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Comment by nhangen | Hacker News Reader

Really wanted to like DDG, and went as far as changing default SE for Chrome this week, but I couldn't hack it for more than a few days. The results page is very difficult on the eyes, and the design hierarchy is very rough. Google is just light years ahead. I'm going back to Google with Incognito and AdBlock for now.

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I tried to switch back to Google because it didn't feel the same to a part of my brain, even though I didn't feel search result quality was an issue. So I changed keyword.url(firefox) to duckduckgo. It doesn't feel that bad now, and when I feel I am missing out I visit google.com manually.

Google has great results, and even with the current fiasco, I do trust google somewhat. But we don't have good alternatives to Google and bing, which isn't a good thing. So I am trying to help ddg out by using their service.

I am still having a hard time with it. However, you might try the "Lite" version: https://duckduckgo.com/lite/

Also, the teletype version: https://duckduckgo.com/tty/

Are incognito and AdBlock meant to protect against PRISM? I don't quite understand what the point is. Why not just log out if you're still using Google anyway?

Incognito and AdBlock might not protect against Prism, but they protect me from other sites. Logging out is an option as well, which is something I'm considering, though I doubt it matters much since they know me by IP and I use Gmail.

I think google still associates searches with 'you' even if you are logged out, via cookies, browser/os/ip fingerprint.

You can greatly customise the layout of the results page, and even store these customisations in the GET parameters, i.e. your browser’s search engine settings.

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