[eksemplar]

2018 was the year I adopted ddg, not because of privacy, but because google result sucks.

Almost every time I search, I don’t get a single result I want on the first page. The first 3 results are sponsored adds, then there is the Danish Wikipedia article (useless), then 3-6 advertisements pretending to be content, and then if I’m lucky something that was relevant 5 years ago.

DDG isn’t much better, but it’s better.

I’m not sure if search engines are really to blame though. With everyone being on Facebook, Medium, Quora, reddit, 4chan and so on, it’s like the web just stopped having content worth visiting.

If it wasn’t because HN gave me interesting content, I’m honestly not sure why I’d ever browse the internet anymore. But maybe I’m just getting grumpy.

[maxxxxx]

I use DDG out of principle but to be honest Google is still much better for the stuff I am searching.

[eksemplar]

Google is better at localized stuff, but very often I prefer the English version. Like in the case of Wikipedia, if my goal was to look something up on wiki I’d always pick the English version, but on google it’s on the second or third result page.

Quora is another good example, it’s a place I often visit after search results, but on google.dk, it’s almost never a result, possibly because it’s not in danish.

DDG is much better, but once in a while when I’m searching for something very specific that I know google will first, I’ll do the !g.

If I’m looking up anything technical or comitting an act of google programming, I’ll always go straight to google.

The other day I was looking for some pipeextenders for our shower though, and neither bing, google or DDG were able to help. I ended up finding them by searching on amazon. Google was 100% commercials for plumbers and completely useless otherwise. DDG and bing had no clue what I was looking for. A few years ago, google would have been able to help, I know, because google helped me find our current ones.

[drivebycomment]

I just tried googling pipeextender, tried it on both google.dk and google.com, and the results look reasonable to me - the first row is their sponsored, but that's actually a list of pipe extenders so still useful. Then the organic results all look reasonable.

What do you see when you google pipeextender ?

[nicklaf]

DDG is more convenient for getting to something you already know exists: either use a bang to get there directly, or make your query specific enough that it comes up in the search result page.

On the other hand, when I expect my search engine to make a best effort guess about my intentions, I just use the !g bang, and almost always Google finds stuff that DDG misses. This is essential for research, but downright annoying otherwise (especially considering all the linkfarms like WikiHow that have spammed their way to the top of PageRank).

[opportune]

Yeah have you ever tried plugging an exception with the function name into Bing or DDG? It doesn't work on those, it does work on Google.

I'm quite a privacy-conscious individual but I'm not going to significantly hamper my engineering abilities to prevent google from knowing what technical problems I'm having.

[kevin_thibedeau]

You get the Wikipedia page? How fortunate. I rarely see them on the first page now even when I know there is a relevant article with matching title. Need more space for ads and DoubleClick affiliates.

[onemoresoop]

I feel the same because of the YouTube changes, I used to browse videos and end up in unexpected places. That is no longer possible, i get only related videos that are either sponsored, older videos i haven't finished and nothing else. I personally am not grumpy but am actually happy that I spend less time on YouTube. Slowly but surely I spend less and less time online and I see it as a good thing.