Reply to: duckduckgo.com

[scooterscot]

So the results.

In the last 7 days I've used Google. No escaping it. I used Google for Maps and translation and Google News but not searching. Even install DDG on the iPhone.

All searches were made with DDG.

My thoughts: Regardless of search engine I'm surprised really how easy it is to switch my preferred search engine. I suspect Google needs those other services to keep a captive audience. The quality of results I'm retrieving with DDG I find I get a meaningful result with less searching, which is good as I don't need 1,000,000 plus results I need 'the result'.

I like the clean interface of DDG, like Google use to be.

[scooterscot]

I still find Google great for searching -

So do I. But when it comes to researching topics related to work does not mean I'm looking to spend money. I want searches that have no past history of me.

However, surely Google will quickly copy any new innovation (or just buy out the provider).

Perhaps. They'd probably forget to adopt the tracking policy during the acquisition.

[d000hg]

I still find Google great for searching - hard to see how they would make it worse - but fair enough. However, surely Google will quickly copy any new innovation (or just buy out the provider).

[scooterscot]

Doesn't DDG largely get its information from other 'proper' search engines like Yahoo/Google, topped up with wikipedia?

If so, whatever, etc, the quality of results when researching, for me, is improved.

DuckDuckGo | Sources

DuckDuckGo gets its results from over 50 sources, including DuckDuckBot (our own crawler), crowd-sourced sites (in our own index), Yahoo! BOSS, embed.ly, WolframAlpha, EntireWeb, Bing & Blekko. For any given search, there is usually a vertical search engine out there that does a better job at answering it than a general search engine. Our long-term goal is to get you information from that best source, ideally in instant answer form.

[d000hg]

Doesn't DDG largely get its information from other 'proper' search engines like Yahoo/Google, topped up with wikipedia?

[scooterscot]

what made you decide to go a week without Google?

In a word, quality.

The decision is based on a couple of jobs I've been quoting for over the last week or so. When researching I want few returns and quality results. Google struggles to do this for me these days. I just performed a very niche search term yet I get 126,000,000 results.

You see I've been searching and searching, Google is all I've ever used. Have been experimenting with DEVONagent Pro in an attempt to improve the quality of material I've been looking for but I do not really want another app. Although it looks the business.

Then other search engines came to me attention, I've found the quality of results produced from duckduckgo, for my work related research, much more relevant. Don't want to sounds like a cliché, but it does what it says.

The tracking of my searches gave me the final push, I don't need privacy but neither do I want the quality of my searching to suffer while Google chase $$ using my searching habits. On the plus DDG do not track or bubble your searching habits. If I could buy shares in this company I would.

In the end commerce is bad for research, Google should know better.


Google’s Broken Promise: The End of "Don’t Be Evil"

[chef]

what made you decide to go a week without Google?

[scooterscot]

A better alternative

Yandex

Better, how?

[Paddy]

A better alternative

Yandex

[xoggoth]

perl yech, requires thought. PHP is brill. You just shove stuff together in PHP without having a clue what you are doing and it mostly works.

As for that search thingy, typed in xoggoth and only got 1 page. Bet even atw's thing would beat that.

[scooterscot]

Terrifying from a maintainability point of view though.

Software is prone to wear and tear?

[scooterscot]

Are you worried google is going to tell the missus about your midget porn fetish?

SSSSSSSssshhh!

[Freamon]

Nowt wrong with modperl. Its ridiculously fast if you know what you are doing.

Terrifying from a maintainability point of view though.

[wim121]

Wish me luck. I'm going to try and live without google for the next 7 days.

DuckDuckGo

Are you worried google is going to tell the missus about your midget porn fetish?

[Sysman]

Nowt wrong with modperl. Its ridiculously fast if you know what you are doing.

Isn't slashdot.org written in Perl? That's a high performance site.

Edit First entry on slashdot - YouTube Identifies Birdsong As Copyrighted Music

"I make nature videos for my YouTube channel, generally in remote wilderness away from any possible source of music. And I purposely avoid using a soundtrack in my videos because of all the horror stories I hear about Rumblefish filing claims against public domain music. But when uploading my latest video, YouTube informed me that I was using Rumblefish's copyrighted content, and so ads would be placed on my video, with the proceeds going to said company. This baffled me. I disputed their claim with YouTube's system — and Rumblefish refuted my dispute, and asserted that: 'All content owners have reviewed your video and confirmed their claims to some or all of its content: Entity: rumblefish; Content Type: Musical Composition.' So I asked some questions, and it appears that the birds singing in the background of my video are Rumblefish's exclusive intellectual property."

You couldn't make this stuff up.