duckduckgo.com seach engine, privacy first?

[BillBoard]

Anyone here using duckduckgo.com?

The giant that is Google has not stopped other companies from jumping into the Search Engine arena. Obviously emulating Google is not a winning strategy. Companies like Blekko and DuckDuckGo have realized this, and attempted to round out the Search Engine experience. DuckDuckGo’s current marketing strategy is aggressively taking on the G giants where it may hurt the most – privacy.

[Adeptus]

Re: duckduckgo.com seach engine, privacy first?

I use duckduckgo in 1 out of 200 searches. Mostly when I don't want Google's auto-localized search results, so, not so much because of privacy reasons, though I don't use a gmail account myself precisely because I don't trust google with all my life's affairs.

Google's brainy Phd's in the past few years have managed to make our searches more relevant by figuring out which city we live, past product purchases (and ad views, and and and....) thus optimizing search results for us. The downside is that when I search for "top 10 sports cars" I may get completely different results than somebody who performs the same search in another country. This thus results in the world wide Internet, really being more like a very large but localized network (depending on search parameters of course). Most of the time I find this useful. For example, I live in a city called "Victoria" in Canada. There's at least 3 or 4 other cities called Victoria around the world (Australia, UK, USA/Texas, etc). I still remember 5-7+ years ago, finding it really annoying that I kept getting search results for stuff out of Victoria, Australia. This still happens once in a blue moon, but far more rare now. So 99.5% of the time I mean to search for something local to me, but once in a while I really do care what the global answer to my query is, for that I now go to duckduckgo.

[shiny!]

Re: duckduckgo.com seach engine, privacy first?

Anyone here using duckduckgo.com?

All the time, either DuckDuckGo or Startpage. Startpage more when I need to see images, like today when I was looking for cabinet pulls. These search engines give fewer pages of results than Google, but usually do well enough for my needs and they aren't collecting data on me. The Startpage proxy server is useful sometimes. I'm using Google less and less, pretty much only when I need shopping results.

[*T*]

Re: duckduckgo.com seach engine, privacy first?

Quite ofte ddg, because i don't like getting bubbled.

[globaleconomicollaps]

Re: duckduckgo.com seach engine, privacy first?

Anyone here using duckduckgo.com?

I started using DuckDuckGo about 3 months ago. Here is an interesting factoid: When you arrive at a page from a google search, the words you searched for are sent along to that web site. I'm not sure what exact privacy invasion I am guarding against, but I have a feeling the US government is going to get my data no matter what search engine I use. If I prevent third party sites and advertisers from tracking me, I feel like I am doing about as well as is reasonably possible.

[c1ue]

Re: duckduckgo.com seach engine, privacy first?

Here is an interesting factoid: When you arrive at a page from a google search, the words you searched for are sent along to that web site. I'm not sure what exact privacy invasion I am guarding against, but I have a feeling the US government is going to get my data no matter what search engine I use. If I prevent third party sites and advertisers from tracking me, I feel like I am doing about as well as is reasonably possible.

This isn't unusual, and is because Google must be accountable for the advertisers who pay to have their ads show up on specific keywords.

What's much less amusing is how the search results you've employed, as well as web sites you've looked at, or even email, are used to populate the banner ads that Google also has on many web pages.

I've been seeing a pattern for over a year now where even an accidental click on a web site I would never normally go to, said web site suddenly starts showing up all over completely random other web site's Google ads.

This is just plain insulting my intelligence.

Given this, I think duckduckgo is probably where I'll shift my search results to.

[Prazak]

Re: duckduckgo.com seach engine, privacy first?

I only use google for location-based searches that I don't mind having recorded to the profile of me that Google and third parties sell onward. Otherwise it's DuckDuckGo, which is set up as my homepage for faster search access. Read this and you may well become a believer: http://donttrack.us/

[BillBoard]

Re: duckduckgo.com seach engine, privacy first?

I only use google for location-based searches that I don't mind having recorded to the profile of me that Google and third parties sell onward. Otherwise it's DuckDuckGo, which is set up as my homepage for faster search access. Read this and you may well become a believer: http://donttrack.us/

Damn, that is pretty scary.

[Prazak]

Re: duckduckgo.com seach engine, privacy first?

Dump google: http://5by5.tv/mpu/77

[FrankL]

Re: duckduckgo.com seach engine, privacy first?

Nowadays DuckDuckGo get used only once in a while on my PC. When I first heard of it, I was trying to fully replace Google with it. In the end, I gave up, because the search results were just a lot worse in quality compared to Google (for me).

I really want to give it another go (to check if it has improved), or even better switch to a distributed open search engine that doesn't keep a search history at all.

Using the Internet is always going to be some sort of trade-off between allowing others to get hold of your data and obtaining what you want/need. I'm reasonably privacy concious: I use a private email server that I host on a private cloud instance, I use my private DNS resolver, I've switched from hosting my pictures on Google picasa to hosting them on my private webserver, I do not use Facebook or other social networks, etc.

The thing is, that these trade-offs come at an expense: often the free equivalents that you can host yourself are less convenient in their usage, lack features and require IT skills, time and effort to host yourself. Further more, not using stuff like social networks turn you into a certain degree of 'digital hermit' . Not that I care much, because I talk to my friends and family mostly through email, phone or in real life; and I intend like to keep it that way.