[MikeCapone]

I've been using DDG as my default browser for a while (though I sometimes revert to !g to search google), and I'm satisfied with the experience.

The main thing that would really improve my experience would be if it was faster. Google really spoiled my with the instant results and suggestions as you type.

I'm also looking forward to them switching to SPDY as I always use the encrypted version, and this should make it a bit more responsive.

[JD557]

One of the main reasons I changed to DDG was because I was having some problems with google:

- Some times the instant search simply doesn't work until I press enter (and sometimes, even when I do, the results just don't appear) - I noticed that google doesn't take you directly to the page. It takes you first to an intermediate page (probably for tracking purposes) and then redirects you to your result. I would be fine with that, but sometimes my browser just got stuck in the intermediate page (no idea why).

I sometimes need to use !g too and I agree that google sometimes is faster than DDG (at least when it works). What I really miss from google is the autocomplete

[MikeCapone]

Agreed. Autocomplete would be awesome. I think it's pretty much expected from any search engine nowadays. I like how Chrome and iCab will sometimes use google's autocomplete even if I'm doing a DDG search, but I wish it was also available straight from the site's search field.

[Steko]

Google has put so much effort into speed over the last 10 years that they can't perceptively improve much in this department going forward. So DDG's target is relatively stationary and closing the gap may be expensive but is at least straightforward.

[mmahemoff]

Well, it's only stationary if Google's features are stationary too. e.g. when they introduced live search, that's a new performance target any competitor has to reach.

[MikeCapone]

That's a good point, though I'm afraid it might be one of those things where diminishing returns mean that it becomes very very expensive to catch up, and I don't know if DDG has the resources. Moore's Law should help, though, but personally I haven't really felt (subjectively) like DDG has become much faster since I've been using it.

[Steko]

The scale of capital investment needed is really only feasible in the context of an acquisition or maybe a huge DDG boom stemming from a massive Google privacy scandal.

[MikeCapone]

Probably. But just adding autocomplete and improving speed some (doesn't need to be quite google-equivalent) would go a long way towards making the experience subjectively better.

Another thing that annoys me is that they have ads near the top of the results that don't load quite at the same time as the results, so I sometimes am about to click on the top result but an ad pops up and pushes everything down making me miss my click. If they could somehow avoid that happening, it would also make the experience better.

[brokenparser]

Error: DDG is not a browser.

[MikeCapone]

I meant 'search engine', that was a weird typo. Sometimes my fingers don't listen to my brain.