>DuckDuckGo’s search results are something between worse to terrible

I would like someone to make some objective research on that.

My experience is the reverse, so I strongly suspect our reticence is just one of changing our habit more than an real thing.

I switched to DDG years ago and it took a few weeks to wean out the tendency to compare searches, usually brought on by the fear of missing out something.

I very rarely have to resort to a !g search and usually if I can't find it on DDG, I won't easily find it on google either.

I don't feel like missing out on anything and I always find what I need (and if I don't, I can't find it in other searches either).

Other platforms have some strength in some area, like Bing and Google have more tools for image searches, and it's possible that one of these is better than the others at some specific domain, like research papers or patent searches.

But after switching to DDG, all these options are still available and -at least in my case- 99%+ of my needs are met with it.

I found it varies. When I don't find something with DDG, I use !g to switch to Google. Google often finds it.

But the reverse is true too. DDG is now my default, but before, when Google didn't find something, I'd switch to DDG.

There is an implicit learning curve switching search engines. The way one crafts searches differs in subtle ways I don't understand on a conscious level.

> DuckDuckGo’s search results are something between worse to terrible and I’m not sure they can do much better without collecting more data

Last I checked, DDG's search results are just Bing (aside from the infobox-type stuff which is from their own data sources), and Bing does collect data from Microsoft's browsers and toolbars https://www.wired.com/2011/02/bing-copies-google/

A year ago, after becoming fed up with my dad clicking financial scam ads, I switched his search to DDG. Thus far, he hasn't noticed.

Google results aren't much better, I feel that nowadays, if I want to find anything relevant, I need to use site:, and most often than not, it'll be either stackoverflow, reddit and some other french sites. Anything else is either spam/sales or ebay "proxys".

It's scary how the web feels much more narrower.

my experience (sample size < 5) is that people that use Google with an adblocker have a very nice experience and don't have an adblocker have a miserable experience.

I use DDG on all my devices, and my experience was very good. I fallback to Google in, perhaps, 1% of cases.

I've been using DDG for years now and the results are entirely adequate. There are some niches where Google still delivers better results but I need them no more than once a month, sometimes even less than that. I guess it depends on which part of the data set you're hitting...

I’ve been using DuckDuckGo as my default search engine on all devices for years. I’ve never had a problem finding what I’m looking for and have never felt the need to use a different search engine to get different results. YMMV.

DDG search has been much better for me than google and has been for a few years. Google search has become a complete disaster. I'm curious about what you mean by DDG being so much worse.

That sounds like a cartel to me.

The tide has shifted this year and ddg is returning better results

DDG is so much better than Google for me.

I think a lot of people overestimate how easy it is to make a search engine, and underestimate how hard it is to sell search to advertisers.

I think this is closer to a 50B problem than a 1B problem. Not impossible, but I don’t know anyone who has 50B that they would want to spend fighting uphill to kill google.

Google Maps has a better data collection method (bugging their userbase to collect data for them, encouraging users to collect even more as Google Scouts) and also the dataset of Waze, while Apple has a much more laborious process where an Apple Contractor (initially in Austin or Cupertino) modifies points of interest, business hours, road alignments, etc manually.

Apple started to ship this operation over to India 5ish years ago, and their contractors over there produce much worse results as they are not hiring professional geographers with degrees like they did stateside.

Perhaps, but I think it's marginal in practice. Whether MSFT makes an internally accounted 10% margin or 10% loss on their $8bn in revenue, Apple collect >$8bn which is entirely profit.

Cooperating and accepting a slice of Google's monopoly profits is far more profitable that competing would be, in all but the most bullish scenarios.

IE, MSFT would need to be outright challenging Google's 1st place position in search marketing to have a hope of earning more than Apple do by doing nothing, spending nothing, investing nothing and taking no risks.

Also, what would it take for MSFT to compete with Google in earnest? For one thing, Microsoft would need to outbid Google for such deals. They'd need to pay Apple, Telcos, and such more than Google do now.