While this is certainly an impressive feat, I've not found myself impressed with DuckDuckGo's results. I love the principles of having search results be free of personal information but, for a search provider that essentially collects and organizes other search engine's results, I always find myself back at Google. Often times the result I wanted was as many as 4 or 5 pages back, whereas with Google it's usually in the first 5 or so results, immediately seen on the first page.
Thank you for giving it a try! We're always trying to improve and to the extent you remember any specific examples we'd love to review them: http://duckduckgo.com/feedback.html
I prefer DDG for general search, but google was too good at digging up obscure code errors. I end up spending more time looking for errors than general stuff (which I guess means I'm a terrible programmer), so grudgingly switched back to the googs.
There's a different approach to DDG, which emphasises having a set of trusted sources rather than a powerful whole-web analysis as Google does. DDG often misses the wanted result, but often gives the result much higher up than Google.
I use Google more than I do DDG, but I use DDG enough that I miss the DDG shortcuts quite a bit when using Google: I recommend spending more time with DDG. The !hn shortcut, for instance, is quite useful around here.
There is a Chrome extension that allow DDG searches while keeping Google as your default:
I've switched to using DDG in FireFox for the past couple weeks. It works fine for 80% of searches and occasionally surprises me with the zero-click box, but the other 20% of the time I have to use Google.
If you can't find what you are looking for on DDG, just slap a !g on the query and you go straight to google. This slight inconvenience for some searches is outweighed by the power of !bangs and the zero click info.
There's no way DDG can outbid Google or Bing. Also, it's not the default search where all the money is so they probably didn't have to beat out the big dogs to get into the list.
Surely the minute DDG starts costing them revenue then Google, et al., will simply cut them off from using their search results (eg via !) and substantially reduce the utility of DDG?
I'm not commenting on your deal specifically, but NDA-protected deals in general: let's say, 50 or 100 years from now, historians want to know all the details of various deals made between companies, to better understand the nature of the market in which we now exist. Is there any way for them to find out, or will these details be forever lost?
I spotted it immediately and was pleasantly surprised.
DDG was in Times 'The 50 Best Websites of 2011', now they show up in Opera. It does not seem to be so spectacular as being listed in Times, yet its gonna stay there for a long time, being one click away. It should translate to extra traffic in a long run.
Seems DDG is in a phase of building momentum which can take quite a long time and includes such (not so small) wins like these two.
Not to forget being listed as the best search engine for private browsing by ConsumerSearch which is a part of the About.com network and has pretty decent traffic. http://www.consumersearch.com/search-engine-reviews
DuckDuckGo needs to change their name, imo. Secondly, they need to reduce the number of links you have to click through to get to a site you are looking for. The disambiguation step takes too long.
Definitely. The name sucks. It sucks just as much as other crazy names that make no sense... like GoDaddy - who would ever use a company like that? Sounds like an escort service. Or Yahoo. Or Google. Those names just don't make sense and should be changed ;)
At least DuckDuckGo is a memorable and easy to spell name. Most sites these days have such odd spelling or nonsense words that you must spell out the name (and dots) when talking to other people.
Because Google owns both the browser and the search engine, and could use position in one market to gain a large advantage in another. Opera is neither a market leader nor it owns DDG. Moreover there is no such thing as anti-trust behavior, anti-trust is a legislation/action( the anti in its name ) that is aimed to stop such behaviour.
dangrossman has given an adequate explanation though I have a question? Why couldn't the Opera people make it the default search engine? It's their piece of software and you're free to change it to anything you want.
That's probably their way of cat-playing with their food.
Also, they probably remember how microsoft was forced to carry a load of different browsers in EU and make WMP-free windows, so they take some steps to prevent that for themselves.
Also they used to disable this selector on per-country basis.
