A few weeks ago, I thought I would try out duckduckgo as my default search tool in my browser. I've used DuckDuckGo in the past - but only by going there via URL. This time, I thought I'd try to cut the goog cold turkey. I don't have anything remarkable to report, but here are some of my initial thoughts after a few weeks:
-it takes some getting used to. It's different. but that's ok
-it's not so great if you're looking for a youtube video. This may go without saying, since youtube is google's darling.
-in fact - it's not so great at any google related anything. And I know that probably sounds stupid - but for someone who had gotten REALLY used to how easy google makes online stuff - it's a thing (I'm looking at you showtimes, wikipedia snippets, music on youtube, google play, etc)
-it's not so great if you're looking for quick price comparisons on an item (oh wait - that's a google shopping thing... moving on)
-image search is lacking... or at least, it didn't feel as robust or as thorough as the goog
but in the end... knowing this means a lot. I mean - I don't do a lot of porn searching, terrorist extremist stuff, or media piracy... but there's just something about knowing that the goog is watching me that makes me feel icky (or at least makes me feel like they should feel icky).
So there it is... the same conclusion many, many people who are much smarter than I am have already concluded:
Google may be evil, and they may be all up in your business... but dang if they aren't convenient and pretty easy to use. Easy of use vs. privacy. And some other stuff.
I may stick DDG out a little longer - but honestly, I've navigated to google.com more than once after DDG's results didn't make all my wishes come true.
I do all my searching using the firefox search bar - CTRL+K FTW! I've used DuckDuckGo as my primary search provider for a couple of years now. The "bang" searches are where it really, really shines. It takes a while to get used to but there are so many and some of them are extremely useful. For those that don't know starting you query with a bang - term does a site specific search. e.g. !g <SEARCHTERM> - searches google. That's right they let you search google instead of their own search engine. The number of bang searches is overwhelming so my advice is just to learn a few you find most useful. hey soon became an integral part of searching for me. These are my most used: !g - google !i - google images !gt / !gten - google translate (English) !yt - youtube !a - amazon !w - wikipedia I don't think there is any question that google's search engine is the best, but I hate the tracking and lack of privacy with google. At first I found myself relying on !g quite a lot, but over time it's become just a safety net when DDG doesn't get me what I need and that's really quite rare nowadays.
I do the same. My default search is DDG and that's usually enough and I don't even realize that I'm using a different search engine. Sometimes I have to tag a !g at the end of my search if I'm having trouble finding what I need and that's totally fine with me. Though, considering I use GMail and google owns everything about my phone and searches there, I'm not sure if using DDG has any effect on my personal privacy beyond giving them traffic and legitimizing them.
I think one of the reasons why switching to DuckDuckGo was so easy for me was because I'm not sophisticated in my searches. I don't search for images or videos or competitive prices or anything of the sort. More often than not, I'm just looking up the definition of a word or a wikipedia article, so DuckDuckGo works perfectly for me. Though the way you seem to put it, if the case was otherwise, I too might have had a tough transition. I'm not a huge fan of change. I like sticking to what is familiar, even if it happens to be slightly clunkier.
I have been using DDG as my main search engine for a year or two now. it's really pretty good and I don't miss Google. If you want Google results without the tracking there's always startpage.com, which functions as a proxy to Google, but I find the DDG results to be just as good for most things and the presentation to be nicer. I do occasionally pop back to Google if an image search didn't turn up what I was looking for, but usually DDG's image search is fine.
Like o11c said: steve did you try using the !yt bang? Here's a whole list of the options available. It's nice feature of the site but I feel it is one that should almost be automatic based on your query. I've not used DDG for a while, I was a big fan when it came out but I found it was often lacking when trying to find solutions for a technical problem and while the privacy factor is a huge concern to me... I'm a total hypocrite and have Google™ Everything™ Always™ and access it from Microsoft™ Windows™ Spymaster-7™ so it never feels like it's worth making the switch.
It's like War said, they could remove anyone they want from society and have AI mimic their day-to-day activity and very few would bat an eye. Heck, my wife is also reliant on Google so they could remove whole family units and very few would notice. I wonder if they are going to start selling this as a service to the intelligence community...
Bangs allow for quick searching of other sites for example !g NASA will redirect you to the google search of NASA !tpb search's pirate bay For the full list
To submit a site to DUcjDuckGo, you need to provide a parameterised search URL that can be submitted (as a GET request I guess) For google you have : https://encrypted.google.com/search?q= what+is+hubski which you would submit to DDG as https://encrypted.google.com/search?q={{{s}}} I'm not 100% sure but I think they send a GET request. Hubski's search is a form that uses POST to https://hubski.com/x You can't submit that to DDG as far as I know. Perhaps one of the devs could make an end-point like hubski.com/search?q={{{s}}} that translates to a hubski internal POST search?