How DuckDuckGo Rode a Wave of Post-Snowden Anxiety to Massive Growth

Re:How DuckDuckGo Rode a Wave of Post-Snowden Anxiety to Mas... by bane on Sunday August 16, 2015 @10:46PM (#10071146)

Like a few other comments here, I switched to ddg a few months ago and only rarely need to go back to google. In fact, it's kind of nice to have a few places to search now (google, bing, ddg), reminds me of the old internet search engine war days.

Unlike the article, I didn't do it for security reasons, I actually gave it a go and found the search results better for most of the things I search for. And if I don't find what I want I can !g and it'll take me right to google's results so I get a direct like-for-like comparison.

I also generally like how DDG presents the results better than google. Little details like checkboxes next to places I've already been are super helpful and I miss those little touches in google. There's tons of little touches like that all over DDG.

I find about 1:30 searches I hit google for and maybe only half of those do I find anything anyway.

About the only think I don't like about DDG is the image search, google is far superior here still. And google sometimes does a better job bringing up maps of places I'm searching for. But I don't see changing back anytime soon and getting better personal security "for free" is a nice side effect.

It also brings into question how important google's personalized searches are for relevancy if DDG can provide equivalent results without needing that information.

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Re:How DuckDuckGo Rode a Wave of Post-Snowden Anxiety to Mas... by rpedroso on Sunday August 16, 2015 @10:52PM (#10071155)

Little details like checkboxes next to places I've already been are super helpful and I miss those little touches in google.

Google does do this, and in a less subtle way -- it applies the classic, purple styling to visited links.

Still, I find your comments compelling enough to give DDG a shot. I found the results inadequate when I last tried a year or so ago -- I found myself using !g more often than not, which led me to abandon DDG altogether.

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Re:How DuckDuckGo Rode a Wave of Post-Snowden Anxiety to Mas... by djent on Sunday August 16, 2015 @10:55PM (#10071165)

I'm pretty sure that's a browser thing, not a Google-specific feature.

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Re:How DuckDuckGo Rode a Wave of Post-Snowden Anxiety to Mas... by rpedroso on Sunday August 16, 2015 @11:17PM (#10071214)

Yes, it is a feature of the default browser stylesheet, but many websites override it. DuckDuckGo, for instance, keeps all of its links black and uses the :visited pseudo class to show the checkmark.

Even if it's default browser behavior, keeping it around is a specific design decision.

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Re:How DuckDuckGo Rode a Wave of Post-Snowden Anxiety to Mas... by jpatokal on Sunday August 16, 2015 @11:15PM (#10071210)

Well, it's a CSS thing these days (a:visited), and something that an awful lot of other sites these days sacrifice in favor of looking more shiny and uniform.

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Re:How DuckDuckGo Rode a Wave of Post-Snowden Anxiety to Mas... by GeorgeOrr on Sunday August 16, 2015 @10:52PM (#10071157)

FWIW, !image will use googles image search.

I have a similar reaction to maps, and for that !maps does the trick.

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Re:How DuckDuckGo Rode a Wave of Post-Snowden Anxiety to Mas... by bestnameever on Sunday August 16, 2015 @11:48PM (#10071305)

you can also use !gi for google images and !gm to redirect to maps.

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