Ask HN: Have you successfully moved away from Google search?

Re:Ask HN: Have you successfully moved away from Google search? by veidr on Thursday August 10, 2017 @10:04AM (#14979763)

No. And, literally just today I (again) disabled the DuckDuckGo extension in my browser, because I felt ridiculous for having done this more than 20 times in a single day:

1. search (via the browser's URL/search field)

2. sigh

3. press ⌘L to return keyboard focus to the browser URL/search field

4. press ⌘← to move the cursor to the beginning of the text

5. enter "!g" and then ↩︎ to re-execute the search using Google

I really do like the idea of a non-creepy search engine. I periodically give DDG another chance. But even more, apparently, I like finding pages and blog posts responsive to my search.

(EDIT: Wow, I learned from this thread that step 4 isn't necessary; the !g can go at the end of the search query. :-D Still doesn't really change anything, though.)

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Re:Ask HN: Have you successfully moved away from Google search? by oAlbe on Thursday August 10, 2017 @10:15AM (#14979877)

You can append the bang at the end of the query, the result will be the same. And you don't need to use cmd+L to focus the address bar of your browser, you can just type 'h' and the focus will go to the DDG search bar.

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Re:Ask HN: Have you successfully moved away from Google search? by charlieegan3 on Thursday August 10, 2017 @11:07AM (#14980443)

I've found that you can put the "!g " string anywhere and it'll work - does seem to need a space after it if it's not at the end though. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=thi%21g+ngs&t=hq

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Re:Ask HN: Have you successfully moved away from Google search? by LizMcIntyre on Thursday August 10, 2017 @11:55AM (#14980940)

Right, but no privacy. Better to go to StartPage.com using the !s or !sp

StartPage delivers actual Google search results without the tracking and without the filter bubble.

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Re:Ask HN: Have you successfully moved away from Google search? by charlieegan3 on Thursday August 10, 2017 @12:09PM (#14981091)

Only if I'm signed into Google or allowing it to set cookies right and not spoofing my user agent right? ;)

I don't know if you're still affiliated with StartPage.com but the done thing is to mention that in any posts promoting your company.

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Re:Ask HN: Have you successfully moved away from Google search? by LizMcIntyre on Thursday August 10, 2017 @11:54AM (#14980930)

Privacy alert: Banging into Google is like going there directly!

If you want Google search results in privacy, use the !s or !sp from DDG to get StartPage.com.

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