DuckDuckGo included in Opera | Hacker News Reader

DuckDuckGo included in Opera

duck.co

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As of Opera 11.52, DDG is included in the default search engine list.

Can you shed any light on the deal terms? That search box is a major source of revenue for browsers. Did you undercut the other search engines?

I know it's sensitive business information but any information you can provide would be great.

Sorry, I cannot comment on the terms.

I'm not commenting on your deal specifically, but NDA-protected deals in general: let's say, 50 or 100 years from now, historians want to know all the details of various deals made between companies, to better understand the nature of the market in which we now exist. Is there any way for them to find out, or will these details be forever lost?

There's no way DDG can outbid Google or Bing. Also, it's not the default search where all the money is so they probably didn't have to beat out the big dogs to get into the list.

Surely the minute DDG starts costing them revenue then Google, et al., will simply cut them off from using their search results (eg via !) and substantially reduce the utility of DDG?

While this is certainly an impressive feat, I've not found myself impressed with DuckDuckGo's results. I love the principles of having search results be free of personal information but, for a search provider that essentially collects and organizes other search engine's results, I always find myself back at Google. Often times the result I wanted was as many as 4 or 5 pages back, whereas with Google it's usually in the first 5 or so results, immediately seen on the first page.

Thank you for giving it a try! We're always trying to improve and to the extent you remember any specific examples we'd love to review them: http://duckduckgo.com/feedback.html

Sure, I'd be happy to. This is certainly a product I'd like to be using.

I prefer DDG for general search, but google was too good at digging up obscure code errors. I end up spending more time looking for errors than general stuff (which I guess means I'm a terrible programmer), so grudgingly switched back to the googs.

I've switched to using DDG in FireFox for the past couple weeks. It works fine for 80% of searches and occasionally surprises me with the zero-click box, but the other 20% of the time I have to use Google.

If you can't find what you are looking for on DDG, just slap a !g on the query and you go straight to google. This slight inconvenience for some searches is outweighed by the power of !bangs and the zero click info.

There's a different approach to DDG, which emphasises having a set of trusted sources rather than a powerful whole-web analysis as Google does. DDG often misses the wanted result, but often gives the result much higher up than Google.

I use Google more than I do DDG, but I use DDG enough that I miss the DDG shortcuts quite a bit when using Google: I recommend spending more time with DDG. The !hn shortcut, for instance, is quite useful around here.

There is a Chrome extension that allow DDG searches while keeping Google as your default:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/edacflbhpmcimdanpf...

What I'd like to see is a DDG/Google search toggle, or a pop-up selector such as Firefox has.

I always found Opera to be ahead of the curve when it came to changes and new features in web browsers.

But I made duckduckgo the default search engine in Opera almost a week ago!

C'mon guys, don't let me lead the way! (It's a scary thought)

Not just "included", but according to the linked post, Opera now uses DuckDuckGo as the default search engine. That sounds like a major win for them.

I didn't see that, and if true would be insane. It's in an "alternate search engine list dropdown".

Good PR piece, but I'm skeptical it'll translate to any extra traffic.

I spotted it immediately and was pleasantly surprised.

DDG was in Times 'The 50 Best Websites of 2011', now they show up in Opera. It does not seem to be so spectacular as being listed in Times, yet its gonna stay there for a long time, being one click away. It should translate to extra traffic in a long run.

Seems DDG is in a phase of building momentum which can take quite a long time and includes such (not so small) wins like these two.

Not to forget being listed as the best search engine for private browsing by ConsumerSearch which is a part of the About.com network and has pretty decent traffic. http://www.consumersearch.com/search-engine-reviews

Not quite - "is now in the default search engine list". It's still an incredible achievement. :-)

Thanks for the clarification.

DuckDuckGo is in the default search engine list, but it is not the default search engine.

more info at Opera:

http://my.opera.com/ruario/blog/2011/10/19/the-hidden-featur...

Hey, what's the point of DuckDuckGo when you have the NOTORIOUS FACEBOOK TRACKING CRAP in the page http://duck.co/topic/duckduckgo-in-opera and the forums ? see http://nikcub.appspot.com/facebook-re-enables-controversial-... and http://www.identityblog.com/?p=1201 http://europe-v-facebook.org/EN/en.html

defeats the intent and reputation of DuckDuckGo.

Zoho runs our forums. I'll investigate and see what can be done. I saw your post on duck.co as well.

They should consider Blekko, too. I've found some very relevant results on it, like if I was looking for a review of a laptop or something like that.

I've had good success with Blekko. Not crazy about the slash syntax, but it certainly seems to work for me.

Btw, I'm a fan on DDG. It's slick and fun to use (although I still habitually go to Google still). Bad habit to break!

Did they use their new funding to pay for this?

Nope -- absolutely nothing to do with it.

That makes it double impressive. This market really needs competition, so all the best.

Cuil!

DuckDuckGo needs to change their name, imo. Secondly, they need to reduce the number of links you have to click through to get to a site you are looking for. The disambiguation step takes too long.

Yeah, a company that's just starting to build brand awareness should really just up and change their name. Brilliant.

Well, it sucks. Better to fix something that sucks early on.

At least DuckDuckGo is a memorable and easy to spell name. Most sites these days have such odd spelling or nonsense words that you must spell out the name (and dots) when talking to other people.

DDG is not new.

Definitely. The name sucks. It sucks just as much as other crazy names that make no sense... like GoDaddy - who would ever use a company like that? Sounds like an escort service. Or Yahoo. Or Google. Those names just don't make sense and should be changed ;)

achievement unlocked

Pardon me for my ignorance, isn't this somewhat considered to be some form of anti-trust behavior?

If not, why does Google Chrome ask you to pick Google, Bing or Yahoo at the first use?

It's included in the list, not as default search provider.

Because Google owns both the browser and the search engine, and could use position in one market to gain a large advantage in another. Opera is neither a market leader nor it owns DDG. Moreover there is no such thing as anti-trust behavior, anti-trust is a legislation/action( the anti in its name ) that is aimed to stop such behaviour.

To abuse monopoly power you must first have monopoly power to abuse. Opera has no monopoly on desktop browsers.

dangrossman has given an adequate explanation though I have a question? Why couldn't the Opera people make it the default search engine? It's their piece of software and you're free to change it to anything you want.

People seem so quick to cry wolf.

From what I understand, most of their revenue for the desktop browser comes from the fact that google is the default search engine.

That's probably their way of cat-playing with their food.

Also, they probably remember how microsoft was forced to carry a load of different browsers in EU and make WMP-free windows, so they take some steps to prevent that for themselves.

Also they used to disable this selector on per-country basis.

Really? Downvoting me for asking a question in possibly the most polite and non-ignorant manner?

I know this is hacker-news, but do you guys really have to get into this anti-big company behavior?

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