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Comment by setori88 | Hacker News Reader

my default search engine

Same.

I am curious. What's the benefit?

Basically, I like the disambiguation pages and zero-click info panels. Granted, google usually has the wikipedia article for a given query in the top 5 results, but with ddg it's always right there at the top along with a paragraph of (usually relevant) the wikipedia article. I don't think it's necessarily a mind-blowing search engine (I don't know if that's even possible), but I tried it out a while back and haven't had any compelling reason to switch back to google (except for the occasional query). I've been using it for a week or two now.

Our about page is now dedicated to this quesiton: http://duckduckgo.com/about.html

just use it for a week and you will see the benefit (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1209384)

Two questions:

Are you an employee, investor, or other interested party?

Is there not one good benefit of this search engine that you can put in to words?

My only relationship to duck duck go is as a user. nothing else. second question -> I know full well my words could have absolutely no effect in persuading you, as search is such a personal and habitual experience. So instead I resort to simply saying; use it for a week and let the site speak for itself. Pardon my deliberate canny dodge.

anyway after a bit of a rant here is what i consider the most powerful feature of ddg: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1209619

I actually did use it for a week but I'm back at Google. There wasn't enough draw to pull me away - though I'll try it again in a few weeks when the owner has had time to respond fully to the reddit feedback.

I think he's going to be a very wealthy man!

That doesn't make any sense. I'm asking to be persuaded. Obviously I'm looking for your words. Asking me to invest a week of my search traffic just because? That's more likely to have absolutely no effect in persuading me.

Remember, I simply posted the duck duck go site and said this is my default search engine, why persuade you?

Research yourself, can't be bothered well, so be it. Try it for a week don't like it ... so be it.

Good luck mate

The internet has too many trolls - not that you are a troll

Just use it for a week, and you'll see. For many things, the results are better than Google. (And it's not just the results, but the way they're presented.)

>Is there not one good benefit of this search engine that you can put in to words?

It has a duck.

Just use it for a week.

That's not even an answer... For me it doesn't have any benefit (it hasn't got my google search profile), but I'm also interested in what benefit do you see in it. Even just because I'm curious...

for one they block a lot of useless spam sites that show up in certain querys and i personally really like the zero click info!

Sorry, I should to be downvoted for my critical answer.

DDG saves me time and I like its privacy policy. And I do like the duck, as compared to google's logo or google chrome's "evil watching-you robot eye."

Pretty much everything described in DDG's about page, I find valuable.

DDG wins hands down with respect to privacy.

TBH, I don't want/need DDG's privacy. I'm working with VoIP - what I want to get when I look for "yate" is the softswitch, not the city. When I look for "asterisk", I want the pbx, not the page about "*". I'm ok with google knowing that - it's search profile works great for me.

I think we've got too many words with multiple meanings to accept the same results page for every person.

The word "asterisk" does indeed have different meanings that is why ddg uses this particular technique to disambiguate the query. Narrowing down the meaning is performed by the user's intelligence not machine intelligence. There on the first page one can see high level "asterisk" meanings including Asterisk PBX, one click away. Please note too that Asterisk the PBX is indeed top of the weblinks section.

Compare the usability to google search. Notice that a person searching for the song "Asterisk" by M83 can find it immediately on ddg. A google user would have to try different keyword combinations to eventually get the topic in question - say "what was the band's name again?" and you are off on a wild goose chase. In all honesty I would rather click that disambiguate menu than have to retype a whole bunch of search terms.

Secondly your "yate" query is in fact the first weblink result of ddg (http://yate.null.ro/pmwiki/), the other top bits help the user disambiguate the search as there are other meanings to the name Yate. A possible reason Yate the softswitch does not show up on the disambiguate menu, could be the same reason why Yate softswitch does not show up on a disambiguate menu in Wikipedia. If you create a well written wikipedia entry, I believe your softswitch would appear shortly in ddg disambiguate menu. It seems the only like to the Yate softswitch from wikipedia is this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jingle_(protocol)

As an experiment, try find those little Yate towns with the keyword "Yate" and the song Asterisk by the band M83 with the keyword "asterisk" in google.

How about one more thing: search for Asterisk in ddg, click on the disambiguate link for asterisk and notice that the results filter out non Asterisk PBX results. Quite handy if you are an Asterisk PBX professional.

Humans can't disambiguate in the sea of words as effectively as machines do. There is just too much results you have to sift through, every time you want to look up some little detail.

That is exactly what Google does: display too many results for a human to sort through effectively, and that is why ddg flattens google.

Wikipedia is humans disambiguating words; ddg is an abstraction of Wikipedia.

This ddg setup is the power of humans disambiguating words into a tree structure, and the power of machines indexing and querying this tree structure on behalf of humans.

I believe wikipedia would do well in copying ddg interface.

Generally, finding information in well structured trees is faster than one modge podge long list - hence the perceived better results.

tree power mate, tree power.

"I believe wikipedia would do well in copying ddg interface."

Of all things dukgo has going for it the interface IMO is not one of them.

DDG most certainly does not "win" with regards to privacy. No man or corporation can win without being tested, and DDG does not appear to have been tested. We'll see how they fare when it comes time to match what they've written on paper with their actions.

all search engines started with that level of privacy and they evolved from there for various legal, marketing and technical reasons. It would be interesting to look at DDG's privacy policy in 3 years and compare it with this thread.

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