Hi, I work on Search at DuckDuckGo. Can you clarify what you mean by “bubblification”? Would be interested to know what has changed for you as a long-time user.
When I make a generic search unrelated to a hobby I have and I get as top answer something about my hobby, it's a very red and very flashing red flag of bubble effect.
The nail in the coffin has happened this weekend when some un-asked for auto-correct prevented me from searching what I wanted. The moment a tool gets in the way (whatever the good intentions are), I drop the tool. And, no, most of the time DDG don't know better than me.
Several people have been calling your founder on this, here, me included, and have been ignored. DDG might not need early adopter anymore. Fine by me, I'll move on.
Sorry for the bluntness but the truth is you already lost my as a user.
You expect some of this from a company perspective, as unhappy users are normally the loudest, but this was an individual trying to learn from you and you just shit on them.
Poor form, dude.
And I said, many people have complained, here on HN about it, only to be met with the same damage control over and over.
But granted, I could have phrased all that differently. You're right.
This is the new normal.
For example if I search “pergola” then I get local pergola providers: good. But if I check the box next to my country flag (I.e. to turn localisation off) I _still_ get local pergola providers. Even if I change the region to another country I still get local results (though further down the page).
My country isn’t well known for pergolas as far as I know, and the effect looks bigger than the search reacting to language differences. So why do I still get local results?
If you selected a different country from the dropdown next to that toggle, instead of switching that toggle off, I would expect that to return results from the selected country instead of showing local results.
Is there a way that I could use ddg that would return the same result for me as someone else would get? Not someone specific, but a an unbiased result so that I can know that if someone else searched with the same (lack of) parameters they will get the same results?