[HN Gopher] DuckDuckGo has had 0 search warrants since founding ...
___________________________________________________________________
DuckDuckGo has had 0 search warrants since founding in 2008
Author : arkadiyt
Score : 221 points
Date : 2021-10-18 15:40 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| mrtweetyhack wrote:
| that just means nobody uses it
| S_A_P wrote:
| One thing I notice DDG lags behind google in is certain cases
| where I want the most timely information regarding something. A
| few examples:
|
| I'm not a huge sports fan but knowing a bit about the latest
| games helps for small talk among acquaintances. On Google I can
| type "Texas A&M football" and I get the most recent score right
| on top. DDG doesn't do this and I usually have to dig through a
| few links to find it.
|
| Another example- there have been 4 house fires in my area in the
| last few weeks. It's enough and close proximity enough that I
| wondered if arson is involved. I DDG house fires in my area and
| got mostly results from 2012. Google was not perfect here but
| much more current results were returned.
|
| Now I could probably adjust my search query/criteria and get
| better results but it seems that in general Google knows when to
| return current results vs general information about some
| regardless of publish date.
| ziml77 wrote:
| That's a category of queries that leads me to use Google. If
| I'm looking up current events or something that changes a lot
| over time, Google seems to be much better at giving me what I
| want without me needing to tweak my query or add time range
| restrictions on the search.
|
| Also for some reason error messages come up with better results
| on Google. DDG will make it look like no one has ever written
| anything about the error I'm running into, Google usually has
| something in its index to show me.
| gundmc wrote:
| Wouldn't it be more impressive if they were served warrants but
| refused or were unable to comply? This just makes it sound like
| no one uses DDG so the authorities don't care to request that
| information.
| irrational wrote:
| Or, the police assume that everyone uses Google, so it doesn't
| every occur to them to ask DDG. It's not like the police are
| known for their tech-saviness.
| autoexec wrote:
| My cynical suspicion is that they probably aren't getting
| warrants because as a US based online service that is
| specifically marketed to people interested in privacy they've
| already been handed a national security letter that prevents
| them from telling anyone about it and the state is collecting
| every scrap of data DDG has in real time and shares some of
| that data with other agencies on a regular basis.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Or they're thoroughly backdoored and warrants aren't necessary.
| shusson wrote:
| As mentioned in the tweet, the impressive part is that
| "DuckDuckGo doesn't have any search histories by design and, bc
| of that, has had 0 search warrants"
| lbriner wrote:
| tbf, DDG can't know that they have no requests because they
| don't collect history, although that wouldn't be a completely
| mad assumption. It is also conceivable that their market
| share is simply so small that no-one the police are chasing
| are known to use DDG for their web searches.
|
| In fact the second is more likely since otherwise the Tweet
| would read, "we haven't been able to serve any warrant
| requests", rather than "we haven't received any"
| mike_hock wrote:
| Or, you know, the tweet may be a lie.
| vadfa wrote:
| As if that assurance by DDG would've stopped the authorities
| from requesting something.
| rndgermandude wrote:
| I cannot believe that no prosecutor got a warrant just to see
| if they were telling the truth in their PR materials...
| didibus wrote:
| > and, bc of that, has had 0 search warrants
|
| That's an abductive argument, which means it is one plausible
| explanation, but given the many possible explanations, it is
| not certain that the lack of search history is why they've
| had 0 search warrants.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| Sure it's not proof, but it's pretty good _evidence_.
|
| _This man is unlikely to be the shooter because he has no
| hands._
| bduerst wrote:
| Terrible analogy. You don't need hands to shoot a gun,
| and the hands-less man would still be issued a warrant if
| there were evidence he was the shooter.
|
| The point is that being issued warrants and claiming to
| not have search logs are independently conclusive.
| blitzar wrote:
| The number of users and the number of issued warrants
| however are dependant...
| ed312 wrote:
| Usually in threads about DDG a common refrain is "but the results
| are worse!" - generally to mean less specific. I always thought
| that was the _feature_ -- they don 't compile a history on you,
| track your location, etc. As a result, they take a best guess
| from a global context.
|
| FWIW, I've been a DDG user full time (mobile and desktop) for ~5
| years. I _have_ learned to increase the specificity of my search
| (e.g. start with a programming language before typing an error
| string). Feels like a very small price to pay to avoid Google.
| BitAstronaut wrote:
| I am fine using DDG except for one specific thing. I am a big
| sports fan and check scores for soccer and hockey all the time.
|
| Being able to search "Google" or "MLS" on Google brings up the
| days games and scores at the very top of the search. I don't
| get that with DDG and every time I try to switch, I always come
| crawling back to Google for that feature alone.
| yumraj wrote:
| In my experience, being a DDG user for several years, I use
| search to find answers to some problem I'm facing. If I can
| find it, I'm happy, without caring about if Google would have
| given me better results. I don't spend my time comparing
| between the two.
|
| Based on the above, I'm been mostly satisfied, I'll say 99% of
| the time. In the 1% of cases where DDG has not provided me an
| answer to my problem, as a hail mary I try !g (Google) and
| sometime I get an answer and many times not.
|
| So, IMO the difference in search for most practical uses is
| minor. Now, add the uncluttered user interface on top of it,
| DDG wins by a huge margin.
| jacurtis wrote:
| I think the idea that DDG searches are "worse" is vastly
| overblown. But again, I don't directly compare the two. But
| using DDG for many years I have searched for my query, scan
| the title of the top 4-5 results (which are visible w/o
| scrolling) and click the best one I see in the results. I
| have managed to find what I needed now on nearly every
| occasion. Going to page 2 is an incredibly rare occurrence.
|
| The one difference I notice between Google and DDG is that
| DDG shows more search results "above the fold", meaning
| without scrolling. There are some searches on Google where
| not even a single legitimate/organic search result is visible
| without scrolling. The top of the results page is cluttered
| with all sorts of self-promotion, info boxes, ads, maps, and
| other garbage. A normal search result usually yields 0-1 (or
| 2 max) organic results above the fold.
|
| So in my opinion that is the trade-off. Is that experience of
| clutter a better search result? I guess that is a matter of
| preference, but for me I prefer the simpler results from DDG.
| I am able to find what I want and the experience is
| preferable, and my privacy isn't compromised. So to me that
| is the winner.
|
| The one area that I will admit Google has DDG beat is local
| search. It isn't even a close contest. I append !g to any
| search query when I am looking for a local result such as
| costco hours, or the name of a local restaurant to find their
| page or address. That is the one area where DDG just plain
| sucks and Google nails it every time.
| hslwdnwkk wrote:
| DDG user but want to say that Google image search is still
| miles better.
|
| I can search for an image based on my memory of elements within
| the picture e.g. compare the results I get when searching
|
| "nwa all looking down"
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=nwa+all+looking+down&hl=en&p...
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=nwa+all+looking+down&t=iphone&iax=...
|
| "Film Poster men in suits Tarantino"
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=film+poster+men+in+suits+tar...
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=film+poster+men+in+suits+tarantino...
| poglet wrote:
| My favorite part of the DDG image search is being able to
| locate and save the original image file without needing to
| navigate to the website.
|
| Google included this feature until a few years ago where they
| removed it.
| rascul wrote:
| > Google included this feature until a few years ago where
| they removed it.
|
| I vaguely recall something about a legal settlement. A
| quick search didn't turn anything up, though.
| throaway3141593 wrote:
| They removed it because photographers and publishers
| complained about how easy it was for the average person to
| just take images from the results and use them elsewhere
| without attribution. The funny thing is, all you need to do
| now is to right-click on the image and open in a new tab.
| But based on _your_ change in behavior I guess that little
| bit of obfuscation was a lot more effective that I thought.
| soperj wrote:
| I like DDG, i use it as my go to. That being said, it's very
| very USA centric. It will default all my searches that are
| place related (weather, restaurants, addresses) to the USA.
| 34g34vb34v3 wrote:
| I don't think that argument holds very much water. You can test
| both in sanitized environments, and Google's search is still
| better. Their algorithm is so much more than "surface content
| based on personal data" but people are so quick to deduce it
| down to just that.
|
| I want DDG to succeed, but their search product sucks, and its
| not because they don't collect data.
| irrational wrote:
| What does better mean? I've never had any trouble finding
| exactly what I am searching for when using DDG. As long as I
| find what I want, does it matter if Google is "better"?
| chasil wrote:
| The last time that I checked, DDG was buying search results
| from Bing (as does Ecosia).
|
| Is Bing that terrible?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo
|
| "It uses various APIs of other websites to show quick results
| to queries and for traditional links it uses the help of its
| partners (mainly Bing) and its own crawler."
| autoexec wrote:
| Bing has been caught stealing results from Google too.
| https://www.wired.com/2011/02/bing-copies-google/
|
| It seems like every search engine that isn't google, is
| still just google but with extra stuff mixed in. It'd be
| nice to see a competitor that didn't rely on anyone else's
| search results and only developed and gathered results from
| their own index.
| ColinHayhurst wrote:
| Apologies for self-promotion. Mojeek Independent and no-
| tracking https://blog.mojeek.com/2021/03/to-track-or-not-
| to-track.htm... Gigablast is another and one of very few
| https://blog.mojeek.com/2021/05/no-tracking-search-how-
| does-...
| Minor49er wrote:
| Bing isn't too bad. I've actually half-migrated to using it
| since the results are often relevant and usually even
| better than Google.
|
| From my experience, Google is better at searching for
| programming-related topics, but anything specific and it
| starts to fall apart. I can make an exact phrase query on
| Google and it will drop words out of the phrase for no
| reason. Bing doesn't do this.
| id02009 wrote:
| I use DDG for years, and it's at most once a month when I
| can't find something and need to fall back to Google. Maybe I
| got used to the suckiness? Or maybe it's relative?
| bamboozled wrote:
| I use Google for work DDG for play.
|
| Google is just so much better at finding technical related
| content.
| Forbo wrote:
| Any time DDG fails me, I just append "!s" to proxy the
| search through StartPage instead. I've found it scratches
| the itch pretty well for 99% of my use cases.
| dmoy wrote:
| Which is just google, right?
| Forbo wrote:
| In the same sense that "DuckDuckGo is just Bing".
| okay475008 wrote:
| this isn't real. Google has the worst results in
| comparison to both yandex, baidu, and even
| ddg/startpage/bing/any other google clone like
| duckduckgo.
| spicybright wrote:
| I found myself typing !s so much I switched my default to
| start page. DDG results are really bad imo
| unicornporn wrote:
| DDG = Bing
|
| Startpage = Google
|
| Bing/DDG results suck (when localized to Sweden), so I use
| Startpage.
|
| I know it's owned by an ad tech company now, but I haven't
| seen any proof that will affect _me_. Its reach can 't be
| compared to Google's, which has its trackers on just about
| every web page (Google Analytics and Fonts).
| squarefoot wrote:
| Looks like Startpage is now what Scroogle was roughly up
| to a decade ago.
|
| https://www.ghacks.net/2012/02/22/scroogle-founder-pulls-
| the...
| ornornor wrote:
| I found a self hosted whoogle[0] to be a good middle ground.
|
| [0]: https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search
| contravariant wrote:
| To me using duckduckgo feels a lot like what using google used
| to be like. Basically it's all about picking the right
| keywords. This has the advantage of giving more predictable
| results, but has the disadvantage that it's hard to find
| something with vague queries (e.g. good luck finding a quote
| from a movie you've half forgotten).
| Arnavion wrote:
| I documented (a subset of) my experience in [1]. I don't think
| any of the Google victories there can be considered to be
| because of personalization.
|
| [1]: https://www.arnavion.dev/blog/2020-12-05-ddg-vs-google/
| spicybright wrote:
| Startpage gives me wildly better results.
| chriscappuccio wrote:
| I would be more interested in subpoenas for user information than
| "search warrants" which I'm sure most companies have near zero
| since 2008 unless they have cartel tiea or whatever
| joecool1029 wrote:
| So the bangs (!) are super useful in DDG for handling the
| limitations it has. As others have mentioned Google still wins
| for super technical searches, but only just so. What we now see
| for Google results for any niche topics is an 'uncanny valley' of
| about half being valid results and the other half being
| regurgitated spam/phishing sites with domains that usually end in
| .it or .de.
| mike_hock wrote:
| I'm an Italo-German prince and just recently came into a huge
| fortune.
| kjaftaedi wrote:
| Maybe it's just me, but I can't figure out how to do technical
| searches in google anymore.
|
| If I put something like the name of an obscure powershell
| cmdlet in quotes, google ignores the quotes and then takes
| words in the cmdlet and searches for variations of them
| returning a mess of search results.
|
| I've tried using plus signs and all sorts of other stuff that
| used to work, but these days it seemingly just gives me what it
| thinks I want, rather than what I asked for.
| keneda7 wrote:
| As a developer I agree with you. I try and use DDG for most of
| my every day stuff. However on complex coding issues I almost
| always find myself back on Google after a couple frustrating
| minutes on DDG. I feel like a lot of this has to do with what
| historical search data Google stores vs DDG.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| I just discovered `hn!` the other day lol
| [deleted]
| rlpb wrote:
| I finally switched my default to DDG after Google introduced
| their mandatory nag permission box in Incognito windows. It
| wasn't worth using Google any more after that. I use Incognito
| often when generally searching the Internet to avoid having to
| care about cookie-based tracking. Dealing with the nag just
| wasn't worth it any more.
| lancemurdock wrote:
| I use StartPage over DDG. The results are just way better. Likely
| because StartPage anonymously using google index.
|
| However, for programming related questions I couldn't live
| without google.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I use DDG for most things, and being totally honest, it's not
| _quite_ as good as Google, but it 's pretty acceptable.
| Occasionally I'll try the same search on Google, and sometimes
| it's better. Not always.
| yosito wrote:
| > it's not quite as good as Google
|
| Two years ago, I would have agreed. But Google has gotten
| dramatically more spammy and full of ads recently. DDG has
| better results for me 70% of the time.
| lexapro wrote:
| >and full of ads recently
|
| Are there really people here that don't use uBlock Origin or
| a different adblocker? I can't remember the last time I have
| seen an ad on a screen.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| I don't. I don't pirate software either^. They are not the
| same thing, but in both instances sometimes you will
| negatively impact the little guy's bottom line. So I don't
| do either.
|
| Edit: to clarify. I don't think any less of any one for
| doing whatever or me being better than any one.
|
| ^there are exceptions. I'm sure if I needed to use
| Photoshop for a day I'd do something akin to pirating. In
| this case I don't think it's a big deal with Adobe being
| worth $300B.
| berkes wrote:
| > negatively impact the little guy's bottom line
|
| We are talking about Google here. How is blocking ads
| from Google "impacting the little guys's bottom line"?
| skinnymuch wrote:
| The posts were about blocking ads en mass. Not about
| blocking Google specifically. It would be incredibly rare
| for some one to get ublock or something similar and only
| block multi billion dollar companies.
| nitrogen wrote:
| It's the smaller ad networks and obscure sites that are
| more likely to have malware sneak into the ads, though,
| so it's safer to block everything.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| Whenever I'm on a new machine I get a momentary glimpse of
| what an ungodly mess the Web is without adblockers. I'd
| love to know what percentage of web users employ an
| adblocker, I suppose as that number increases the remaining
| users can expect to see an increase in both the volume and
| visibility (and arguably obnoxiousness) of the ads.
| scollet wrote:
| This doesn't stop SEO promotion. However I can't say DDG
| hasn't occasionally ranked some submarine results higher.
| micah94 wrote:
| I don't use adblockers because I need to see the web as the
| 'users' see it. When I do use a blocker I always forget to
| turn it off to do troubleshooting. Eventually I left it
| off... I'll proxy or incognito or whatever when it need to.
| HanaShiratori wrote:
| How do you do that? I'm a huge DDG fan and am 99% degoogled,
| force myself to use DDG every couple of weeks but always end
| up back at Google, because from my experience it's just miles
| better. Don't want to hate on DDG though, since there is
| obviously a massive gap in resources between both projects.
| yosito wrote:
| I used to use the !s bang to get Google results via
| Startpage, but I find myself doing it less and less.
| the-pigeon wrote:
| Great thing about using DDG is you can have both.
|
| In my experience DDG is fine for general information but
| Google is better for very specific information.
|
| But DDG supports !Bang. So you can do "!g" in your search
| bar for you specific query and it uses Google. Or "!w" to
| go directly to wikipedia or "!a" to search Amazon.
|
| There's over 10,000 of them https://duckduckgo.com/bang so
| it's great for whatever sites you frequently look for
| information on.
|
| And can even do things like complex math equations with
| "!wa" (Wolfram Alpha).
|
| Point being, using DuckDuckGo as your default search engine
| doesn't mean you are limited to its' results. Personally I
| get the best of a lot of worlds by using it.
| warent wrote:
| Wow I had no idea about this! Actually going to make me
| switch back to DDG
| peakaboo wrote:
| They really should market this more, its one of the best
| features.
| weaksauce wrote:
| or use !sp and use google through a proxy
| HanaShiratori wrote:
| Yeah the problem about the bangs is that whenever I force
| myself to use DDG again I will end up using the !sp bang
| exclusively after around a week and decide to switch back
| to Google a while after that, because typing !sp after
| every search defeats the initial idea why I inteded to
| use DDG in the first place. Until I hate myself for using
| Google again and switch back. It's an endless cycle I
| cannot escape :/
| cyberbanjo wrote:
| so you at least try with no bang first and find ddg
| search results unsatisfactory? if you default to !sp
| maybe it would be better to use use startpage as a search
| engine, is it worse in some way than duckduckgo
| (excluding obvious diff of bangs)
| ufmace wrote:
| I don't know the exact timeframe it changed, but I've really
| noticed the difference around the last few months or so. It
| feels like it's a lot more common for me to do a search in
| Google that I would expect to have good results and be
| genuinely surprised at how every page is total garbage.
| Shared404 wrote:
| And occasionally, Google is worse!
| Lambdanaut wrote:
| Particularly when searching for information that our
| governments have been paid by corporations to keep us from
| finding. Google is massively censored.
| the-dude wrote:
| Such a claim warrants some examples.
| burnafter182 wrote:
| How do you present examples when all it takes is a
| narrative of "conspiracy theory" to dismiss them? We know
| both government and corporations are, remain, and will
| continue to remain corruptible. We know they've done bad
| things, we know they do bad things, we know they can
| continue to do bad things.
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| So to be clear you have no examples, or proof of any kind
| for this claim?
| mavhc wrote:
| don't you see, the lack of examples is proof I am
| correct!!!
| berkes wrote:
| Or citation, or any credible resource, really.
|
| This reeks like Conspiracy Theory all through. And if it
| is legit, that is a pity, because most, or many people
| will dismiss it for "quacking like a Wacky Conspiracy
| Theory".
| AlbertCory wrote:
| The assertion "<x> is a wing nut conspiracy theorist" is
| itself a conversation-ender. Or at best, the opening to a
| never-ending version of Culture Wars, V304,045.
|
| Over the weekend we had a very civilized discussion about
| tribal stupidity (prompted by the Dietrich Bonhoeffer
| essay), and the reason it didn't descend into CW is that
| _no one_ provided any examples. The instant anyone gave
| an example, the particulars of that example would have
| taken over.
|
| So I can appreciate the desire for citations, but you
| have to realize that if he'd provided any, everyone would
| have just argued about _those_.
| magicalist wrote:
| > _and the reason it didn 't descend into CW is that no
| one provided any examples. The instant anyone gave an
| example, the particulars of that example would have taken
| over._
|
| On the other hand it's easy to think you're pontificating
| wisely but you've become untethered from reality.
| Absolutely it's easy for broad discussions to get
| distracted by lawyering examples, but the GGP made a
| specific claim, so they invited the request for evidence.
| 1_player wrote:
| DDG has never worked for me, and I've tried. While I've been a
| happy Brave Search user since day 1. I'm not joking when I say
| it's the best search experience after Google, by a mile.
| pepperonipizza wrote:
| Was very pleasantly surprise with brave search.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| I'm with you at this point.
|
| I used to be a ddg user exclusively. The only time I use
| google is when searching a location nearby. Ddg has gotten
| worse over the last year or two, unusable almost for anything
| that isn't current events. It is full of blog spam whenever I
| search anything.
|
| I've been using gigablast here and there, it's good for
| obscure, completely organic search results, but that means
| it's results feel like search before google existed. Brave
| fills the gap for me, it feels like how google used to feel
| before all the cruft started getting added in.
| louthy wrote:
| I rarely, very rarely, need to use !g in DDG searches these
| days. I don't even really think about Google any more if I
| can't find something, I usually just try a bit harder with DDG.
| I'm a happy customer
| rendall wrote:
| If the results on DDG are not satisfactory, I prepend a _!g_
| and try again.
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/bang
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| You can also append!
| samb1729 wrote:
| Or put it somewhere in the middle of your query! :)
| Taywee wrote:
| You might want to prefer !sp to !g if you want Google results
| without compromising privacy. Startpage is just a privacy
| proxy for Google results.
| Errsher wrote:
| Startpage was purchased by an advertising organization that
| apparently "specializes in targeted advertising":
|
| https://restoreprivacy.com/startpage-system1-privacy-one-
| gro...
| oblak wrote:
| Startpage started aggressively monetizing a few months
| ago. At least that's when I realized there are way more
| paid results (ads) than before. I've been mooching for
| years so I thought that's ok. Maybe the owner wants some
| return for their money and I can live with scrolling a
| few more paid results.
|
| But they didn't stop there. I bailed as soon as they
| started requiring js no matter what. They actively deny
| access to the site without js enabled.
|
| Oh well, it was nice while it lasted.
| OJFord wrote:
| I use it for everything, and I have no idea if it's as good as
| Google or not because I've never needed to find out - that's
| good enough for me.
| franczesko wrote:
| I used DDG for 2 years. Recently, I've been testing brave search,
| which I personally think is much better.
|
| They're investing in their own index, whereas DDG is just Bing,
| but without tracking.
| Minor49er wrote:
| You don't count Amazon affiliate linking as tracking?
| m0zg wrote:
| The only alternative search that doesn't suck currently is Brave
| - they're the only US-based search engine that has its own index.
| Everybody else is using Google or Bing which exposes you to
| algorithmic manipulation and censorship, if not outright
| tracking. Curiously, though, it shows the same biases in image
| search as Google: "straight couple" brings up gay couples, and
| other well known "litmus test" searches are similar as well. In
| fact almost the same selection of images as Google image search.
| [deleted]
| majjam wrote:
| Just on the offchance anyone from ddg reads this - a while I and
| orhers requested a bang for search.marginalia.nu - a more old
| school web search and would love it if I could !mg search :)
|
| Edit for hn link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28550764
| dyingkneepad wrote:
| I use DDG as my default search engine and it works fine if what
| you're searching is in English and is easy to find. When I'm
| looking for an exact page and type stuff that I remember is there
| Google always seems to find it, while DDG sometimes misses what I
| want. Also, for programming terms that also may have other
| meaning (e.g., python referring to snakes or programming), Google
| seems to always get me what I want, while DDG may get royally
| confused.
|
| Now, when it comes to non-English, the fact that Google knows
| what is my native language makes it 10000% better. I often type
| stuff in my native language and those words are the same in
| Spanish then DDG shows me a buch of stupid Spanish results, when
| what I really wanted was my native language.
|
| In the end I always end up reflecting that allowing the search
| engine to learn stuff about you is indeed somewhat useful. Still,
| DDG is the default search, Google will only get the queries it
| handles better.
|
| Edit: I guess DDG could try asking my browser about what language
| it's configured in and prioritize that over Spanish....
| paulpauper wrote:
| too bad the results are not that good. when using duckduckgo you
| have to be very specific or you just get unrelated crud
| dandotway wrote:
| Do you have recent real examples? 98% of the time for me both
| DDG and Google pull up the same Wikipedia article or Stack
| Overflow answer or Github repo or news story. Occasionally I
| still do "!g" or "!gi" in DDG to see what Google has but less
| and less.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I just tried to plug in my most recent search from Google:
| UnsafeVarint, where I was looking for the protobuf method.
| Google gets me a direct hit to the source code. Perhaps
| "unfair" because Google knows this result is relevant to that
| search _for me_.
|
| I put the same search into DDG and it gives me two mainsteam
| media articles about COVID as #1 and #2. Useless. People who
| defend Bing are just out of their minds.
|
| Imagine defending a search engine by microsoft that top-ranks
| irrelevant articles from its own wholly-owned subsidiary,
| MSN. Just absolutely the worst search results anyone can
| imagine.
| julianlam wrote:
| Interesting, because for me, the first result was the link
| to the source code.
|
| Does it work better for you if you surround the query in
| quotes?
| dandotway wrote:
| > ...
|
| EDIT: You are right, double quotes around "UnsafeVarint"
| improve the result. Learned something new just now. : )
| rPlayer6554 wrote:
| My first result was something in another language but my
| second result was the GitHub link for a file in protobuf.
| [deleted]
| dandotway wrote:
| I just tried "UnsafeVarint" in DDG and while #1 and #2 were
| useless COVID hits as you said, DDG #4 was the same as
| Google's #1 hit which was this GitHub issue:
|
| https://github.com/tensorflow/models/issues/7420
|
| Google's #2 hit for me was blogspam at "bankoftrans [dot]
| com" that copied the source code for UnsafeVarint in order
| to game Google search results. (A growing problem others in
| this discussion have been complaining about.)
|
| So Google isn't stellar for your search, either, though
| perhaps it was working better for you because you were
| logged in with your Google Account.
|
| Like I said, I do still use Google via "!g" and "!gi" when
| DDG's results are garbage, but often in these cases
| Google's results are also junk.
| jerf wrote:
| "I put the same search into DDG and it gives me two
| mainsteam media articles about COVID as #1 and #2. Useless.
| People who defend Bing are just out of their minds."
|
| Exactly what search query did you use? I just popped
| "UnsafeVarint" (without quotes) into DDG and it's not
| remotely "media articles about COVID".
|
| I don't know whether it'll be what you want. It's clearly a
| long-tail result in DDG as well, but it's at least mostly
| programming stuff for me, and no COVID at all.
| [deleted]
| NabiDev wrote:
| how about searx
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| And you should believe them because they said so.
| julianlam wrote:
| Ha, well tinfoil hat on... Maybe they have not had to process
| any search warrants, because the various three-letter agencies
| know to just ask nicely and they'll hand it over.
| bluGill wrote:
| The conspiracy theorist in me says they get got a court order
| to make the press release along with a warrant for some
| information...
| [deleted]
| intricatedetail wrote:
| Anyone else noticed that Google results are 90% spam and lead to
| malware gateways? The quality has drastically dropped recently. I
| don't even use Windows to search out of fear I'll get a virus.
| kuratkull wrote:
| I find DDG good for queries where I know my answer will be one of
| the top 5 results for sure. If I am skeptical about my question I
| usually find G fetches better results. But DDG satisfies about
| 90% of my queries so pretty happy with it.
| avalys wrote:
| I understand what they're trying to say, but...this would also be
| true if they were just irrelevant.
| pessimizer wrote:
| It would also be true if they were a ham sandwich, but since we
| know they're not one, we ignore that possibility.
| rudian wrote:
| This reminded me of:
|
| > If grandma had wheels she'd be a bicycle
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I thought of being sarcastic, but you've done it for me.
|
| My version of that saying is "If my grandmother had wheels,
| she'd be a bus" but this is fine, too.
| avalys wrote:
| Has anyone outside of the "I'm deeply concerned about online
| privacy" brigade even heard of DuckDuckGo?
| bredren wrote:
| Warrants follow requests to compel sharing of information known
| to exist.
|
| So, DDG very well may have been served requests for available
| information on a given user or IP, its just that the information
| the company had was not enough for LEOs to request a warrant.
|
| It's still impressive, but it would be interesting to know if
| LEOs continue to ask, (as in, "has anything changed on your end
| where now we can get this stuff?") or if LEOs know DDG is a dead
| end and are no longer even making information requests.
| allemagne wrote:
| The unofficial consensus seems to be that "well DDG isn't as good
| as google, but it's worth it because of privacy."
|
| I've been using DDG almost exclusively for software engineering
| work for roughly the last three years, and can't remember the
| last time I felt like resorting to "!g", because I can't remember
| resorting to Google ever actually solving my problem.
|
| I don't at all discount the possibility that there's some extra
| value I'm just able to forego without noticing, but is this
| really a particularly unique experience for DDG users on HN?
| JTon wrote:
| I bang !g all the time still. Wish I didn't feel compelled to.
| As a point of contrast: I'm not using DDG very often for work,
| more so personal use.
| kgermino wrote:
| > [I] can't remember the last time I felt like resorting to
| "!g", because I can't remember resorting to Google ever
| actually solving my problem.
|
| I use DDG by default and it covers most of my searches, but I
| do have 2 main issues.
|
| 1. Maps and business information is way better with Google.
|
| 2. I usually work with Salesforce, which uses a lot of words
| from the 'traditional' developer ecosystem, but is an entirely
| separate world. Google "knows" that the method I'm looking for
| is in the Apex string class, not the Java one.
|
| It's not enough to get me to switch but I find a lot of
| Salesforce related queries which give perfect results on
| Google, but overly generic ones on DDG. I suspect that's a
| common issue when you work in a more niche area where the
| personalization is more valuable.
| strombofulous wrote:
| I can't help but feel like anyone who is celebrating this is just
| going through a slightly modified thought process of
| https://xkcd.com/538/
|
| The fact that the government has never requested anything
| probably just means they get it from somewhere else.
|
| If there was actually a pedo-terror-arsonist on the loose using
| ddg to find information on their targets, I'm very confident that
| the government would still be able to figure out what they were
| searching for
| albatross13 wrote:
| That's because the warrants all go to Bing, lol.
| arkadiyt wrote:
| Are you saying that DuckDuckGo passes the client ip address to
| Bing?
| bduerst wrote:
| I think the bigger point here is that it's impossible to know
| _either way_ because DDG doesn 't undergo independent
| verification of their privacy.
|
| It's closed-source code from a privately-owned, for-profit
| corporation based in the U.S. We have no idea what
| information they share or don't share, other than the claims
| they make about themselves.
| MerelyMortal wrote:
| Or people look up "bad" stuff using that search engine (Bing
| is notorious for porn).
| chasil wrote:
| Perhaps not everything.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo
|
| "It uses various APIs of other websites to show quick results
| to queries and for traditional links it uses the help of its
| partners (mainly Bing) and its own crawler."
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