page for a user. This was not how YouTube used to work.
These factors has changed how we, at least for me, consume content. In the old days you found small independent sources much more easily, which meant that it was up to you to make a judgment if that source was interesting or not. Today it is the opposite, "here is a clip that has been viewed 20 millions times before you, enjoy!". This has made the web much worse.
One thing that Google do better is grouping result from same source, like here is all matches from Reddit, this has two main benefits. First it easy to view that group separately. Second is that you can view more matches on the first search page.
I'm a little bit surprised that http://startpage.com isn't on the list, it's anonymized google in the same way ddg is anonymized bing.
Not necessarily a bad thing, but I have zero trust that these new owners will not succumb to some common and oh-so-effective shenanigans to improve their ad performance in the StartPage search results. That's like selling a rehab facility to a drug cartel. A match made in heaven.
Dead Comment
I tried to use DDG for a whole year only to realize I was constantly typing !g
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25383289
People already know/feel that when Google states that it will not do something with people’s information but it does not say what it does... well, that doesn’t feel very comfortable. In fact, it’s so uncomfortable, that people avoid asking what does Google do with that not logged or not for advertising data. On mobile, being the only alternative a device that costs about 5 months of my work, I may not what to know the answer for that questions too and just hope for the best
Before, I was getting proper localized results. Even searching in Japan with English keywords gave me Japanese results.
Nowadays when I search even for simple things it does not work. If I look for "dominos pizza" in Japan, I get:
dominos.com
allmenuprice.com
dominosaruba.com
dominospanama.com
dominos.ca
dominos.com.au
dominos.co.in
dominos.co.nz
...
And it goes on and on with multiples pages, but I have to go to Google to actually get dominos.jp
P.S. - I realize even DxOMark scores and ranks may be disputed, but that's still one (close to objective) index and it's used just as an example here.
In the end it is all about having good search engine options.
What I don't like about DDG is that they use bing. Hope they start using their own search now that they are getting big.
I dont' trust MS as much as I don't trust google.
I believe you, I'm just saying that's not my experience at all.
Meanwhile, I struggle to give up GDocs and remind myself to use Zoho instead.
Google is good at finding very specific error messages and other strings.
I have a theory: Technically Google is better but the search results suffer from every marketer and publisher trying to game the system.
This feature would make me switch to DDG.
(I tried DDG, but got tired from typing "!g")
Besides, a userscript that does what you want could be written very easily I guess.
that opens google search
The past few years, I'm sure I've wasted a lot of time searching on the net, looking for relevant articles while Google spouts out BS.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo
* "Google search is malicious, send the same data to Russia with Yandex instead."
* Apparently Google Chrome is a search engine.
* "Google doesn’t care about users’ privacy that much. It collects your data and uses it for their own purposes." Might just be me, but this reads like a throwaway essay written by an 8th grader.
* The site uses Google Analytics.
Despite the clear lack of quality in this article, it seems like this type of post does well on HN simply because "Google == bad" is such low-hanging fruit.
To be clear, it's definitely not at all better in any meaningful sense for Google/the US government to have your data. But sometimes it's about the principle of the thing.
Absolutely. It is much less of an issue here than on, say, Reddit. But lots of people upvote posts because it sounds interesting, not because they have gone through it and determined it to be high quality.
Deleted Comment
Don't trust them
1/ Google Search, YouTube, Maps: visit https://myactivity.google.com/activitycontrols to turn on auto-deletion or turn off search history, location history or YouTube watch history. This page also allows you to turn off ads personalization. There are many security and privacy controls on https://myaccount.google.com/, turn them on however you see fit.
2/ Chrome: visit chrome://settings/syncSetup to turn off Chromesync, disallow Chrome sign-in, disable automcomplete searches and URLs, etc. You can also change the default search engine to something else, but see point 1/ if you want to use Google Search. Use Incognito mode more often.
3/ Gmail, Photos, Calendar, Drive, Docs: "we don’t use information in apps where you primarily store personal content—such as Gmail, Drive, Calendar and Photos—for advertising purposes, period." [1] In other words, Gmail, YouTube or Search ads are not targeted or personalized using your emails, photos, events, docs, etc.
Disclosure: I'm a Google's security engineer, advocating for and contributing to some of the aforementioned security/privacy controls.
[1] https://blog.google/technology/safety-security/keeping-priva...
I switched from Firefox to Ungoogled Chromium after a long time because of atrocious UI/UX on macOS. However I am stuck with Google pushing Manifest v3
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
" Google and its partners have access to all your information and they can collect data, they can display ads inside your inbox, and the contents of your inbox are shared with random third parties. "
the proof they link to is an article about cases where the gmail-user gave permission to those third-party apps to read their gmail-email. so, no "random third parties", no "partners". if you remove those parts from the argument, what remains is an email provider that also displays ads next to your email.
Godaddy is offered as a domain and website host, when they have been known to inject JavaScript tracking code unbeknownst to the user [0].
[0] https://www.igorkromin.net/index.php/2019/01/13/godaddy-is-s...
There's also so much SEO-spam on Google/Bing that I find it easier to just do site:reddit.com or look up the top rated posts/comments on HN from Algolia. The latter works really well, so thank you all committed HN users! :)
There is a plan to extend custom search engines with that functionality, but it is not clear if it can be a full replacement.
I tried to find a link to the discussion where Mozilla took this decision, but apparently the decision process at Mozilla is not very open, or it’s documentation is scattered among too many systems.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G65IlLQqooUnRFtrzi-FU79M...
From that it looks like bookmark keyword searches will be auto-migrated to a new user interface in about:preferences that will allow users to create their own "custom search engine", which seems to imply it will have all the features necessary to do what bookmark keyword searches can currently do. Without knowing anything about this change prior to reading your comment, on the surface this seems like a good thing to me since it sounds like it will be a lot more discoverable and usable to your average user than bookmark keyword searches currently are.
Disclosure: I'm a Mozilla developer.
the only thing stopping me from going back to vivaldi at this point if the containers feature