Not because DDG got better, but just because google got worse.
google is still better for site-specific searches, and google scholar still has minimal AI slop
So far its still less bloated
No. DDG still puts less priority in small blogs over Reddit posts. All bigger search engines put way too much stock & rank in corpo social media.
Google is mostly adverts. Wouldn’t take much to be better than that.
I finally left Google a month or so ago and its amazing how little I miss it.
Yeah. I search for things all the time. Thousands of searches each month. I thought I’d miss it a lot, but I’ve not used Google for two years or so and it’s not really a problem.
76% of their Q2 2024 revenue came from adverts. I’d rather pay with capitalist-consumerist shit on my screen than pay with money, but as everyone knows it’s far too invasive rn. Ergo, I use uBlock, sponsorblock and I don’t care about cookies.
Not really. If you focus purely on just searching, yeah DDG is decent. But, I find its maps inferior and trying to find answers to some questions can get tedious. DDG I guess is just for people who want guilt-free searching.
ddg maps is just a no-frills apple maps.
which is to say: terrible
yes, it is. but between it and graphhopper (or osm), it’s “enough” for me.
i don’t need a feature-filled “app” (my phone is ‘dumb’), and the only time i end up on something else like bing or google maps is if a site i need to use embeds and relies upon them.
my problem with apple maps is how frequently it has something’s location completely wrong because osm addresses use the European addressing system everywhere when i don’t live in europe
OpenStreetMap contributor here. What address format isn’t supported? Maybe I can help
United States format is very different from the european format and often the apple maps algorithm makes some boneheaded assuptions to translate from a US address to something OSM understands. i contribute, too, but the next time i have an example of apple maps fucking up… i’ll have already forgot this convo happened, but i’ll try
Agreed. Even if it were identical to Google maps in terms of content, it runs slower on all platforms I’ve so far tried (windows, iOS, OSX).
DDG is just Bing
Sorta not really.
the bulk of its search results come from bing. only its instant answers and ai features aren’t bing
I got identical results with a side-by-side comparison.
kagi still owns both of them. but there’s also startpage and leta which are google wrappers if you don’t want to use Google directly
Yes, I switched back in 2023 and noticed it was already better than google.
All major search engines feel like they’re either filled with AI slop results, or just only returning major corporations’ sites anymore, though. DDG just falls into the latter, while Google is mostly the former.
I find it’s actually better at this point because it just gives results without AI summaries and ads, also I find it’s just straight up better at actually finding what you’re looking for
i find ddg sufficient for nearly everything. occasionally i will go to startpage or ecosia or mojeek for a different ‘perspective’, but that is not very often at all. i also use wolframalpha almost daily for some sort of calculation or conversion.
i haven’t used google or bing except by accident when using someone else’s browser or device (that is, when i forget to go to duck.com first).
Is ddg on mobile just a facade and still uses google?
I really agree Google just took themself out of the market. I wouldn’t be surprised if they dropped their “search” product completely, the way they’ve dropped a lot of other good products along the way.
I’ve never forgiven them for getting rid of their search within results, that was brilliant
My thought always was that DDG was good to set as my default, and if I’m not happy with the results then it’s not a big deal to use Google once in awhile.
Just use start page instead for Google results. That’s what I do.
Wow this is way cleaner than google. Just straight text search results for the most part.
Yo, startpage looks sick. I’ll have to poke around and see if I can find more info on that it looks super useful. My quick test just now was “cloture 2025” which returned 4 news articles followed by basically nothing but .gov links, whereas Google returns way more “news”
Mullvad has recently made their google search proxy free for everyone. It’s a good alternative to startpage: https://leta.mullvad.net/
I like startpage more still. Mullvad’s ui sucks.
Good enough for me, although there are times I need to use google.
You seriously can’t type whatever dae means?
I can. Be nice and I might.
If you wish to be understood, choose your words more carefully. If you wish to be treated with kindness, drop the defensiveness, learn to process feedback objectively, and take communication seriously. No one is being unkind or unreasonable here, except you.
That initial comment is quite pointed…
Yours is pretty over the top as well, lol.
“No one knows what the heck dae means you lazy bum. We invented words for a reason, try using them. If you’re illiterate then maybe try a YouTube video essay. “
If someone said that, sure… but no one did. Perhaps the Original Poster needs to take communication more seriously and less personally.
I think you’re making a significant deal out of something that is quite minor, personally. It’s okay, though. It’s minor, so we can agree to disagree. Cheers!
The basics of human communication is nothing important at all. 🤡
It’s an abbreviation on the internet. Do you act this way any time you see TIL, wtf, eli5 or other. Or are you just sour you don’t know this one
Chill out, man. This isn’t parliament. Everything doesn’t have to be communicated as if we’re drafting laws.
Communication styles vary greatly, and tone is dependent on setting. What OP posted was completely fine. No need to throw around clown emoji 😝
Never saw that abbreviation before, but my assumption is it’s “does anyone else” since I can’t think of anything else that’d make sense in this context
I’ve been online for almost thirty years and have never - knowingly - seen “dae” as an abbreviation.
I don’t believe you. DAE has been an extremely common abbreviation for well over a decade at least.
TIL I’m a liar…
I didn’t say you lied, just saying that there’s no way you’ve been on the internet for 30 years and have never seen DAE anywhere before now.
DAE is a fairly common acronym on online forums, often used in titles such as these. You could have used Google (or DuckDuckGo) to learn its meaning 😊
It’s simply “does anyone else.”
It’s just as good as 2008 google, which is all I want.
I’ve had to use !g way too much lately, so no.
Whats that do?
Bangs, used to move the search to another site, in this case google
100%. I have not used google in about roughly 15 years. DDG has been my daily driver since 2010
I love DDG AI
Just dont use ChatGPT but one of the other models. I find LLama to work fine.
Wha… Why? Why gpt the only baddy?
Well afaik they host their open source models them selves / with a cloud service they have control over so no data going to big bad tech
Yeah, I trust DuckDuckGo. And I like they anonymize my AI queries. I feel like it’s the next best thing to running it locally.
Does their ‘anonymizing queries’ feat mean anything if they don’t disclose how it works or what that even means literally?
At least with the open source models the data is not sent to the big bad tech cooperations afaik
“Trust me bro”
