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0 pointsczechdeveloper7y ago0 comments

It's feudalism, because you don't have a choice.

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6 comments · 1 top-level

pavel_lishin7y ago· 5 in thread

You have a choice, the choices are just worse.

I tried using DDG for a long time, but it's just _terrible_ for technical queries.

Not as good as google, but it still makes sense to make it (or something else) your default search engine for those 99% of times it actually works just fine.

pavel_lishin7y ago

But it doesn't work fine 99%. I tried to find a short story I read awhile ago, so I DDG'ed for "Berryman Parrot".

DDG helpfully suggests a bunch of unrelated videos - a Coldplay video, a Tyler, The Creator sketch from the Eric Andrew show, and something about a C-line fencing tool. The actual search results are vaguely related, since the first one is a youtube video about birds with someone named Berryman in the description. The next one is a bird rescue, and the third appears to be some sort of etsy shop.

Compare to Google. The first result is the Wikipedia entry for the exact story I was searching for. The second result is the full published story. The third is a related story set in the same universe. Google then shows me some image results, and bam, the second one is actually related to the short story!

Sorry, DDG. You just don't cut it for my needs.

1 more reply

andreareina7y ago

I use DDG as my main engine and I find that to be true. Unfortunately even Google's become pretty bad, I never know when it's going to ignore one word of my two-word query.

weberc27y ago

I often find DDG will even ignore quoted terms altogether. It was really good for a while, but it has gone downhill and now I need to open Google a few times a day.

czechdeveloperOP7y ago

I can replaces search, i use DDG as default, I have simple shortcut to google.

But I use gmail, google docs, Android with many google integrations. I could find alternatives, but really not as good. And mostly it would be just another company, where I'm not sure I can trust either.

Local and self-hosted options are just really not good enough. For example in MS Excel, I can't load actual currency tickers, or share it simply.

I also use Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter. If I don't I'll just have no voice.

I have my own web, but nobody goes there.

Open Internet is gone for me.

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