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DuckDuckGo

arthwollipot said:
Quick straw poll: who here still goes to a particular page in order to do a search, rather than just searching from the address bar?
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Me. Duckduckgo is my home page, portal on to the internet, and in primary position on my bookmarks bar. Using that means I can be certain I am not using Google.
 
MikeG said:
Me. Duckduckgo is my home page, portal on to the internet, and in primary position on my bookmarks bar. Using that means I can be certain I am not using Google.
Click to expand...
Did you know that you can change the default search engine in any browser?
 
In my experience, the problem is that Google has the best search engine. It delivers the most relevant results for me. I like using DuckDuckGo, and I generally dislike Google as a company, but sometimes I get impatient or frustrated and go to Google.

One big issue for me is that DDG doesn't date their search results, which definitely slows me down. I hate it when Google fetches a ten year old article for a technical question I have, but at least I know it's old before I bother clicking it - most of the time anyways.

I thought DDG used Google's engine but without the tracking etc? Or maybe another one uses Google. Can't recall.

For images, Google is best for me and I almost always go straight to it for that.
 
arthwollipot said:
Quick straw poll: who here still goes to a particular page in order to do a search, rather than just searching from the address bar?
Click to expand...

Address bar. And Google as the default. But I don't worry about the tracking since I login as Trebuchet.
 
I've used DDG for maybe three years and like it.

I agree that Google shows more results, and sometimes, I use it. Can't say they are always better results, however.

To answer the question arthwollipot asked, I generally don't use the address bar. The reason is that I'm putting something in the search box that I will look for later.
 
This thread has caused me to use DDG. I reckon it's okay. I can still direct searches to Google in Firefox, so I use both until I find what I need.

Neat.
 
Perhaps I wasn't clear. I might copy and paste something into the address bar and leave it there while I continue reading where I was. Then later, I will open a new tab and search.

At the moment, "dual clutch" is in the search box because I was reading something on a car website. I meant to check it out, but got distracted. Now that I have answered you, I'll go look for the explanation of dual clutch.

To directly answer your question, yes the Firefox address bar remembers past searches. But my personal "browser style" is not compatible that feature.
 
xterra said:
Perhaps I wasn't clear. I might copy and paste something into the address bar and leave it there while I continue reading where I was. Then later, I will open a new tab and search.

At the moment, "dual clutch" is in the search box because I was reading something on a car website. I meant to check it out, but got distracted. Now that I have answered you, I'll go look for the explanation of dual clutch.

To directly answer your question, yes the Firefox address bar remembers past searches. But my personal "browser style" is not compatible that feature.
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Huh. Okay, that's interesting. When that happens to me, I open a new tab straight away, do the search, go back to what I was reading and then look at the search results later.

Like I said earlier, I'm asking for curiosity, not to suggest that you should do anything different. What works for you works for you.
 
mgidm86 said:
In my experience, the problem is that Google has the best search engine. It delivers the most relevant results for me. I like using DuckDuckGo, and I generally dislike Google as a company, but sometimes I get impatient or frustrated and go to Google.

One big issue for me is that DDG doesn't date their search results, which definitely slows me down. I hate it when Google fetches a ten year old article for a technical question I have, but at least I know it's old before I bother clicking it - most of the time anyways.

I thought DDG used Google's engine but without the tracking etc? Or maybe another one uses Google. Can't recall.
For images, Google is best for me and I almost always go straight to it for that.
Click to expand...

That's Ixquick or Startpage. They are proxys who submit your search to Google anonymously, so Google never sees your IP address, and does not track, bubble or filter your results.
 
Blue Mountain said:
I try to keep as low a profile as I can when browsing the web. I do this by runing FIrefox with some add-ons, notably NoScript, Facebook Disconnect, Google Disconnect, and Twitter Disconnect. I also have the MVPS HOSTS file (you can GoogleDuckDuckGo it for details.)
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This merely leaves Windows 10, reporting all sites you visit (they control the Internet connection) and every keystroke and occasional screen capture back to Microsoft for analysis for targeted advertising.

There was just a report about their Enterprise version, which was released in response to corporate and government demands for no spying, and it turns out there are over 100 unreported settings you need to change to disable most of it, and there's still some stuff you cannot turn off.

Home and basic corporate versions, forget it. You don't even get access to most of those switches, by design, because that's how Microsoft views itself as earning money in the future. It's why Windows 10 was given out for free to anyone who already had Windows.


Congratulations, 1984 is here. Well, maybe not, because the government isn't monitoring it. Unless they are because of a national security letter to Microsoft, or Microsoft was cowed into providing a secret room, or a telecom company was, as was actually done previously, or they just have their own servers sitting in judicious places and can tap into the stuff Microsoft is reporting to itself. Or they just subscribe to Microsoft's targeted advertising then use AI to fingerprint you over the sites you visit so as to reconstruct who you are.
 
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Beerina said:
This merely leaves Windows 10, reporting all sites you visit (they control the Internet connection) and every keystroke and occasional screen capture back to Microsoft for analysis for targeted advertising.

There was just a report about their Enterprise version, which was released in response to corporate and government demands for no spying, and it turns out there are over 100 unreported settings you need to change to disable most of it, and there's still some stuff you cannot turn off.

Home and basic corporate versions, forget it. You don't even get access to most of those switches, by design, because that's how Microsoft views itself as earning money in the future. It's why Windows 10 was given out for free to anyone who already had Windows.


Congratulations, 1984 is here. Well, maybe not, because the government isn't monitoring it. Unless they are because of a national security letter to Microsoft, or Microsoft was cowed into providing a secret room, or a telecom company was, as was actually done previously, or they just have their own servers sitting in judicious places and can tap into the stuff Microsoft is reporting to itself. Or they just subscribe to Microsoft's targeted advertising then use AI to fingerprint you over the sites you visit so as to reconstruct who you are.
Click to expand...

Which is why I run Linux, and have been doing so for years.
 
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Beerina said:
Congratulations, 1984 is here. Well, maybe not, because the government isn't monitoring it. Unless they are because of a national security letter to Microsoft, or Microsoft was cowed into providing a secret room, or a telecom company was, as was actually done previously, or they just have their own servers sitting in judicious places and can tap into the stuff Microsoft is reporting to itself. Or they just subscribe to Microsoft's targeted advertising then use AI to fingerprint you over the sites you visit so as to reconstruct who you are.
Click to expand...


That's what they are doing, and they (Clapper) have the audacity to claim that collecting everything isn't monitoring, because nobody is looking at it (until they choose to do so for any of a variety of reasons).
 
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