So recently I got annoyed by DDG's "optimizations" (they are a lot more aggressive in ignoring words in your query than google and unlike google they don't even tell you about it; I know I can use "" to force a term, but !g is much quicker).
I thought I'd give startpage.com a try (proxied google results without tracking), but besides being slow I realized I couldn't live without bangs anymore (and was also missing DDG's rich snippets).
I wish DDG had some kind of bang that tells it that I actually want to search for the query I entered, not some random query they think I might have wanted :/
edit: I should mention that after complaining about it on their subreddit, someone on the team said they are looking into it.
> after complaining about it on their subreddit, someone on the team said they are looking into it.
Anecdotally, for every feature I’ve wanted of DDG, I’ve found an old post where someone on their team says they’re looking into it. For some I’ve found multiple posts, going back over a decade! Always the same “looking into it”.
I use DDG, but I put them in the category of companies too afraid to say “no, we won’t do that feature” or “we like that idea, but it’s low priority so we don’t know if we’ll ever get to it”. Whichever features they have, I use; the features they promise, I ignore.
I thought I'd give startpage.com a try (proxied google results without tracking), but besides being slow I realized I couldn't live without bangs anymore (and was also missing DDG's rich snippets).
I wish DDG had some kind of bang that tells it that I actually want to search for the query I entered, not some random query they think I might have wanted :/
edit: I should mention that after complaining about it on their subreddit, someone on the team said they are looking into it.