this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2023
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DuckDuckGo CEO says Google kills competition through phone deals that make it hard for users to switch search engines (fortune.com)
submitted 11 months ago by celmit@lemmy.ca to c/technology@lemmy.ml
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[–] red@sopuli.xyz 0 points 11 months ago (3 children)

DuckDuckGo CEO apparently is just another CEO. I've been an early adopter that's been using their search engine long before there were apps or a browser.

What's stopping people from using DDG isn't switching to DDG, it's getting absolutely dogshit results 90% of time. As an advanced user I know I can prefix my search with "!g phrase" to use Google instead of DDG. The sad fact is that despite the ad-ridden result page and tracking, Google is still lightyears ahead in providing relevant, and especially timely results for a user that is both tech-savvy and critical.

They need to improve their product, users will follow a good adfree search engine, that's a given. Only a fraction of users will put up with degraded results in order to search without tracking.

I sincerely hope they will get their tech up to par. And that their browser on mobile reaches feature parity soon. (as a Z Fold user, DDG browser doesn't have tabs. Brave, Vivaldi and Firefox does).

The new kid on the block needs humility and good tech, not shittalk. Fuck that CEO,. he's undermining something very promising and important.

[–] Mikina@programming.dev 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I've switched to DDG almost a year ago, and I never had issues with my search results. Quite the contrary, every time I tried using !g because I simply wasn't finding an answer, the Google was ad-ridden bullshit full of promoted pages without relevance to what I was looking for.

I guess I'm just used to DDG quality of results, but I never felt like it's as bad as you say.

[–] owf@feddit.de 0 points 11 months ago

That depends very heavily on what your searching for.

If you're a programmer or similar, like the poster you're replying to appears to be, then you absolutely will find DDG crap compared to Google.

I use DDG as my primary search engine, but if I have a tech question, I usually skip it and go straight to Google.

[–] PP_BOY_@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I've never had a problem with DDGs search results that simply rephrasing my query didn't solve. What are you all searching for that Google's results are "light-years ahead" of DuckDuckGo's? (Honest question)

[–] sonnenzeit@feddit.de 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

In my recent experience Google still delivers better results for tech troubleshooting queries. "linux drivers for acer e15 card reader" at least points me to some semi-relevant pages on Google that could lead to a solution or more ideas where to look while ddg throws a lot of generic stuff that is only faintly related.

[–] xtapa@feddit.de 0 points 11 months ago

I made the switch a week ago. For two days at work, I always used Google, DDG and ecosia(uses bing) at the same time to compare the results. They are the same most of the time for the first 10 to 20 results. There's sometimes a blogpost that one engine shows that the other doesn't, but that post never made a difference.

When DDG does not get me helpful results, I can still ask Google to help out.

[–] kamen@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

He's probably right, but from what I see, the reality is that like 95% of people simply don't care, and the rest will find an alternative.

[–] owf@feddit.de 0 points 11 months ago

Thing is, Google is also (still) just better.

I use DDG as my primary search engine, but I find myself repeating searches with Google so often, I wrote a userscript to add a "Search with Google" link to the top of the DDG search results.

[–] AfricanExpansionist@lemmy.ml 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Maybe if they made DDG give better results, I wouldn't use Google quite as much

[–] sic_1@feddit.de 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

DDG does have better results than Google. I've not used the latter for years and was surprised by the bad quality of results when I used it once accidentally last week.

[–] polle@feddit.de 0 points 11 months ago

Exactly my thoughts as well. You need enable your country, though.

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

But Weinberg testified that getting users to switch from Google was complicated, requiring as many as 30 to 50 steps to change defaults on all their devices, whereas the process could be shortened to just one click on each device.

Full disclosure, been using Duck Duck Go for a while but...

30 to 50 steps? On a Samsung it's one click from the address bar to select a search engine and then another to select Duck, Google, yahoo, or bing.

The way it's worded they're adding steps for like 10 devices together.

And for it to be a single click, all the options would have to display every time you click the address bar, which would make it look like a 90s web browser.

I'm all about Duck, but that reeks of bullshit because they know most politicians don't know as much about the internet as a 9 year old does.

[–] IzzyData@lemmy.ml 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That does seem like an exaggeration, but there is truth in the power of defaults for the mainstream audience.

[–] lustrum@sh.itjust.works 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Pixel phones it's harder:

Change fucking launcher... The google bar is always there, cannot be removed and it's always google.

[–] passepartout@feddit.de 0 points 11 months ago

This fucks me up to no end. I love this phone but that fucking search bar made me switch the launcher. I also love the Pixel launcher (if it wasn't for that search bar), so I run the alpha release of Lawnchair. Problem is, there is no proper release bc there is not enough manpower to develop it.