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Duck duck is barely usable ... but they don't spy on you. The !g and !b commands make it my first choice. If the results aren't getting what you want, try the search on google or bing. IF you don't mind Sergy Brin or Bill Gates tracking you.

I still think there's room for a search engine that supports boolean(ish?) operations like AND, OR , NOT and NEAR. Providing links directly to the source and not a redirect to the search engine company would be a really good thing.

A cookie-less search engine would be double plus good.

Duck duck is barely usable

On the contrary, I find Google barely usable these days, with everything covered in layers and layers of horrible bloat, random UX mess of the week and constant pestering about G+.

DDG is nice and clean, has features Google is (still) lacking and just gets me the results. I may resort to other search-engines (like Google) once a week or so, but at this point, there's no way I'm going back to having Google as default.

That's just not worth it.

I applaud what DDG is doing. I've been using it as my default search engine for roughly 2 years. Yes, there are some areas for improvement, especially when it comes to complex technical queries. But for the majority of everyday things, DDG is excellent, and returns less advertisement bloat within its results than Google/Bing.

Plus ducks are my favorite animal, so launching DDG as I begin the work day is a joy!

Google supports AND, OR, NOT and NEAR. There is an AROUND operator that is similar to NEAR.

I think the way DDG can gain more traction is motivating top sites to enhance their local search pagerank. It's incredible how Google search restricted to Stack Overflow works better than the Stack Overflow local search engine. I wrote a rant about this at Challenging Google’s Search Engine [1].

[1] http://blog.databigbang.com/letters-from-the-future-challeng...

> Duck duck is barely usable ... but they don't spy on you.

1. You don't know that.

2. No search engine ever spied on you when they started.

In what way do you find it barely usable? I've used it for about a year and I find the results to be great. I don't think there's been a time when I couldn't find the result I wanted with ddg but could with google.
Barely usable, yes I agree. So use Startpage.com. They also say they don't spy on you. It works just as good as Google, because it uses Google (see it as a proxy).

DDG is especially terrible if you are used localized versions of Google. I was used to "Swedish Google", and using a localized (Swedish) DDG was totally unusable. And so I found Startpage. Works better than the real deal for me. There are a few differences though. A search operator like site: is named host: as an example.

> but they don't spy on you

How can you be so sure of that ? A few months ago, pretty much anyone would say "but the NSA don't spy on you". From a paranoid (ie security) point of view, DDG is not better than Google et al.

Now, I do believe they are more respective of everyone's privacy, but there's absolutely nothing more than words to back this.

I don't know what the hell you mean, "barely usable". I basically just use it and I search for things and find things, there's nothing "barely" about it's usability. Maybe I don't know what I'm missing, but I've never experienced search as though it magically reads my mind.
+1

i've started using it as my main engine a while back but i absolutely have to go back to google fairly often. i'm using pentadactyl so i never noticed the !g !gi etc. commands. thanks!

The killer feature for me with ddg (as a programmer) is the ! searches for documentation:

  !php strstr
  !python os.makedirs
  !pypi requests
  !js String
etc.

This gives you a single search bar for all documentation, which is amazing.

edit: formatting

I've been a happy DDG user for about 3 years now. I initially started not because of privacy, but because I think the home page and search results are much cleaner and more minimalist. And I've told myself that if Google ever produces a search result that I couldn't find just as easily with DuckDuckGo then I will switch back. So far that hasn't happened.

Now I use DuckDuckGo as my home page and it's my only search engine. And the search results just keep getting better and better.

I've actually been turning to reddit for a lot of my searches. Yes, you read that right, reddit.

I found that a lot of times when I was looking for general advice from other people (recent examples: how to treat dandruff, how to start a garden) I actually get really well thought out answers from real people who have done the same things. And I know they're not trying to sell me anything or just get page views.

Doing those same searches on google just returns vapid SEO filled articles from ehow and wikihow, and those kind of places, pretty worthless.

I reached out to Gabriel a few times while living in the Southeast PA region for entrepreneurial related questions. He always got back to me within a day or so...incredibly helpful and nice. I switched to DDG a while back, and while it took a little bit to get used to the changes, I use it for 80% of my searches now. The only way they will improve is by us using them more and more often. You can complain about how they aren't as good as Google, but that doesn't help them improve. Getting involved in the DDG community and setting them as your main search engine does.
I switched over to DuckDuckGo as my default search provider, for about half a year. It was alright for a while... but eventually I would search for things on both DDG and Google and realized how much I was missing... Sadly I've moved back to Google since then.

Another issue that kept coming up for me, was their lack of keyboard controls on search result pages. Although, this isn't really as relevant to most users I would speculate

> We give everyone their own dev environment that's a full stack of DuckDuckGo. It's a full machine. Some people are using eMacs.

Is this like how foreign words get remapped into Japanese syllables? Fast Company tech writers only speak Apple? chuckles

DuckDuckGo does not have its own index. They are pretty much layer over Bing plus some customizations for query parsing and head queries for trusted sources which they do index. If Bing decided to block DDG tomorrow, they will be toast. The only impressive thing for me about DDG is that they are able to turn privacy thing in to marketing for geeks and get tiny trickle of traffic to stay alive in hope someone would buy them out.
As a quacking/ducking web developer, results often are more relevant than with google these days. If I'm not happy with what I find through duckduckgo I just add a quick !g and skim the google results - best of both worlds.
I applaud the DDG spirit but without their own crawling data their future is doomed.

If their data sources ever cut them off, it's over.

They need to build their own crawlers like gigablast.

I'm impressed, it works quite well.

However, just to put DuckDuckGo's 4 Mqpd into a broader context:

Google 2013: 5.9 Gqpd Bing 2012: 3.1 Gqpd

Not to put DuckDuckGo down or anything, but it's important to understand what a >1000x difference in scale means, in terms of operating costs and scalability issues. For example, for a single person is very easy to get hold of $10k but it's extremely difficult to get $10M. (I'm not actually interested in money, it's just an example measurement unit, and particular range, that people are familiar with).

Sources: http://www.statisticbrain.com/google-searches/ http://leaderswest.com/2012/07/02/how-bings-search-increased...

I use either DDG or https://startpage.com/ . I still have to go to Google about once or twice month though...
What's repeatedly surprised me is how I'll get results from DuckDuckGo and think that, "You know, I bet Google would have given better/more relevant results." And then I'm proven wrong! When DuckDuckGo gives nonrelevant results, Google often isn't any better, and when DuckDuckGo gives relevant results, sometimes they're often as relevant or more relevant than Google. I switched cold turkey a few months back, and I'm very pleased with how usable it is. I also really like the !word features, it's better than Google in that respect. I should mention that it's easier to do math in Google because Google infers more (such as inferring parens in an expression like: "2 + 2) * 4", outputting "16". DuckDuckGo can't handle that at the moment.
Nice to see the internals of other companies like us. We love tiny team sizes at Coinkite.com.

It's incredible how much you can accomplish with very very few focussed makers.

We created our own rack mounted HSM, our own Hardware POS payment terminals, and all the payment web structure. Answer to support and automated the supply chain.

Stop hiring!

DDG is good but not for non-english context. I mean, comparing to google for Greek text search is laughable at best.

That said, I hope the grow strong so I can use their engine.

I made two attempts to convert to DDG, the first nearly two years ago, then, successfully, this past June. And in large part, it's working better than Google. Searches are fast, they're unfiltered, the !bang syntax is great, privacy is respected, and overall site weight and load is much preferable to Google. While I don't always find what I'm looking for, switching to !g often doesn't turn up what I was hoping for either -- sometimes it's just search refinement that you need.

All in all, I'm happy with it. This after sixteen years of Google use.

I've been using DDG for a few years now. I recommend it to anyone who will listen, and really hope they continue to grow. It's been fascinating to watch Google copy their zero-click results.
Can't you just browse and search "incognito" with Google Chrome?
I have lots of respect for the founder. One of his blog posts motivated me to buy my own rack + datacenter class equipment. So much fun!!
How does DDG work? Do they have their own algorithm to rank the web pages? What makes their algorithm better?
Quite surprised about the humongous boost following the Surveillance revelations [https://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html]
Most of the time when I have tried DDG the results I got back looked like spam I would get if I clicked on the 3 or 4 result page from a Google search.
DDG gives me freedom to better craft my queries, and it's won my browser's default search engine for years because of the bang syntax. I can !anything and it almost always gets me what I need. I still !g and !b quite a bit, but I do so deliberately based on what I'm looking for (and I do think about whether I want the search affecting my Google Now results).
My main concern with DDG is its founders history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_Database

His past isn't exactly one I'd look for if I wanted a trustworthy search operator, I think.

Is there a ddg cheat sheet? How can one make it the default search in Chrome's url field?
The only reason I still use Google over DuckDuckGo is the keyword suggestions as I'm typing. I find that to be very useful when I'm searching for something but not quite sure how to phrase it. I would for sure switch over if DDG added that!
Redirecting to this page - http://www.fastcodesign.com/3026431/this-company-wants-to-ma...
Ah, I'm getting linked to an article Nice Laundry, not duck duck go.
It is so cool to see them growing like this. Gabe, the founder is a great guy. When I lived in Philly, he would have periodic hack nights in that office, open to all. I met some cool people there.
Does DuckDuckGo have image search?

I don't like that when I press tab I go to the search field I would like to go to the first link. Also I type in YouTube and the first link is for the Wikipedia entry.

hmm competitor? Does Sprint call one of its MVOs Virgin a competitor?
I'm another happy DDG user a few years now. They sent me a bunch of stickers, and I've been putting them up in my university, work places & friend's laptops.
Seems like DuckDuckGo went down. Not loading for me.
How does DuckDuckGo make money to support itself?
This article ended abruptly.
I prefer ixquick.com
DDG is excellent.
lol at the pic with the server setup