When Gabriel Weinberg launched a search engine in 2008, plenty of people thought he was insane. How could DuckDuckGo, a tiny, Philadelphia-based startup, go up against Google? One way, he wagered, was by respecting user privacy. Six years later, we’re living in the post-Snowden era, and the idea doesn’t seem so crazy.
In fact, DuckDuckGo is exploding.
I might use it for very sensitive searches (such as a good place to dispose of a body after my next murder), but for normal, day to day searching, the privacy aspect is of no concern to me.
And unless the DDG engine is open source, we really have no way of knowing whether they’re tracking users or not. It’s like VPNs who advertise that they don’t keep logs, but when LE comes a knockin’, they’re more than happy to provide the info.
Here’s a far out conspiracy theory that I just thought of… what if the guys at DDG paid Snowden a crapload of money to leak that info in order to drum up business for themselves? Of course, I know it didn’t go down that way, but man.. that would be a genius move
You say you know it didn’t… but do you really *know* that? Or do you just assume it’s too out-there to be true? Are you paranoid enough?
The search results are improving, though still nowhere near Google for obscure or technical queries. Still only really of use for English though.
Neat idea but the search results are garbage.
The results are OK, but the layout is sub-standard.
For example, I don’t like how the results ‘hide’ the website name by burying it beneath the description and using a lighter font.
Another poor layout choice, click “images.” Instead of filling the page with images, DDG simply adds a small strip of pictures above the text results.
Similarly, search for the name of a town. Google results show a list of websites, a map, current time and temperature, and a row of images. DDG shows no map, no current conditions, and only a single image.
“For example, I don’t like how the results ‘hide’ the website name by burying it beneath the description and using a lighter font.”
If you click the Settings button in the top right corner, then click “Advanced Settings”, then “Appearance”, the website name can be placed between the page title and the description (enable “Result URLs above snippet”). The font can also be changed (under “Font”).
That’s helpful information, but I’m probably not going to do it.
Search results aren’t garbage, but they are way too subject to noise. I had to give up and go back to google because of the marketing hits.
That’s probably what he meant when he said results were garbage.
Are there relevant results? Yes. Do you have to filter the noise and unrelated results yourself? Most of the time, yes. In my book that fits the garbage definition
The automatic search that occurs when I type something into the address bar that isn’t a valid URL – this way google isn’t tracking everything I typo into my address bar.
If I want to run a google search, I still go to google.com first and do so, but for all other queries, i’d rather DDG handled it for me so it’s not tracked.
How does it compare to Startpage? I feel that the results I’m getting are better with Startpage. Does anybody have a different experience?
Edited 2014-12-05 09:38 UTC
Until they improve significantly their non-English results I can’t really use it.
Google understands perfectly well that what I’m searching for is in Bulgarian, and not in Russian. Even though the word is the same in both languages.
DuckDuckGo, Yahoo and Big don’t.
I don’t really care if Google is tracking me, as long as they provide me with the most relevant results for my searches.
Edited 2014-12-05 10:04 UTC
DuckDuckGo’s rise in popularity only accomplishes one thing… Proving once again that people will believe anything.
As I have said numerous times, there’s no getting around the fact that DDG is an American company based in America, subject to American law and court order. Your “privacy” is no more safe with DDG than it is with Google or any other company. They could be under sealed court order right now to log everything and the public would never know. Or, their servers could already be compromised and agencies like the NSA could be dumping data without their knowledge. This isn’t conspiracy theory nonsense, it’s what we already know to be real and happening right now. It’s not exclusive to America either. The spying epidemic is happening worldwide.
Anyone who thinks they have any real privacy in todays world where surveillance is everywhere & all around you is either a complete moron or completely naive.
Regardless of the anti-americanism of the above post, how about the fact that DuckDuckGo relies of the likes of Bing and Yandex for indexing?
The Yandex part is a deal breaker for me. Yandex is a Russian company, and you can bet your life savings that Vladimir Putin and his cronies have their tentacles deeply embedded in every Yandex search. Yes, the NSA has gone too far in a lot of cases, but I’m far less concerned about them than I am about Vladimir Putin and his “democracy in name only” totalitarian regime.
I’d ask you to clarify how exactly pointing out facts is “anti-Americanism”. Further, did you miss the part where I said, “This isn’t conspiracy theory nonsense, it’s what we already know to be real and happening right now. It’s not exclusive to America either. The spying epidemic is happening worldwide“? Only someone with their head buried firmly in the sand, or up their own ass, would suggest that being honest about reality is anti-anything.
Regarding DDG relying on Bing and Yandex… That’s just more reason to not be foolish and believe the DDG hype. The mistake it seems you’re making is believing that one government (entity) operating in the shadows is any more trustworthy than another government (entity) operating in the shadows.
I’m not convinced any country or agency is any better than any other because unless you know the totality of what they’re doing, you can’t possibly come to informed judgment. Enough has come to light to know that nobody plays fair or cares about the rules/laws. But I understand that’s too scary for some people to consider so the only other option is to pull the wool over your own eyes and pretend it’s not that bad, or that “they” are dirtier than “us”.