[personal profile] usernamenumber
So, ok, I like Google, I really do. I love gmail, and my social life would be non-existant (or, un-thinkably, even more chaotic) without gCal. Back in the day, I even wrote a lengthy defence (of sorts) of gMail against its critics, by which I still stand.

That said, competition is good, and while it's really cool when a company like Google can dominate a breadth of markets just by virtue of being so damn good at what they do, it also makes it all the more impressive when a little guy comes along and innovates in a way that lets it keep up.

Enter Duck Duck Go. They are part their own engine with their own crawler, and part an intelligence layer on top of results from a bunch of sources (including engines like Yahoo and Bing, results from which are included with attribution, and reference sites like Wikipedia and Wolfram Alpha) which does a really good job, in my experience, of sorting and presenting those results with a whole bunch of really clever interface goodies, like their !bang syntax, a "why hadn't I thought of that??"-incudingly simple mechanism for honing searches.

On top of all that, they only do search, which means there's no such thing as a Duck Duck Go account for data to be associated with. That, plus the fact that they do not record IP addresses means that your anonymous data really is anonymous. See their impressively extensive privacy page for more.

I added DDG to Firefox's search bar months ago, have been using it as my default engine since then, and have been very pleased with the results, so I'd encourage others to give them a try!

Date: 2011-02-19 01:28 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] srakkt.livejournal.com
I really like the Bang mechanism, but the specific token irritates me - I feel like if they're so down with *nix administration and shit, they should have chosen something else, rather than something that means the exact opposite of what they mean.

But it's seriously cool, and so I've got this cognitive dissonance going on now, and dammit! Augh. I need a cup of coffee.

Date: 2011-02-19 02:03 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] srakkt.livejournal.com
In fact, I've realized something more, upon caffeination. Basically DDG's Bang-syntax takes Konqueror's web-shortcuts feature and makes it into something that happens on the search engine page, rather than in the browser.

I'm not yet sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, it means that syntax is available to me even if I'm at somebody else's machine, but it does mean it's not strictly customizable. I'll have to weigh how I feel about that.

Date: 2011-02-19 01:38 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] endlessgame.livejournal.com
You explained this really well, may I link to your entry?

Date: 2011-02-19 02:54 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] usernamenumber.livejournal.com
Of course! Permission to link to any non-flocked post is always granted.

Date: 2011-02-19 03:07 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] usernamenumber.livejournal.com
Huh. The pingback bot says you've linked to it, but then it says the post isn't accessible. Odd.

Date: 2011-02-21 02:45 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] endlessgame.livejournal.com
Huh. Try again? Maybe there was a hiccup. (Also, pingback bot?)

Date: 2011-02-21 04:33 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] usernamenumber.livejournal.com
No idea where it came from, but see the comment after yours.

Date: 2011-02-21 12:09 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] endlessgame.livejournal.com
Er.. the one by wyldelf about Opera? (I can see 10 comments total, including this one I'm about to post)

Date: 2011-02-21 12:49 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] usernamenumber.livejournal.com
Ah! Apparently pingback comments are screened by default. See here for more information.
From: [identity profile] pingback-bot.livejournal.com
User [livejournal.com profile] endlessgame referenced to your post from Duck... Duck... Go! (LJ echo from [livejournal.com profile] usernamenumber) (http://endlessgame.livejournal.com/85128.html) saying: [...] Read this entry [...]

Date: 2011-02-19 07:27 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] wyldelf.livejournal.com
Thanks! Added it to Opera as defaults so we'll see how this goes.

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