Get our Latest Finds
Subscribe to our RSS feed or enter your email address below to get the feed delivered to you by email:
Follow Gizmo
Using this Site
Top Rated
Gizmo's Freeware is Recruiting
We are currently looking for people with skills and/or interest in the following areas:
- Anonymous Surfing Service
- Mobile Apps contributors
- Mac Section contributors
If this sounds like you then click here for more details
Could This New Search Engine Be A Real Rival To Google?
There was, believe it or not, a time when Google didn't rule supreme in the realm of internet search. One of the early players was Lycos. Then the world discovered Altavista, and everyone ditched Lycos. Then the world discovered Google, and everyone ditched Altavista. And as both Lycos and Altavista discovered, once someone has set their browser home page to a different search engine, there's very little you can do to win them back.
And it's not just search engines where people-power rules, of course. Remember how Second Life was going to be the next big thing, where we'd all communicate in a social networking sort of fashion?
I've recently been trying out a new (ish) search engine. It has the rather stupid name of Duck Duck Go, and you can find it at www.duckduckgo.com or www.ddg.gg. It works just like any other search engine, and seems to find what I'm looking for without too many problems. Its results screen is certainly less cluttered than Google's, and DDG claims not to invade your privacy by storing your search history.
Have I switched my home page from Google? Not yet, but I'm seriously considering doing so.
- Article type:
Printer-friendly version
Comments
I just switched over to DuckDuckGo as my default search engine due to Google's new tracking consolidation policy effective March 2012. I was surprised by DuckDuckGo's explanation of bubble filtering for searches by Google (and probably other big name search engines). Duck has a much cleaner design and I'm liking their policies.
Cancelled my Google + account and spent a fair amount of time tweaking my Google Dashboard to opt out of everything and changed all my info to bogus text. I'll be using different browsers for most Google services specifically YouTube. My default browser has been IRON portable for the last few years.
I really got tired of Google's announcements, invites and requests to join Google+ and other Google services. They changed their News page last year and now are changing G Mail's appearance (which I can't stand)
Z.
Yup. After my sordid love affair with Google as primary search engine/home base, I'm afraid that the love once felt is dismally gone. Befuddled, scratching the head in wonder of what went wrong with Google, I muttered, "What to Duck?!!" Then I remembered a search engine whose name "Quacked me up"...Duck Duck Go...or, as I refer to it affectionately, DDG.
DDG is now the waters I call home.
Crying no 'fowl',
RS
Your own thoughts mirror my own reasons for switching to "The Beak" :D
Since changing to Duck I now enjoy the search results I've asked for, rather than those someone else thinks I should see.
Using DuckDuckGo for a week and liking it very much. Just find the settings that work for you.
Yes. I use Ixquick, which does not record your IP address and does not share your personal information. It is great!
Looking at the comments here, I'm certainly going to try this.
I'll try it but right now i'm using Ecosia http://www.ecosia.org/ simply because they'r not as greedy. They use Bing or Yahoo to get money and i guess the search results too.
I only use Google when i don't find what i want on Ecosia and even then i use the google minimalist extension on firefox so no crap, just my search.
I don't perticularly like it...
I mean, it's basically a clone of google. I rather value a unique look so something trying to piggy back off of google's design doesn't go very far in my books.
Plus I really don't mind google tracking me, it's at least better than what other sites/companies do to track me (facebook/government :D)
I'm not sure I understand how it's piggy backing anyone with so many options to choose from in the settings. I only changed a couple of mine and it looks nothing like Google.
http://duckduckgo.com/settings.html
After using this for a couple of days I'm impressed :)
I disabled the safe search default for site use and enabled WOT ratings from the settings options. It's just a pleasure to see search results without all that extraneous fluff attached.
I had tried this before and did not like it much, but after seeing your post MC, I went in and changed a number of settings and found it to be much better.
There is a firefox addon for the https
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/duck-duck-go-ssl-search-p...
And I think it would be better if the link here was to the https search
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=i
Glad you're linking it second time around. It's now been a full week for me and I don't miss Google one bit. I have on a couple of occasions entered the same query into a Google search just to see if I was missing anything and the answer was no. It's just great to see the uncluttered results I asked for and nothing else.
I'm aware of most things attached to marketing requirements but even so I'm not so sure the chosen name is doing them many favors.
That said they're unlikely to change it so we'll just have to live with it. Funnily enough though, I remember a lot of folks saying the same thing when a new service called Google first came out :D
I just took a look at wikipedia on DDG. Name is somewhat derived from Duck Duck Goose. I agree it seems not to be the best alternative-but as you say-Google and add Yahoo (my two examples of why domain names are not that valuable unless they already have traffic).
One feature I like is the exclusion of eHow articles (and other such sites), which are primarily junk designed to rank high in Google. This is nice for me when I am searching for new pages for my book pages here as it eliminates a large amount of junk entries in the search.
Apparently DDG filters out pages with high advertising.
One can also opt for anonymous searching. When you click on a link, it is routed through TOR.
Me too. Adios Google:)
Still upset with Google for removing "search within results". Also still looking for Google's replacement and happened upon Yandex.com.
Clearly not cutting edge quality but does offer SWR as I hope other engines will.
I hope more search engines adopt Duck Duck Go's privacy policy! Google has become way too big-brotherish! I've been using Scroogle.org. which is ad free scraper of Google's search results. It doesn't have the advanced options but the results are Google's sans tracking and it works pretty good as a verb too!
=}~
Don't think it can beat google.It is just a compination of yahoo and bing search engine.
Apparently it's a combination of Yahoo and Bing, with rubbish (such as sites which contain nothing but ads) thrown out. Seems to work, too.
But if it overtook Google, how would it work as a verb? "I duck'ed it!" "Maybe I should go duck myself"
=P
LMAO! Yes a very poorly thought out name.
Hmm, I tried a bit of ego surfing. My 'professional signature' name gets about 3,760 results on Google and just 12 on DDG. Is that a good or a bad thing? I don't know... Ask the shrinks ;-)
And there is Ixquick.
Post new comment