Millions Choose Simple Privacy Protection with DuckDuckGo | Hacker News Reader

Millions Choose Simple Privacy Protection with DuckDuckGo

spreadprivacy.com

84 pointsheadalgorithm69 comments

Personally I stick with DDG because in the search result page there is more text about the sites. With more context it's easier for me to decide if a site will be useful or not. (And also because that horrible 'other people search' popup in Google that I always end clicking because it appears after the exact milliseconds it takes me to move the cursor to the next entry).

And in those cases where Google performs better, I have a bookmarklet in the always visible bookmarks bar to switch between both, from ddg to Google and from Google to ddg (I'm a mouse user, just one click away).

    javascript:void(window.location.href = "https://" + (window.location.host == 'duckduckgo.com' ? "www.google.com/search" : "duckduckgo.com/") + "?" + window.location.href.match('q=[^&]\*')[0])

in DDG you can add "!g" to the beginning of your search term to switch to google results, too

Also at the end! Which is useful for mobile (discovered it from another comment here in HN, thanks!).

On desktop I prefer the bookmarklet, it is just one click away (as I said I'm a mouse user)

I use !s for Startpage results, which are Google results, but it doesn't go directly to Google and is supposedly more private.

> that horrible 'other people search' popup in Google that I always end clicking because it appears after the exact milliseconds it takes me to move the cursor to the next entry

god I hate that thing so much! In my mind, with no evidence to back this up, I like to imagine they A/B tested various versions of their code and the system automatically decided that version xyz made people use the feature more, so that's the one it went with. But the only reason that was the case was version xyz took a little longer to answer queries or load the client side JS, and the result is exactly what you described.

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" and all that. It's not that I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt here but I just really like to imagine that they're not even aware of how frustrating this is.

That's pretty cool. You can also type "!g" in the searchbar to search your query in google. There's also "!gi" for google images and "!gm" for google maps. They call these "bangs" and have many more of them. They're super useful and one of the main reasons I use DDG

I've been pleasantly surprised with DDG's quality. It's definitely not as good as Google (for my usage), but it's good enough.

I've stopped using Google after they've introduced the very (cleverly) intrusive privacy intermediate page, which is really annoying for those permanently using the browser private mode.

Same. I have been using DuckDuckGo for over 4 years now. There is not much reason to go back to Google. DuckDuckGo ticks all my requirements:

- General search.

- Prefix search with "\ " to jump to the first result. (often use it for those links that I am certain of ranking first)

- Bangs for site-specific searches. Use it for online shopping.

- Quick currency, temperature conversions, math.

On the mobile side of things, the tracker blocker functionality with one-click-erase functionality are neat.

There's nothing really to not like about DuckDuckGo. If desired results are not available, Google search is one step away. Just prefix with "!g"

I briefly considered Ecosia but the lack of first-result jumper and bangs were a problem for me.

Brave Search is something I want to try but the large amount of space between search results is slightly bothering.

It’s bing. You are using a reskin of bing search results.

Yes, but also no: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27528625

Also: do you care if it’s Bing? If it works as well as it does it could be a hacked up version of the old AltaVista code for all I care.

I've gone back and forth on using ddg. I realize whenever I am searching for technical assistance, bing results are really terrible. Because of this, I wind up !g every search. Lately, I have begun using https://www.startpage.com, which gives you a private, untracked google search every time.

https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so...

Who cares? The average consumer just wants something that works. They don’t want a multi user multitasking operating system, they just want Windows because they’re familiar with it. They don’t care about Google vs. Bing, they just use what they’re familiar with, or in this case they use DDG because they feel it protects their privacy.

I just switched my phone's default search engine to duckduckgo and have been pleasantly surprised at how little difference it has made to my life. One major factor that led me to switch was just seeing the vast amount of data google has on me on their data dashboard. Between maps, Android, Gmail, and search I am sure they know more about me than my own family!

Another perk is that duckduckgo plays nice with my pihole ad blocker - the top Google results are often ads which get blocked by default.

Completely missing out on the whole AMP mess was a nice plus for me honestly.

I switched a couple years ago. DuckDuckGo’s seems to be getting better and better over time. I don’t miss Google at all. In fact, I used it recently out of curiosity and was pretty shocked with how far the quality of search results had declined.

I stopped using Google when they started showing me captchas for the crime of using a VPN…

Switched to Duck but I’m giving Brave Search a try as well.

How do you find Brave in comparison? I've been pleasantly surprised with it's results but wondered how it fares to regular DDG users

Not op, but I've used ddg for years. Imo ddg and brave are currently pretty much a wash. I've found that for some queries brave performs better, and for other queries ddg/bing performs better.

With both of them, i've found that in most (but not all) cases, if the results are bad, google's results are also bad.

I'll need to retrain my muscle memory to do "!d" instead of "!g" on unsatisfying brave results. I suspect that would let me drop google usage to basically zero.

I find them about the same, Brave supports most of the same bangs, though ddg is a bit faster and smoother UI wise and I think I prefer the overall design of the ddg results pages. Overall, I like them both with ddg just being a bit better because of it being around longer.

I like that Brave has it's own index. Will be interesting to see how it manages over time.

I find it hard to fault Google for the VPN captcha thing. I have little doubt that the associated IPs are being used for all kinds of nefarious purposes that deserve flagging them as suspicious.

Which is fine, they can run their search engine however they like and I’m free to use a different one :)

DuckDuckGo is a really great search engine.

The '!g' keyword is really important as a quick way to search with Google when the DDG results are lacking, but for me 3/4 of searches don't need that.

Same here! But when I use the !g I rarely find better results.

Too bad adding "!g" takes 7 touch-interactions on mobile.

DDG should really add a "!g"-button to the bottom of their search result page.

Two (plus a space) for me. if you’re on iOS - and I think Android - if you hold the “123” modifier and then _slide_ to the “!” and release, it inputs the character and then switches the keyboard back to alpha. one touch.

the space isn't required typing "query!g" will refer you through to the google results

You forgot that you'll have to put the focus back on the search bar. And you have to hit enter.

Android:

    0. slide back up to the search bar
    1. touch the search bar
    2. touch "space" (optional, I guess)
    3. touch "?123" modifier
    4. touch "!"
    5. touch "?123" modifier
    6. touch "g"
    7. touch "enter" or "search"

https://private.sh/ is something I've been working on lately. It is powered by my search engine of 20 years, https://gigablast.com/ . private.sh can't be evil because it uses javascript encryption to encrypt your query so that only gigablast can read it, and then it routes your encrypted query through a proxy so that gigablast does not know your IP. This level of privacy is a notch above what everyone else is offering as it is guaranteed by cryptography. Basically we can only offer this because Gigablast is the back-end search engine, not Google or Bing. You need a backend search engine that supports the encrypted query protocol. All the other "search engines" in the U.S. are just serving Bing or Google, but mostly just Bing.

Is there a link to private.sh or gigablast Open Source software?

https://github.com/gigablast is the gigablast open source software. private.sh just uses javascript so that's already available by viewing the html source. there is also a chrome extension for private.sh as well as an android app in the google play store if you want to have a persistent, verifiable version of the javascript if you are concerned about MITM attacks.

I’ve been using DDG for years but am now extremely disappointed having found out that it’s just a wrapper for bing and the whole tank man fiasco.

Googles ads have been on a rampage lately they’re even injecting ads into my gmail. We’re in a tech dystopia and I’m feeling defeated.

Did you think the less than 150 person company that doesnt steal your data built their own search engine?

No, but I expect more than a wrapper for bing.

The tank man incident shows that the image search results (at least for that specific query) were directly taken from a single source without modification.

Okay so you expect content to be quality checked and if not strong enough then for it to be sourced from another search engines data or to be pulled themselves? Again sounds like high expectations for a 150 person company.

You’re missing the point. You made up that silly requirement not me.

I keep saying “more than a wrapper for bing”

I don’t understand how to phrase it more directly.

I mean come on, there’s not any logic server side to pull from multiple sources if the query yields ZERO results?! For a search as simple as “tank man”?! Why on earth does anyone need more than 150 employees for a simple check like that?

Sounds like you need to raise your own standards rather than lower everyone else’s.

I'm just not understanding what you want them to do bar creating their own search engine. You want other sources to be checked if a search returns zero results to prevent something like the tank man issue, right?

How would one accomplish that? Create their own search engine. Purchase search results from someone else. Do Yahoo and Ask.com sell their search results? I don't know. But I'm assuming if it was as easy as, "have two data streams to pull from" then DDG would have implemented it.

This is interesting to me, because I think the claim here is some combination of untrue or useless - if DDG cares about privacy there is nothing at all preventing that from changing in the future. All the same data as a Google search feeds through their platform.

But on the other hand, the claim is really accurate because using DDG breaks apart the really invasive part of Google - combining of email, search, likely video, probably phone use habits and location, etc, into one centralised blob of data.

So on the one hand DDG are being very honest here, and on the other hand very deceptive.

I tried DDG for a couple of months on all my devices because privacy, but returned grudgingly to Google because of two issues:

1. I was using ‘!g’ a LOT to get better results, especially when searching for coding hints.

2. The ‘-‘ exclusion prefix is borked on DDG: it does exactly what I want on Google (exclude this term) but on DDG it merely reduces the importance of the term, often by a negligible value.

I really wanted my DDG experiment to pay off, but have had to trade some of my privacy for my own time. The savings in time and frustration minimization make Google worth my time, sadly.

DuckDuckGo should have a warrant canary

What if they did have before we started using them, but it's dead?

How would we ever know?

Does anyone remember a canary on DDG?

What good would that be? They are served with one warrant for something and the canary is gone. you know something happened, but not what. Maybe it is a one time thing, maybe they get them all the time. Maybe it is even a real crime you would approve of a warrant for, maybe it is political. Maybe it is specifically targeted, maybe it is give us everything.

For that matter, what is to stop courts from ordering as part of the warrant that the canary stays up?

This also kind of assumes that DDG is not a honeypot to begin with, which we have no evidence of.

Anyone can pay lip service to privacy, but we have no proof they're actually doing anything they say.

Do we need to keep linking to these marketing pages for DDG? I think by now this audience has heard of DDG.

!g how to get back google from 2004

You mean without all the SEO spam? Doesn't it still use Google's indexes/algorithms so the results would be the same?

I tend to alternate between my default search set to DDG or Google. Seems like about once a month I switch.

For me, the fraction of time spent with DDG as default keeps increasing because there are so fewer 'spammy' search results.

DDG is pretty great, I’ve been enjoying it for the better part of the last year. Sometimes I’ll go back to Google for niche questions but it’s infrequent. The !commands really power it up once you learn what they are.

I've been trying out the new Brave Search and it's surprisingly giving pretty good results + there's a one click way to further search on Google if you don't get what you're looking for.

I want to love DDG so much and I do have it as my default search engine for iOS/Safari. But the results are really poor compared to Google.

Every search I perform I add “!g” to it.

I wonder how many others are like me.

I switched to Brave & DDG not because I care all that much about who's keeping track of what I'm doing on the internet but because I have no idea what the political leanings of the parent corporations are. I gave up on Google & Firefox when they started shoving left-wing politics in my face.

Brave’s founder has a dislike for gay people...

I highly doubt either FB or Google show “left wing” stuff. Neoliberal and liberal stuff sure. But they aren’t going to be showing you Bernie and other left wing stuff consistently. That’s not even their politics, not that that’s what matters anyway.

this (ad) has already been posted 5 times in the last few weeks

I really don't like duckduckgo. Maybe I am in the minority. But the 2nd page from duckduckgo is just really bad. If you just need the first its fine (still google is better imo)

wow that is a lot of the word "surprising"

I use metager.org

I just tested and immediately bookmarked it.

Seems like it is stricter about exact matches when I use doublequotes.

Unfortunately, it looks like viewing their search results requires Javascript.

That's a no-starter for me.

DDG lets you view their results without Javascript, using https://lite.duckduckgo.com

Was there a study?

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