"Uses" is a weird word here. Because some people are suggesting that DDG is a reskin of Bing. But if we look at what DDG says[0], they talk about it the same way they talk about Stack Overflow. No one is crazy enough to say that DDG is a reskin of SO. What they are actually saying is that they are aggregating results. Which I don't understand why that would be a bad thing.
Money quoute right here: "We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we also source from a variety of partners, including Verizon Media (formerly Yahoo) and Bing."
SO and the other 400 sources are only used for instant boxes and other widgets. The real organic search results are all from Bing.
> In fact, DuckDuckGo gets its results from over four hundred sources. These include hundreds of vertical sources delivering niche Instant Answers, DuckDuckBot (our crawler) and crowd-sourced sites (like Wikipedia, stored in our answer indexes). We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we also source from a variety of partners, including Verizon Media (formerly Yahoo) and Bing.
I'm not sure where you're getting
> The real organic search results are all from Bing.
> In fact, DuckDuckGo gets its results from over four hundred sources. These include hundreds of vertical sources delivering niche Instant Answers, DuckDuckBot (our crawler) and crowd-sourced sites (like Wikipedia, stored in our answer indexes). We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we also source from a variety of partners, including Verizon Media (formerly Yahoo) and Bing.
Honest question: how do you people even cope with the crap results?
I'm a StartPage user, but decided to try DDG for some time after the System1 debacle [1]. The Swedish localized search results are downright unusable compared to StartPage/Google. I'm really trying to give it a chance, but I keep reaching for SP in every other search.
Because they aren’t crap for me the vast majority of the time. I often hear about local results, but flipping the "Germany" switch gives me great German results.
There are 2 cases when I need to use !g, both of them are when there aren’t many results:
1. Rare error, simply not in their index
2. Ambiguous term and I need to force a part of the query to appear. Because DDG thinks it’s perfectly fine to ignore the user sometimes and show you completely unrelated things even if you tried your best to tell them what you are looking for and it’s in their index.
Sadly recently google started doing that as well. Not as bad as DDG, the first few results are still an answer to my query, but then they decide to spam the results with useless sites that don’t have the term.
Completely honest answer, not trying to be dismissive -- DuckDuckGo gives me fine results for most of my queries. I don't reach for Google that much unless I'm doing a deep dive into a problem that's hard to search in general, in which case I often find I'm aggregating results from multiple search engines.
I find Google better at some results -- occasionally Google "gets" what I'm trying to search for better than DuckDuckGo does and zeroes in more specifically on the topic. Sometimes I find that DuckDuckGo does the same. I particularly think that DuckDuckGo's smart cards are just (to me) obviously better than Google's. DuckDuckGo's news is really bad for me, I guess -- I pretty much always use Google News for current events.
This comes up pretty much every time that DuckDuckGo comes up, and I have seen it come up so often, that when I step back and try to come up with a semi-impartial reading of which engine is better, the only conclusion I can reach is that a lot of people have different opinions about how a search engine should react when they search. I think different search results are an acquired taste, and there just isn't an objective right or wrong answer to which engine is better.
So it's a little like if someone was recommending eating vegetables, and you asked, "but what do you do about the crap taste of spinach?" You have a real problem in that I want to help you find foods you like, but at the same time, I'm not trying to "solve" the way spinach tastes. I don't agree that spinach is "wrong", it's just not what you want.
From that point of view, having multiple, diverse search engines is good, and we'd all be served better by using multiple search engines. I don't want DuckDuckGo to just be a Google clone; part of the reason I use it is because of their different results. I do want it to improve and get better, but I disagree that morphing into Google 2.0 will accomplish that for me.
If you like Google's style of search results, then what you really need is a trustworthy replacement for Startpage. You need Google but without the tracking -- and DuckDuckGo isn't just Google without the tracking. I think you're justified in telling anyone who says, "just use DuckDuckGo" to shove off, since DuckDuckGo isn't solving your problem. But I don't agree that DuckDuckGo has bad results, it has a different flavor than you're used to.
> I'm a StartPage user, but decided to try DDG for some time after the System1 debacle
I haven't kept up with the most recent news, but I assume OP would still be using SP if they could trust it not to track them. What they need is a StartPage equivalent that they still trust.
I too use DDG first and I'm just willing to suffer a bit 'till I use Google. Using DDG first at least keeps Google honest and they are only a click away on Firefox.
The thing that's saddest is not only are DDG results not as smart but they also seem dumbed-down in the fashion of Google - ie, too much "your search" --> "what we imagine you really want" --> "here's our curated list of things like this (and screw your actual keywords)"
I use DDG as my main search engine and I agree localised results are subpar ( I'm Brazilian ). I end up resorting to the !g bang most of the time but since these kinds of searches are a just small subset of my queries, it doesn't bother me that much.
I honestly can always find what I want with DDG or I can’t find it in DDG or Google. If I end up searching Google it’s essentially the same results, but it also depends how you search.
I’m either searching for something straight forward and Wikipedia (or some other obvious site) suffices or its so niche that neither Google or DDG work.
I also wrote my own search engine that works well for my niche topics (better than either IMO). Mostly for discovering interesting aspect though.
It's not just you. I sincerely believe in DDG's mission, but the sad truth is I just can't find what I want with it. Unfortunately there seems to be no good way to use Startpage with Safari either.
Maybe it's just my searches, but I'm able to pretty consistently find what I'm looking for with DDG, and the number of times that Google has helped in those situations is basically nil. I think it's a really subjective thing, and it may take a while for DDG to work as well for all users as it currently does for some.
Not a single word about encryption on the front page. If this wants to be your most private social network for your close ones, it better step up. I/we chose Signal.
Signal and Matrix are good but there is value in UX optimized for closed, intimate groups. Signal also requires phone numbers which, in certain nations, are becoming problematic.
Adding more cargo space is easy with a trailer. Adding more passenger space isn't. And some permanent cargo space for weekly shopping is easier to justify than cargo space you need twice a year.
Over here in (Western) Europe most people rent a trailer when they need it, unless you are living more rural. If you need it once in a blue moon then renting isn't really an issue. Many places that sell large things, like IKEA, also rent out large vans basically for free if you purchase from them.
Right, but if you’re willing to rent, might as well just rent a truck on demand. At this point you’ve shifted the goal posts to, “why do people buy things and underutilize them instead of renting on demand”?
Why have a guest room when there are hotels you can send visitors to?
Why have a 4 door car that incurs most of its mileage in a commute with 1 or 2 people?
Well, here at least trailers are rented because you can pick up a trailer at the gas station at zero notice. Renting a truck is a little bit different.
I don't think most people have guest rooms on purpose. More often those are the rooms kids lived in before they left home and then the rooms get repurposed.
Mine is actually on the side of the house, behind the trash cans (also forbidden). The HOA hasn’t messed with me because I let the HOA guy borrow it. Utility trailers are very useful.
I guess it depends how often you need to use the bed. If you have to truck around that thing all the time just for those few occasions every year when you need to move large or heavy items you might be better off just renting a van for the day.
People should just do the math and decide for their own particular case if hauling around a huge vehicle with all the disadvantages that come with it (maneuverability, fuel consumption, parking, etc.) actually pays off when they need the capacity, or if they're better off always using the right tool for the job (regular car for most of the needs, rent big one for the rest). YMMV.
I’ve seen several comments in this thread that conclude that it’s wasteful to have the truck bed when you are not using it. Going one level deeper, to the owner it doesn’t feel wasteful on a day to day basis because you forget it’s back there when you’re not using it. But it’s so handy when you do need it.
Former truck owner myself, I downsized to a car after moving to a more urban setting. It’s often on the weekends that I loathe not having to pickup for various furniture moves, gardening, etc. since I now have to borrow and friend’s or rent one.
It’s wasteful in the sense that you use more fuel to carry around more car. You have a harder time parking and maneuvering in a city, and you generally take up more space than needed. Most people forget that what they do has an impact but this does not remove the impact.
How many times per year would you say you need to move furniture? If you do it 1 day per month but carry around a full truck and the above mentioned disadvantages the other 30 maybe it’s not that bad of a trade off.
Or just hire a van - I do this once a year or so when I need to move a lot of stuff. It's £30 for a day with a small van, £70 for a LWB transit (which is massive), or only £100 for a box van with a tail lift (basically a small lorry).
It is for this reason that I still cannot use an iPhone as my main device. In spite of the many advantages of iOS devices (camera quality, resale value), it is still primarily a mobile browsing device for me. So the fact that I can't replicate my desktop browsing setup on it, extensions and all, means that I'll be sticking w/ Android and hopefully move towards a Google Play Services-free implementation.
uBlock and uMatrix are a perfect addition to a setup with a dns based filtering system, though by themselves alone do not provide a solution for all use cases. Think smarttv's, consoles, IOS devices, apps, etc. Basically anything that is not android firefox browser or a desktop browser.
Additionally having DNS filtering in place will also prevent information leakage in case something goes wrong with one of your browser plugins.
> my one complaint is that it is almost never available for the phones I own
This is the reason that I've only bought Google's handsets. Easy to unlock and always excellent ROM support. Flawless LineageOS support and I have also very good experiences of GrapheneOS (former CopperheadOS).
I buy them when the next model (or the model after that) is out for a fraction of the price. Couldn't care less about getting the latest phone these days. At this level they're pretty much all the same to me.
Only thing to look out for is Google's crappy long term support and security fixes (which even GrapheneOS relies on). For my current Pixel 1 device OS updates were supposed to run out over a year ago. Still, Android 10 was "just" released for the Pixel 1...
Me neither. That's why I use https://www.startpage.com/