Google does infer purpose better, and if someone is looking to buy something, it does well there too.
Ddg is very good at info queries and the more one uses it, the better it is.
What they could do is exactly what google did and that's to review those uses and improve.
But what they have right now is solid, given just a tiny bit of work.
If anyone is thinking of making the switch, you can always redirect your searches to Google by throwing a g! in the query.
I wonder if this is generational or cultural?
Personally, I dislike trying to interface with a machine using natural language, because I know it can’t really understand me, and I’d rather read and interpret the results for myself than have an algorithm pick the “best”.
I actually find speaking to machines (e.g. automated phone systems, Siri etc) using natural language quite embarrassing, as if we were pretending that real life was like Star Trek.
Until we address meaning, my statement remains solid. And it can often be easier to treat the tool like what it is rather than figure out how to best pretend it is something it is clearly not.
Although such queries are habit forming and now google does a decent job understanding the actual question
Got good at including words for context early on and never stopped.
My default remains word searches. Frankly, better operators would benefit me more than questions would.
I really do not always want to formulate a question. Doing that makes sense sometimes.
Often, I want to see relevant info, then formulate other queries.