Duck Duck Google^WGoose!

Lately i've been taking a bit of time in my life to look at using other services than Google. Even if you still trust Google 100%, and don't get me wrong, i don't have anything against Google personally (well... not much), it's been a good experience. One of the hardest things to get away from though is Google's search. It's very easy to get in a habit of using it. It's everywhere, even on my phone. Google's worked very hard to make their search results very good. Even so, there's another search engine i've found that i quite like, Duck Duck Go.

Duck Duck Go is quite simple. It has a very clean layout, similar to the early days in Google, and it focuses on giving you some quick 'zero-click' meaning at the very top of the page. It also tries to sort links into topics that make sense to a human mind. More importantly, it's entirely anonymous, saves (almost) no private data, and is entirely accessible through SSL. (I've even provided the SSL link above.) This means that no one in between you and Duck Duck Go needs to know that you're looking for a new job, not even your current boss.

In 1997 when Google was started, it was fundamentally expensive for most people to start up a search engine that would provide meaningful results. Back in those prehistoric days powerful computers were expensive and so was the bandwidth. Nowadays, the chip in my phone is powerful enough to run a search engine, never mind the computer in my lap or my desktop at work. It's become much easier to democratise search; anyone can do it. In the days of Web 2.0, where anyone can put up a web page, Gabriel Weinberg, the creator of Duck Duck Go, wrote up a detailed blog post on how he uses commodity open source tools to put it together. You don't have to be a Google Engineer to do it.

Duck Duck Go is a pretty cool search engine to try out. It can be integrated into Firefox too, so you don't even know you're using it until you start searching. It's fast, it's simple, it provides you with good privacy from the start and is actually useful. It's even got a cool duck as a logo.

4 flames:

Stefan Hartsuiker zei

Have yoou looked at https://ixquick.com/ ?
It has much of the same features.

Yankee zei

Nope. Difficult choice now. :P

Anoniem zei

I've also been moving away from Google lately.

First I opened a Jabber account somemonths ago to stop using GoogleTalk, and now I'm in the process of dumping my GMail account as well.

Thanks for the link though, as I didn't have figure how to stop using Google search yet.

> and is entirely accessible through SSL. (I've even provided the SSL link above.) This means that no one in between you and Duck Duck Go needs to know that you're looking for a new job, not even your current boss.

My current boss will still know it : the proxy in our company does mitm for all SSL connections (and yes, Firefox says that every certificates on the Internet are invalid as a result). Courtesy of Zscaler.com.

But that's not a reason for not using Duck Duck Go anyway :)

Yankee zei

Ah, you'll never get passed that kind of issue at work anyways. The only other option is to build up your own private VPN and use that to go online at work.