- To be honest, I didn't find DuckDuckGo's AI on the top of their search to be very good anyway compared to the one Google has. However can't say I have cared much as typically if I am searching I don't want an AI response, otherwise I'd just go straight to an AI chat interface in the first place.
by james2doyle
0 subcomment
- Maybe I’m a wierdo but I actually like the Brave version of their Search + AI solution: https://search.brave.com/ask
After switching between Perplexity, Phind, and a couple others, it seems like the best balance for my use.
You can always just use the regular Brave search. It does seem to include an AI summary by default, but you can turn that off: https://search.brave.com/settings#:~:text=Make%20AI%2Dpowere...
I find it is grounded in facts (based on the results) more and doesn’t typically make stuff up. I am usually using it for things I am more well versed in (web dev) so I have a baseline knowledge to draw from.
by MeetingsBrowser
0 subcomment
- DDG has been my daily driver for more than a decade now and I could not be more pleased.
Better privacy, good results, no drama, first search engine to include bangs, and its free!
- "Wait, we're getting an influx of new users, and they actively don't want us to run the most expensive part of our search results page?"
Where can I find such accommodating customers myself?
by bradley13
2 subcomments
- You have to ask: Why is Google pushing the AI results? You would think that this would impact their ad revenue. Since Google is fundamentally an ad company, this deserves a closer look.
My suspicion - for which I have no proof - is this: With search results, Google marks the ads. The marking has gotten ever more subtle over the years, but it's there. If you want to avoid clicking on ads, you can. With AI, Google wants to integrate ads seamlessly into the results. If you search for widgets, and Acme Corp. has paid Google enough, the AI summary will praise the virtues of Acme's widgets. And the user will have no idea that this is paid placement, instead of a summary of product reviews, etc..
- Kagi is still by far the best results for me, particularly for engineering content and worth every dollar.
DuckDuckGo results are even more frustrating than the currently-terrible version of Google for finding good information IMO.
- I've weirdly found that I like the Google AI mode in specific cases, and I find that the hybrid is the worst of the two worlds. There are some cases where I don't know exactly what I'm looking for and I want the AI to curate results. In other cases, I know what I'm looking for and I want to read the OG source.
The AI popup is the worst and will hallucinate answers from Reddit comments. I specifically had it ask me a nonsense question which was literally just someone's Reddit comment suggesting a follow-on topic B to the search topic A. The AI mode will _sometimes_ be useful enough to prompt into doing the search and summarization for me and get me just enough info and some links to continue the work myself.
- I think a lot of people aren't actually against AI itself. Personally I just want to choose when I need a chatbot and when I want a normal list of links. Over the last few years, that line has started getting pretty blurry
- Since google got as bad as bing, it doesn't matter anymore and ddg is fine (afaik still the main source). This is just a plus.
- Unfortunately DDG is still horrible for non-English results. As are most "smaller" search engines. I rotate through them every now and then to try. Is there a meta search engine that uses country specific engines depending on searches anyone can recommend?
- I've been using DDG for years and it's at least as good as Google for most general use. I still keep it set as the default search engine.
For some context sensitive searches where words overlap with more common topics I have a Kagi subscription.
by emaccumber
3 subcomments
- I switched to DDG search three months ago, and unfortunately it's much inferior to Google. Maybe I've subconsciously optimized my queries for Google these past 20 years and need to rethink how to query using DDG, though.
- I previously posted about DDG search results (not personalized, but as geolocated as they can)
> DuckDuckGo search results, seem to be based on either crude geolocation or recent movies of similar names, bizarrely, when I search for specific technical terms. I have to qualify searches with multiple negations to get anything of interest to someone with more than high school education and interests.
by marcosdumay
1 subcomments
- I would be way happier with the old site-specific excepts and no AI on the search results, but the AI page still a click away like it's today.
DDG today has two search options, IMO, both could get some improvement.
by mentalgear
0 subcomment
- Been using DDG now for years since I noticed a few years back already that its search results were at least equal, if not superior, to G00$le.
- My issue with DDG AI result is that sometimes I would accidentally hit the "more" button to expand the result and it would begin a painfully slow crawl of text that pushed the results I was actually interested in further and further down the page. It was usually preferable to refresh rather than wait. So this is a welcome change.
- "&udm=14" still works on google.
- DDG would be a lot better if lite.duckduckgo.com didn't automatically block anyone who looks deeper than 200 search results as a bot and then force a JS only challenge on the lite page (that crashes old browsers). I think this false positive could be solved by DDG lite returning more than 10 results per page.
by ghost_pepper
5 subcomments
- Anyone with experience know how DuckDuckGo compares to Kagi in terms of quality of search results?
- I personally switched to DDG months ago when Google opted me into AI search against my will.
- I don't liked this AI answers in the beginning, but now they are to handy and help to not scroll and choose website by website.
by shevy-java
0 subcomment
- So, Google killing off google search, is probably the number #1 reason for DuckDuckGo growing - that and how AI ruins everything now.
Unfortunately, whenever I used DuckDuckGo, the search results were also crap - and the User Interface was crap too. For some reason these web-searches suck, from A to Z, starting at the UI, but more importantly showing search "results" that are really qualitatively not good or inclusive. We already HAD good results - Google search used to be usable, then Google killed it off deliberately. Some inspiration Google appears to have taken from youtube, where you can search for "xyz", and it shows you "abc" instead after a while, which is horrible but not totally horrible as you may just watch another video. But for exact text search, copying that was stupid. Google ruined its search engine deliberately over several years, hoping that people will never notice it. And now we should use this crap AI garbage "search"? That is a privatized web. I refuse to help transition to private actors controlling the www. For similar reasons I do not use AMP and recommend everyone to not fall for the trap Google puts at you.
Either way, someone can hopefully tell the DuckDuckGo team to offer alternatives that do not suck in their search engine. (Qwant also sucks, by the way - they just copy/pasted Google's search UI; perhaps some people want it, I don't. I want oldschool search. Simple. Stay simple. Don't clutter the UI. Don't add garbage. Don't lie to the user. And so forth.)
- The logical business opportunity in the current LLM-boom is to create a bunch of AI-less services and products, and then charge money to access them.
Think of premium branding analogy: masses get cheap AI slop, wealthy get high quality human-curated and human-created produce. Like organic vs regular food.
by gattac_janitor
3 subcomments
- I switched to duckduckgo last week and i am really loving it. I tried their browser but I was getting a lot of 'this browswer is no longer supported messages'. I think I will try brave next.
by ChrisArchitect
0 subcomment
- Related:
DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48296649
- Does DuckDuckGo support -not_wanted_word syntax? I tried to use it with -shop or -pharmacy and it still gave me unwanted results
- Ironic to me as the only DDG thing I use anymore is their duck.ai service
by waynesonfire
0 subcomment
- very impressived with no LLM results. If I want LLM, I don't need to use a search engine to engange with it. That's a different product.
- > Since then, traffic to DuckDuckGo has been booming. Last week, the company noted that web visits to its no-AI search page were up nearly 30% week-over-week, and its U.S. app installs were also up 18.1% week-over-week, with U.S. iOS app installs peaking at 69.9% week-over-week growth.
Of course there are no absolute numbers or scale. This is just an advertisement for DuckDuckGo. It's gross that previously respected tech publications run this kind of slop for clicks
by nikhilpareek13
0 subcomment
- [flagged]
by chris_explicare
0 subcomment
- [dead]
- [flagged]
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