Google’s search results are absolute garbage lately. It pushes the most advert-heavy spam sites first.
DuckDuckGo has more reliably been giving me the technical documentation I was looking for in the past year.
I can’t find shit anymore, always spam sites angry at my ad blocker or YouTube videos, which are angry at my ad blocker.
The first half of the first page is all ads now on Google. It’s utter shit - the things it’s a lot better at than DDG is NLP, being able to understand questions, and anything news related. If you know exactly what you’re searching for though, using the old style of search words works great on DDG
What does NLP stand for?
Most likely Natural Language Processing - being able to understand what you’re searching for
Search engines are about to be replaced by AI anyway.
If you want good results, use something like perplexity.ai.
It is slow, so it isn’t my main engine. But those results are amazing. You can be very specific in what you are searching and keep refining your search since it remembers your previous results, it tells you why the result is relevant and it also gives summaries of the website so you can know what it says before you click on it.
It truly is artificial intelligent searching.
I used to be able to search for a tracking number by Google and it would link to the correct delivery tracking service. About 1-2 months ago Google stopped doing this and just gives no results. Why would they stop linking you to FedEx or UPS? Who knows, but my wild ass guess is since Google was not able to link “related” sponsored links along with it they just removed the functionality. They are just actively making their service shittier anytime something minor doesn’t dish out a shitty ad along with it.
I’ve gone on to using Kagi and DDG. Rarely do I miss Google search.
I do this all the time for work. It still works for me when I put a FDX trk # in
Not sure what I am doing wrong, work is when I discovered problem. This is what happens when I try to search in android. Doesn’t work on my work pc or on mine. Maybe it is a Firefox thing?
EDIT: YUP. Tried it with chrome and DuckDuckGo browser and ups tracking search works fine. Wonder what’s going on with Firefox preventing it. Don’t think it’s an extension because doesn’t work in Firefox focus either and my work pc doesn’t have any addons.
User agent. Google wants you to use Chrome. You can spoof the user agent in Firefox to get the same results.
Kagi looks neat but they’d have to have absolutely amazing results if they want me to pay for them, which I doubt they have… And sorry, but paying $10/month for a fucking search engine (where the actual cost per user is negligible and profit scales with number of users extremely nicely) is just insane.
I guess Google would make at most about $1/month off of ads from me… if I didn’t block them. I’d be willing to pay that, maybe up to $3 for a really good service. But this is just insane, and continues the trend of “oh you like a service that’s not complete crap? I guess you should pay an order of magnitude (or several) more than what’s necessary to provide that service, because fuck you, what can you do?”
If I had to pay for every service like that I’d probably spend $500/month just for that and then they’d still figure out that hey, we can still put ads in and make a little bit more cuz why not, what are they gonna do?
You are not wrong, but Kagi is basically still a baby. They started maybe like last summer or so? And already decreased their prices twice (well, relative prices.) I think if we give them some time there will be a good priced tier for everyone.
P.S. Search engine is not the only thing they have.
Their lowest plan is $5/mo for 300 searches.
I love searching for something on Google and have the entirety of the above the fold be sponsored results
My favorite is when I ask how to do something in Google Slides and Google gives me answers on how to do it in Google Docs. So helpful. Not at all frustrating.
or how every answer is a youtube video like just put it all on a page i can skim and read
That’s largely a problem of “modern internet culture” than anything. Resources locked behind proprietary crap like Discord “servers” is a big issue, too.
Ublock Origin
When I built my PC last year I decided to just let Edge and Bing go for a bit instead of immediately downloading another browser or changing the search engine. I can count on one hand the number of times I needed to enter in Google.com to get a different or better result. And almost every one of those was because I wanted a google maps results and not whatever weird maps MS has.
If I recall correctly, DuckDuckGo uses Bing’s search database (not search itself, just the database).
They say that’s a myth, that they have their own search engine and database.
Their own CEO admits they are required to allow Microsoft tracking in their “privacy” browser due to the contract for search. They use Bing for search, it’s not a myth.
For non-search tracker blocking (eg in our browser), we block most third-party trackers. Unfortunately our Microsoft search syndication agreement prevents us from doing more to Microsoft-owned properties. However, we have been continually pushing and expect to be doing more soon.
— Gabriel Weinberg (@yegg) May 23, 2022
This is no longer the case as of August last year, they managed to get the terms of the agreement changed https://www.pcworld.com/article/828064/duckduckgo-will-now-block-microsoft-trackers-too.html
Edit: Duckduckgo’s statement on it https://spreadprivacy.com/more-privacy-and-transparency/
They still have the disclaimer on the app in the pay store. It was added after they were called out.
The fact that they hid it in the first place is disqualifying for a privacy focused product.
Oh definitely, I’m a bit hesitant about them because of things like that, I just consider them as an “it’s at least better than Google” kind of thing
Yeah, I agree with that. I would never use their browser or other products but their search fits the “at least it’s not google/MS”.
I even think what the CEO is saying is correct here, Google is doing it’s best kill competition.
afaik they use multiple, including bing and their own indexer (duckduckbot afaik)
Of course, we have more traditional links and images in our search results too, which we largely source from Bing.
https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources/
So I wasn’t totally right in that it doesn’t all come from Bing, but it largely does.
I was going off of an interview he had, that’s interesting.
They literally state this themselves, it’s not a myth.
I miss the 2000s/2010s Google. Now I need to endlessly scroll down the page in an attempt to find something barely useful.
Weird, I stopped using DDG because it was useless for troubleshooting IT stuff.
Depends on what you’re doing. I look up Linux admin stuff. DDG points to the Arch Linux wiki which is solid, even for non-Arch Linux stuff. Google points to random sponsored blog tutorials that are sometimes outdated or the author doesn’t have a full understanding of what their copy-paste terminal commands do.
Recently I used google to look up a Kotlin coding thing. It pointed to every source except the official Kotlin documentation.
Good thing about DDG is you can just add a simple bang to search another site right from the results
DuckDuckGo has been giving me poor results lately - especially when I look for news, everything is a redirect to Bing now - so I instead use Brave Search. It’s kind of disappointing since DDG had always worked great for me
Daily reminder that unregulated capitalism hurts all of us.
Daily reminder that capitalism hurts all of us.
Capitalism isn’t about free markets, it’s about private property and profit extraction.
Agreed!
Nice to -for once- see someone else who recognizes that capitalism in itself isn’t a problem as long as it is very well regulated and doesn’t immediately go “Communism is the answer!”
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I’m sorry but your definition of capitalism is incorrect.
Leveraging money and power to extract resources and value without actually creation anything of value-i.e. Capitalism- is very, very bad.
Yeah, it’s something that capitalism as currently is (mostly in the US) allows, but that isn’t the basis of what capitalism is.
I fully agree with you that capitalism needs very strick limits to not be abusive, but it’s still a hundred times better than communism, something that too many people here propose as the
finalgreat solutiondeleted by creator
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Capitalism in itself is very much the problem. There is no positive aspect to the extraction of surplus value (“profit”), hoarding the vast majority of it into the hands of the wealthiest “private” property owners.
Free markets don’t have to be capitalist.
Laziness or not giving a damn is a choice
He’s probably right, but from what I see, the reality is that like 95% of people simply don’t care, and the rest will find an alternative.
Thing is, Google is also (still) just better.
I use DDG as my primary search engine, but I find myself repeating searches with Google so often, I wrote a userscript to add a “Search with Google” link to the top of the DDG search results.
I’ve seen a lot of chat recently about Google search quality tanking and it’s made me realise that I haven’t re-searched a DDG query in Google for a really, really long time. when I first started using DDG as my main a few years back, I would repeat searches in Google probably 25% of the time? but I honestly can’t remember the last time I had to now. Been at least 6 months!
unfortunately, I do that often. Even when using meta search engine which sources to google, Google UX and results are simply better but sometime feeling is just not rationale
regarding duckduckgo, it is simply too long to type and people rarely configure their browser, especially on mobile.
so yeah, in a sense, Weinberg is right. At the very least, a choice should be provided on first run but you can’t force people to be curious.
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Sure, but I think there’s still benefit to what the other person did. Search DDG by default, and then if you don’t see good results, it’s one extra click for the google search… vs mousing, clicking, 2 keystrokes…
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I agree. At least in my experience Google does a better job when it comes to search engine. I use DDG as well but when it comes to searching specific things Google beats it unfortunately.
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I think if you were to ask “most people” about which search engine they prefer, they wouldn’t really understand the question. I remember in highschool a teacher asked someone what operating system they have at home, and she replied “I think it’s Microsoft Office”.
Tech people tend to severely overestimate non-tech peoples’ understanding of tech.
Counterpoint: tech literacy is irresponsibly low for a modern developed world that now requires it for everyday operation.
Both of these things can be true at the same time.
Fuck you spez
tips fedora
I am lucky my husband likes to learn about this sort of stuff. When we started dating he barely knew the difference between Mac and Windows. Now he uses Linux. Granted, I have to install it, but he keeps on top of maintenance.
Seriously, most people don’t even know you can go into browser settings, let alone change your default browser there.
I made a list of the Google services I needed to replace, replaced a couple of them, but ultimately that list had dozens of items on it and I’m too tired already to complete it
It is not easy. This comment must be satire?
For example have you tried navigating in a car with a navigation app besides Maps? I don’t have an iPhone and the ones I’ve tried so far suck. I mean, I think Waze isn’t even all that good and Google owns even them now.
I tried Mapquest recently for the first time in 18 years. It was astonishing just how terrible their app and directions were.
I would gladly pay a few dollars a month for an alternative to Google Maps or Waze, but it’s like no company even wants to try and compete with Google and Apple maps.
While I don’t believe you can degoogle that quickly, because some of their services take quite some time to properly switch, such as email, in the end it’s not too hard, but just takes time and some work.
Changing email is easy, if you don’t mind it being a slow process. Just forward your google email, and start slowly replacing any service you notice in the following months/years to your new address.
Google Drive is harder to replace, I went for just running a NAS with Nextcloud, which takes care of most of Google Drive/Docs/Calendar stuff. If self-hosting isn’t your cup of tea, Proton is slowly setting up usable google alternatives - they have Drive and Calendar IIRC.
Now for phone, that’s the hardest task. You wouldn’t help yourself by getting an IPhone. While it would de-google you, there’s basically no point in switching google for apple. Getting android to be usable for stuff like banking, MFA and other bullshit you need your phone for while being degoogled is hard, due to the bullshit Google Services. The only solution I found is to either just go with dumb phone with an obscure OS, or just get a Google Pixel and run GrapheneOS.
Maps are another issue, but thankfully we have a local https://mapy.cz/ , which is a pretty OK alternative to Google maps for our country, and I guess they even work worldwide. I don’t drive a car, so I don’t really need it that often.
The only remaining Google service I use is GCloud VPS, because I have some websites running there on the free instances that I’m too lazy to move. But I’m slowly migrating it to Amazon. Not that it would help much, anyway. And also Youtube, but I’m trying to go through the alternative front-ends as much as possible.
And for browser, I’m using https://mullvad.net/en/browser. Fuck chromium.
Migrating email alone is a huge pain. To be truly independent you need your own domain in case whatever provider you choose goes to shit. Any decent one will cost money. Now, most people don’t even know what a domain is, let alone where and how to buy it and use it for email. They also have to pay that mail provider, configure everything and migrate their old emails and forward their old mail. Oh and now they also have different logins everywhere, and because they probably don’t have a password manager either they need to get one or just have different logins for different things.
That’s … a gargantuan task. for an average person - even if you provide them with a rough outline of what they’d need to do they probably wouldn’t be able to do so without help.
Also, as a side note, what do you use for watching videos? What phone do you have? What maps do you use? It’s not so easy to “de-google” completely.
Migrating emails isnt that hard if u dont set yourself a deadline. Some services like proton offer migration and forwarding from google and you can just slowly update them as you use it. I myself got tutanota and anonaddy and going through my bitwarden entries updating different alias for everything for the past couple days. Still gonna keep the gmail accounts around for emergency but will slowly disassociate from it.
Takes a while but you can just stick with updating them when you do use it if you dont have the time or feeling lazy. For an average person who doesnt value privacy, they have no reason to move out of google anyway so gmail will always be the popular one unfortunately.
This is how I did it. Set up a Protonmail account with my own domain, and set all my Gmail emails to forward there. I set up a special folder for all forwarded mail, to remind myslef that I should change my email on that service, and every time I logged somwhere or received an email from an important service I use, I made sure to change my address there.
It has already been several years, but I think I’ve managed to replace it everywhere within a few months. I haven’t seen a forwarded email in months, so I think I’m finally done.
I installed a custom launcher that’s close to the stock one on my Pixel 3 specifically to make it possible to remove the Google Search widget. Now I have a Firefox widget that points to DDG.
If any are interested, the launcher is Lawn Chair, and it can be installed via F-droid.
That launcher is abandoned
It’s true (and it feels a bit dusty), but it’s still meeting my needs. I hope it’ll get picked up again or perhaps another project will replace it.
It is updated on the github
Last update was from more than one year ago, last I checked. Has it been updated since?
Still more recent than 4 years ago
Well, it’s only maintained through dependency updates
F-droid relesae is 4 years old, you can get August 2022 releases on github
For more convenience, the newest version is also available via the IzzyOnDroid repo, you can enable it with one tap in Drod-ify.
If you have a Pixel, why not go all in with https://grapheneos.org/?
I e been debating switching the graphene for weeks weeks now. But I just know I’m gonna end up installing Google play services on it and completely defeat the whole point of the OS. I’m probably gonna buy the pixel 8 when it comes out so once I have that I’ll put graphene on my current phone and see how I like it.
Play Services is sandboxed on Graphene and is treated as a regular app, so you can actually disable most of its features, including network access.
I’ve just switched to it literally yesterday, and while you will probably not avoid Play Services, being able to install it into a different profile that’s only limited to the few apps that need it is nice.
Also, just the fact that on Graphene Play Services do not have the special privileges as on any android phone, and are subjected to the same limitations as any other app (which are even stricter on Graphene) helps a lot. It also means that even if you end up just running the play services at all times, they can’t do as much as they can on other android phones, and the data they can access without your explicit permission is really limited. So, even that helps by a lot.
This is actually great to hear. I’ll probably still ending up holding off until I have a spare phone to test with just because wiping my phone and redoing everything just isn’t something I’m up for right now though. Thank you very much for the info.
I like the ‘ground up’ approach they mention that doesn’t rely on insecure ‘adversaries’. I’ll check it out soon.
this absolutely wouldn’t happen if there were no regulations - a libertarian
A libertarian has two answers:
- The government’s supposed job is to crush monopolies, and they didn’t, the government only used the monopoly to expand their surveillance powers
- The government through its huge government spending forces central banks to lower the interest rates, which leads to huge companies getting an unfair advantage by getting cheap loans, in which they can have an unfair advantage since small, competing businesses can’t get these loans, inflating monopolies’ powers.
So, your government didn’t really help. It only made the situation worse. Take your propagandized ignorance and get out of here.
DuckDuckGo CEO apparently is just another CEO. I’ve been an early adopter that’s been using their search engine long before there were apps or a browser.
What’s stopping people from using DDG isn’t switching to DDG, it’s getting absolutely dogshit results 90% of time. As an advanced user I know I can prefix my search with “!g phrase” to use Google instead of DDG. The sad fact is that despite the ad-ridden result page and tracking, Google is still lightyears ahead in providing relevant, and especially timely results for a user that is both tech-savvy and critical.
They need to improve their product, users will follow a good adfree search engine, that’s a given. Only a fraction of users will put up with degraded results in order to search without tracking.
I sincerely hope they will get their tech up to par. And that their browser on mobile reaches feature parity soon. (as a Z Fold user, DDG browser doesn’t have tabs. Brave, Vivaldi and Firefox does).
The new kid on the block needs humility and good tech, not shittalk. Fuck that CEO,. he’s undermining something very promising and important.
I often don’t find what I want in DDG; and I then try !g to look for it with Google… and Google doesn’t find it either.
In my experience it is very rare for Google to help me with a search that DDG failed with. As for the converse, I wouldn’t know - because I never search Google first. Why wouldn’t I? They’re evil.
That said, I will point out that I don’t use a google account, and I block most google-related cookies. I know that some people find Google gives better results due to its personalised results; and obviously I’m not ‘benefiting’ from that. So it is believable that you get better results from Google than I do, due to it knowing more about you, and thus guessing what you might want to see.
In my experience, DDG has less relevant results than Google most of the time, but will occasionally end up being way better than Google if you’re looking for something that goes against corporate interests. It’s a lot easier to find free movie sites and whatnot on DDG.
I used DDG as my main for about half a year recently (and also a few times in the past). I always eventually end up back with Google. Don’t get me wrong the results aren’t that much better; but they’re definitely marginally better, at least for me. The personalization helps, too.
This time I had a brief detour using Neeva for a while and I was really happy with it; was kinda like a better DDG; but that got defunct so I ended up with Google again in the end and I just don’t see a way out.
DDG isn’t the only alternative to Google. I use Kagi and love it. The results IME are definitely better than Google’s.
I just signed up for kagi and so far i like what i see. I am still in my 100 search trial though.
I’ve switched to DDG almost a year ago, and I never had issues with my search results. Quite the contrary, every time I tried using !g because I simply wasn’t finding an answer, the Google was ad-ridden bullshit full of promoted pages without relevance to what I was looking for.
I guess I’m just used to DDG quality of results, but I never felt like it’s as bad as you say.
That depends very heavily on what your searching for.
If you’re a programmer or similar, like the poster you’re replying to appears to be, then you absolutely will find DDG crap compared to Google.
I use DDG as my primary search engine, but if I have a tech question, I usually skip it and go straight to Google.
I work part-time as a game developer, and part time as a pentester, so I do search for technical questions quite a lot.
Hmm, now I wonder whether I’m just used to it. I haven’t used any other search engine in more than a year. I’ll have to compare the results more, but as far as I remember every time I couldn’t find what I needed on DDG and resorted to !g, the Google results were even worse.
I am with you. I don’t know what this guy’s about about the search results of Google. A couple comments above people were complaining about the terrible results googles ad driven engine spews out. Also saying he’s so tech savvy and needs the Google “quality”, somehow not knowing !g just completely circumvents the benefits of DDG
I work in IT and use the search engine around 100 times a day in order to find specific answers to specific edge cases. DDG results are just too generic most of the time.
But once they get better, oh yeah.
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I agree that DDG’s results suck, but so do Google’s.
They really are both just awful. I’ve yet to find a search engine as good as Google was 10-15 years ago.
I wonder how much of that is Google being worse and you making more complex searches because you’re older
You got me there, but only you didn’t at all and I just feel sorry for you. Great baseless conjecture though.
I wasn’t trying to “get” anyone. It’s genuine curiosity. Christ, dude. Send your toxic-ass Reddit attitude back to that shitty platform it belongs.
It was an absolutely unnecessary comment and in no way a relevant quesiton. Odds are I’m better versed in technology than you. Don’t act like you were reasonable and you’re the one being attacked now. You’re one of those people who thinks they have the right to say whatever crappy thing they want and then look all confused when you illicit whatever response you absolutely deserved. Then accuse the other person of exactly what you started. I’m not facilitating this childish banter any further. Have whatever day you deserve.
Man you really think I’m being wildly more hostile than I am. It was genuine curiousity. It was in no way unnecessary, it wasn’t attacking you in any way, it was prompting a conversation. If you think every response to you that’s only tangentially related to what you said is off topic, then I fear for anyone who even attempts to have any sort of conversation with you at all. That’s how conversations work.
Fifteen years ago my searches were limited to Minecraft and basic programming questions. Now they’re more like searching for specific research papers and other significantly more complex topics and I get much less useful results. Are they related? Who knows! It’s an interesting idea, though, which I was hoping to explore with someone who might be interested. But no, you decided to be whatever this is.
Fuck, dude, get your head out of your goddamn ass. Learn how to talk to people. Fuck.
Until recently I would have agreed 100%.
But Google’s search has turned to dogshit since it’s started trying to be smarter than it is, and DDG is now giving me results on par with old Google - that is, a list of exactly what I was searching for on the first try.
I made the switch a week ago. For two days at work, I always used Google, DDG and ecosia(uses bing) at the same time to compare the results. They are the same most of the time for the first 10 to 20 results. There’s sometimes a blogpost that one engine shows that the other doesn’t, but that post never made a difference.
When DDG does not get me helpful results, I can still ask Google to help out.
ecosia(uses bing)
Ecosia is a fucking scam. They claim that “every search plants a tree”, except the monetary contribution towards their “tree-planting” stuff comes from clicking ads – therefore if you are a knowledgeable user who purposefully skips over ads (or just use an ad-blocker) then Ecosia makes exactly $0 off of your traffic.
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nope, they don’t get paid for merely displaying ads. as per their own blog, ONLY when you click on them.
Yeah, I e had worsening search results from DDG over the past 6+ months. I’ve set it to my default browser, but I often have to switch because the results are not specific enough compared to Google.
And now Googles AI results are a huge time saver.
DDG rules
Im just here to watch the slimeballs duke it out.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The U.S. Department of Justice argues that Google has smothered competition by paying companies such as Apple and Verizon to lock in its search engine as the default choice — the first one users see — on many laptops and smartphones.
Even when it holds the default spot on smartphones and other devices, Google argues, users can switch to rival search engines with a couple of clicks.
DuckDuckGo still sells ads, but bases them on what people are asking its search engine in the moment, a technique known as “contextual advertising.” That focus on privacy helped the company attract more users after the Edward Snowden saga raised awareness about the pervasiveness of online surveillance.
It gained even more customers after Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal opened a window into how personal information extracted from digital services can be passed around to other data brokers.
But Lehman said machine learning has improved rapidly in recent years, to the point that computers can evaluate text on their own without needing to analyze data from user clicks.
During the exchange, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta drew a laugh by asking how internet searches would answer one of pop culture’s most pressing questions this week: whether superstar singer Taylor Swift is dating NFL tight end Travis Kelce.
The original article contains 637 words, the summary contains 212 words. Saved 67%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Good bot
I could switch but I don’t see any need to. The lockin from apple apps and google play apps is far stronger.
Bing says what?
Ker-ching! 🤑
that’s DuckDuckGo and “Names Database” CEO*, folks. PLEASE do not look to this man as a beacon for anything privacy-related, even when he says something true.
ok ill try using duckduckgo again
I’ve been using freeadblocker browser after stumbling on it (with DDG as a search engine). Does it have anything to do with Google/chrome? I’m confused, because I’ve been using it for so long and it blocks all ads so I guess I don’t know why no one is using it unless it’s some Google stepchild I don’t know about and I’m still googled without knowing it.
Seems really fishy.
Quite a few trackers: https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/com.hsv.freeadblockerbrowser/latest/
And so many red flags like a free VPN (so they route all your traffic), “powered with AI technology” (what for?), not open source…
A browser is a very sensitive piece of software, you trust it with a lot of personal data. Don’t use a random one like this one.
Because I can use Firefox.
Is that iOS, Android or PC? Do you have a link?
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Android. It seems to be available on Google play ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hsv.freeadblockerbrowser) now but I remember having to find the APK elsewhere when I first got it.
Hmmm, that isn’t open source, I don’t know if one can trust it. Why does a browser need in-app purchases? Try Mull or Cromite.
Edit: from the description, it uses Brave Search (to answer you question), so it doesn’t send to Google your queries. But I’d be careful with an app with a bunch of SEO keywords in its description.
