Fuck DuckDuckGo!

Is this is what you "privacy savyy" like to get? Irrelevant content. WTF?! Such a waste of time. I'm selling my soul back to Google. Fuck your opinion.

Part of the relevance of googles search results come from the extra info they collect that lets them filter on your expected preferences not only on the plain words.

Duckduck uses google in the background but without the extra context it will never be able to provide as relevant results.

Its a personal decision which is more importance, integrity or convenience.

I use google extensively and feel very hampered using any other search engine, google knows where my interests are and use that.

But it will mean they know a lot about me.

So my trade of is that I use only gmail and search from google, other services are spread out.

It would still be a pain to move but at least not everything is locked into one supplier.

@Voxera Same. Great comment.

As far as I know, DDG is only acting as proxy between you and Google, stripping all persobal information from your query.
You still get Google results, but only for what you actually searched instead of Google showing you what you might have wanted to search.

That being saiy, I sometimes have to use Google aswell because DDG doesnt understand what I want.

I do remember talk about DDG doing shady shit with whatever data they collected a few years ago. How come it's still relevant as a 'privacy first' search engine?

What about searx.me?

DuckDuckGo is great if you are use to doing advance google searches and can put into words what you are looking for.

Google having Access to a fuck tonne of your data makes it better as it knows what you are looking for based on previous searches and context. Context is important here.

Take for example, looking for a raspberry pi.
If your previous searches include “python, webdev, embedded software, robots” ect, you’ll get the Rpi board appear.

If your searches are more relevant to deserts... well you can tell what’s going to return.

DDG is missing the context of historic searches, one of the downs sides of being privacy focused.

Googles results always seem irrelevant to me. When searching for something ddg usually gives me the best results

@b3b3 thats interesting :)

Either google is to dependent on extra context and do worse in your situation or DDG stores more data on you that I thought they do.

Or maybe its the DDG proxy skewing the results as you get bundled up through their IP so other DDG searches affect your result.

It's on reverse for me

@Voxera why do you think that DDG uses Google in the background?
It's no wonder that devRant loves DDG when the most upvoted comment in the post is just false information.

DDG's results are nearly always relevant enough for me.
But then, the main reason I don't use google is their integration with at least one mass surveillance network.

I do also use searx.me through a self hosted version.

@sSam Its not a secret. But I thought it uses bing and many others as well.

@linuxxx yeah they use Bing, Yahoo and many others (over 400 sources), but they are not just a proxy for anonymized google results.

@sSam That's true, they're a little more than that!

@sSam because the do. They do also use many other search engines and now they also have their own crawler.

But when they started in 2010, when I looked at them they primarily used google as the competition was so much weaker.

And it was at that time quite visible in that much of the first page was the same.

This was when google still did not use quite as much personalization.

Apparently they today uses many more sources so my answer was incomplete, but hardly false and I stand corrected. But when accusing information to be false, please supply an alternative, both so that others reading it can jugde for them self and for the person, me in this case, to be able to learn something.

Just claiming false info is not really helping out :)

@Voxera https://reddit.com/r/duckduckgo/...

@sSam I distinctly remember that when they started it was all about getting googles results without having to use google but either the information I got was wrong or they have changed. I agree that from what I can find now that part of my post was wrong.

They do use other search engines though as they state in the page you link
“we also source from a variety of partners, including Oath (formerly Yahoo) and Bing.”

And the rest of my post, which was the important part about how google uses the personal information they have about their visitors lets them make a better guess about which results will be most interesting, is still valid and corroborated by both googles own statements and DDGs claims.

DDG which specifically prioritizes privacy will never have the same context and therefore will not be able to guess which results will be most relevant to me since they pride them self to not store such info.

This can be good if you want unbiased results but it can make some searches harder unless you are more specific.

For example searching for a framework with a very common name.

In google it was he second hit for me but when I out of interest tried it in an anonymous session it was not among the first 3 pages at least.

So the choice is between convenience and privacy.

And for any theories about political filtering, I do not use google for news so I believe I so get some more unbiased reporting ;)

And for controversial subjects I use multiple search engines to get a better coverage, not trusting any of them to be completely unbiased :)

It's funny, I used to use Google all the time before switching to DDG, and as time went on, Google's results kept getting worse and worse, to the point that I found Bing and DDG much more accurate. This was about 1y ago. Nowadays I only use DDG, and I haven't had any hiccup in a while.

@endor me and several colleagues actually tried to use bing but even after a few weeks it was hard to get good results unless it was regarding the us.

We got the impression that the did not have as good algorithms for foreign language sites.

That might have changed

With google I rarely have to go to page two to find what I am looking for. Unless its something very alien compared to what I usually look for.

And even then an extra word usually puts it on the right track.

But its always good with competition, its the one thing that ensures progress :)

@Voxera Bing was not an easy beast to tame, I'll give you that. Last I recall (6m ago?), you had to be quite accurate with your keyword selection, or the results could be easily swayed and end up off-topic.
A bit annoying, as you'd sometimes have to refine the search 2-3 times, but once you get used to that, it feels like having laser accuracy. Definitely a double-edged sword though.

Google, on the other hand, has been trying too hard to "guess what you're thinking before you even articulate it" (that's the best way I can express the idea), so my results would often be full of irrelevant crap whenever I'd search for something very specific, and often surrounded by fluff and advertisements for things I don't need.

Now that I think about it, Azure offers a free trial for the Bing Search API, which doesn't include any advertising in their results. Would be interesting to give that a try sometimes, and compare that with other search engines (including regular Bing?).

This is a problem I struggle with frequently. On the one hand, privacy. Kinda speaks for itself.

On the other, it's really nice to go to a site and it seamless knows what you want, when you want it. But on the first hand again: it's kinda creepy.

I don't personally use duckduckgo, because a) I forget to. Google is just burned into my brain. Instinct. And b) I've given up on Google. They know all, nothing you do can stop them. I focus my "no you can't know that about me!" Attitude into other companies.

However I do reset my tracking ID frequently, turn on do not track, turn off search and watch history for Google and YouTube, use ghostery, use incognito mode frequently, etc.

It's a personal preference. You do you bro!

@Voxera I've been using google a lot so they should know me. DDG results, for me at least, are the same on all clients I use it on and when searching for more technical stuff I find solutions on ddg whereas on google the first few pages are either promoted links or they think I mean something totally different because I used some short term in my search request