this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2025
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Not because DDG got better, but just because google got worse.

google is still better for site-specific searches, and google scholar still has minimal AI slop

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I really agree Google just took themself out of the market. I wouldn't be surprised if they dropped their "search" product completely, the way they've dropped a lot of other good products along the way.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

I've never forgiven them for getting rid of their search within results, that was brilliant

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Definitely not; DDG has always been bad. However, as others have pointed out, Google is getting worse and every day. That said, it's still better than DDG, which isn't saying much.

There are no good search engines anymore. I got tired of having to add site:reddit.com to all or my searches to get actual answers, so now I've resorted to using AI and pretending that it isn't just making up half the shit it spews. Perplexity is a half decent replacement for a search engine; it's more accurate than most and it cites its sources:

https://lemmy.world/post/26764870

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Duckduckgo mostly uses Bing for its search results. It also uses yahoo, yandex, and it's own crawler, but for the most part you're getting Bing.

So what you really want to know is if Bing is just as good as Google. If you think it is, you should definitely use ddg because they're the least intrusive.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago

It's much better than Bing.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago

I really tried, I set duckduckgo as the default for my second browser (I use it a lot) to slowly get used to it, but every time results are so bad I get mad and switch to Google especially for images

[–] [email protected] 40 points 2 days ago (7 children)

I’ve been using DDG exclusively for something like 8 years. It works great for regular text search and I use bing for image searches. I really don’t understand the reluctance of people to switch to it. To me, Google has been borderline unusable garbage for a long time.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

I use Yandex for finding pirated or otherwise censored content.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

yeah honestly I've been using ddg for a very long time and while a few years ago I had to frequently !g because search sucked now google got so enshittified many times ddg feels better

[–] shaggyb 8 points 1 day ago (4 children)

I can turn off the horseshit firehose that we call AI, making it far better than google

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[–] Alpha71 1 points 1 day ago
[–] [email protected] 59 points 2 days ago (5 children)

Not really. If you focus purely on just searching, yeah DDG is decent. But, I find its maps inferior and trying to find answers to some questions can get tedious. DDG I guess is just for people who want guilt-free searching.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 days ago (1 children)

ddg maps is just a no-frills apple maps.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 days ago (5 children)
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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

What do people use google scholar for? Use jstor and other specific databases like arxiv

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Google just got worse.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 days ago (7 children)

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

...........Oh, sorry.

Hell no. If anything, it's gotten worse.

In their defense, however, it's probably largely not their fault. In my admittedly one-person-sample-size experience, 90% of the searchable Web is either Reddit threads or articles, and with Reddit going officially with Google (meaning DDG doesn't catch as many Reddit threads as they used to), that leaves most of the searchable Web being articles. Because SEO has to ruin everything.

So, it's not really that DDG is shitty (mostly), but that all searches are shitty. Though, with the whole Google-and-Reddit thing, I find Google's results are noticeably less shitty (though still shitty).

[–] untorquer 3 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I feel the same except Google is worse due to higher number of ads in results and most SEO prioritizes Google over Bing meaning more Google results are AI spam articles.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yeah I really tried with DDG, switched my phone to it for 2 months. I was using !g so often it made the whole thing pointless.

Google sucks, but right now nothing is better. This is why they’re able to push their AI bullshit results so heavily, because just like with YouTube, ultimately there is no real competition.

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[–] Squizzy 4 points 1 day ago

DDG sold out, very focused "bubble" results that they initally railed against.

[–] JackLSauce 24 points 2 days ago (2 children)

"just as good"? No, I feel it is (and has been for years) vastly superior but I mostly use it to find documentation or Stack Overflow answers so consistent UI and concise summaries are high priority to me. Take that as you will

I don't think anybody can dethrone Google Maps yet but that's another story

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Have been using it for 8 years now. I never felt the need to switch back honestly. Only Google thing I really love is Maps and that's it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

Gnome Maps is honestly really good!
Not everything has to be inside your browser.

[–] lucg 3 points 1 day ago

Tried OpenStreetMap? Quality varies by country though

[–] ceenote 21 points 2 days ago (6 children)

My thought always was that DDG was good to set as my default, and if I'm not happy with the results then it's not a big deal to use Google once in awhile.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

I switched to it a couple of years ago, with the expectation that I had to resort to google in more complex search instances. But very soon I found out that ddg did the job, and my "alternative" google searches did not turn up anything better, quite the contrary in fact, and I haven't been back since.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 days ago (3 children)

i switched from DDG to ecosia because of Lemmy and i gotta say it's even better

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[–] dojan 10 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Google is mostly adverts. Wouldn’t take much to be better than that.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago

I just realized the other day that I haven't typed !g in months.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Google kind of went downhill

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

Kind of? It went Paul Rudd in Mac and Me.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 days ago (1 children)

DDG does the job. Hopefully, I won't have to switch engines soon.

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