Searching for things is way too general and important, and I wouldn’t want to miss anything about that, so, I don’t see the value people sacrifice Google’s results for. I shouldn’t narrow down the results I will be getting when I want to find something, for privacy reasons, so I never understood how people can stand using DDG in 2024, the century of information and knowledge. The only useful reason why your data is collected, getting good results for what you’re looking for based on who you are and where you are, let it be. I think it’s the wrong decision not to want to use such a technology. Let your data to be used to get better results, don’t cease the opportunities you have to be 100% private. You can’t find shit if you stay anonymous. As I said, you find what you’re looking for when the search engine gets to know you, but on the other side, you get the same results everyone gets. That wouldn’t help you.
This. Also, people never seem to remember that in order to exist as a business, you need this thing called “revenue”. When you get to be as large as a DDG-sized tech company, Patreon “Buy me a coffee” badge donations don’t cut it. They have to diversify and develop multiple revenue streams in order to keep the lights on. They do it with privacy in mind and never as a second-thought, but the sausage has to get made somehow or we’re all SOL. In this case, the sausage comes from the things OP thinks are frivolous, like the massive AI boom right now.
Google search results seem increasingly aimed at selling stuff rather than answers and info.
The “quick answers” on other providers are often wrong. I don’t use DDG since they’re objectively worse in every possible situation, but not providing “Quick Answers” means you have a chance to not take what the engine THINKS is the right answer (and is often wrong), and instead you go get the correct answer and surrounding context by doing the research you want.
You shouldn’t be told the answer by a search engine. You should be told where to go for the answer.
Edit: Oops. I just used DDG and… It literally has Quick Answers. That sucks.
I would say that currently all search engines have a certain difficulty due to AI content.
Worst excuse I’ve ever heard. Literally just rank down SEO websites and bring up human websites like Reddit, StackOverflow, forums, etc… These are pretty much guaranteed to be human content.
It’s that literally easy, just rank down articles. Even if they’re not AI-generated, they’re simply driven by profit and are useless by design and easily detectable.
AI does not know facts. Do not rely on it providing factual information.
DDG got 50 million so Google could train their AI on Reddit posts. IMO id rather they train it here than on most of the internet. Plus, most of AI is a well funded nothingburger.
will be 9bn soon enough!
I think it’s a great way to use AI if nothing else. Rather chat there without login than tie loads if personal information in with any needed account elsewhere.
You need this thing called “product quality” for people to stay on your platform and give you a revenue stream at all.
DDG has nothing to show for it and their only marketing is “privacy”. Everyone advertises “privacy” as product, including Google.
Except Google has better search results. The only reason I use DDG is literally just the feature set. It’s fully keyboard-controllable (with vim keybindings btw), I can easily switch between local and global results, the UI is cleaner, bangs,…
But once it becomes completely useless what’s the point? Nobody is gonna give DDG money just out of politeness.
Yup, because it is trained the data which is already available in market. No unique. That’s the issue.
Why DDG got paid in this deal? Does this have anything to do with the fact that Google is being accused by the US government?
When did I say that? Google isnt helpless to stop it at all. They just have absolutely no motivation to fix thier broken search engine and every motivation in the world to turn search into a linkfarm populated with thier own properties.
DDG knows who you are, what you search for, and easily ties that back to your AI chats. You can use other “AIs” for free, without an account, and get the same if not better privacy.
Oh I get that, I wasn’t trying to white knight for their vastly superior quality. They are saddled with Bing as the actual engine and all the band-aids in the world couldn’t keep you from being Mid-Tier For Life and always runner-up in the search result wars. But since I don’t subscribe to the DDG OnlyFans or their Patreon and don’t mail them cashier checks to keep them afloat, they gotta make their bag somehow. The unfortunate part of being a corporation with morals is you have to wade into the very pool of muck that you, at least in part, are diametrically opposed to wading in as a main tenant of your business model. Profiteering and finding as many channels of revenue as possible while trying not to sell your soul in the process.