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Comment by Stubb | Hacker News Reader

Don't care. Haven't used Google since they put social engineering and ad revenue ahead of search quality and usability When I peek in from time to time, it looks intolerable compared to DDG's clean results.

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I tried using duckduckgo but gave up after I kept getting irrelevant results for simple queries

If you wish to retry anytime in the future, you can use the bang commands to search elsewhere whenever the results aren’t satisfactory. I usually start with DDG, then if needed, I move to !s (for startpage) and then to !g (google). This does take more time, but for me it’s worth not having to use Google as much as possible. I’ve also become a bit wary of Startpage after it was recently acquired. There are many other alternatives too, like Searx, for example.

After many tries at ddg, I am using startpage.com since it uses anonymized google results. Still far from perfect, but the best I have found for now.

startpage was purchased by an ad company last year.

Is that your main concern about Startpage? As a Startpage person, maybe I can shed some light on this. Last year, Startpage announced an investment in Startpage by System1 through Privacy One Group, a wholly-owned subsidiary of System1. With this investment, the plan is to further expand privacy features & reach new users. The Startpage founders have control over the privacy components of Startpage. More info - https://support.startpage.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Artic...

I wish that page was a little clearer as to how startpage still has control, since it turns out system1 now has a majority stake in startpage. However, in reading the letter from your CEO linked at the top, it appears this is by covenant. While in theory that could be renegotiated in the future, it is a relatively strong protection. It would be nice to see the exact language of said covenant and whether there are protections requiring public notification if it is ever changed or rescinded. I know that is probably not going to happen, but it's worth communicating what I think would be a common desire.

I hear you. Your feedback is much appreciated and I'll share it with the team.

Did you actually try Startpage without an adblocker?

https://i.imgur.com/KAZWb9i.png

The Ad maker on Startpage is way less visible than it ever was on Google or even DDG.

No I confess I never have :/

IMHO the ads on Duck Duck Go are much worse / harder to ignore. At least Google puts the [Ad] icons on the left so they line up. DDG puts them at the end of the title so they are all over the place. Try to use it without an adblocker.

So you actually want the ads to look more like the organic results?

No, I want them to be visible and even to distinguish. The new design has a much larger [Ad] icon which helps with that.

I'm just saying that comparing with DDG is not a good idea in this case, since on DDG the ads look much more like organic search than on Google.

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