John Carlos BaezOct 4, 2023

NOTE: I quoted a report from an executive of DuckDuckGo attending the antitrust lawsuit against Google. This article has now been retracted from Wired:

"After careful review of the op-ed, "How Google Alters Search Queries to Get at Your Wallet," and relevant material provided to us following its publication, WIRED editorial leadership has determined that the story does not meet our editorial standards. It has been removed."

I hope we'll learn more about what Google actually does, since September 28, the court established a process allowing the Justice Department to publish more information about this case.

https://www.wired.com/story/google-antitrust-lawsuit-search-results/

A Note From WIRED Leadership

WIRED
Show threadMartin EscardoOct 4, 2023

@johncarlosbaez

I moved to DuckDuckGo a while ago, not for ideological reasons, but simply because it gives me, more often, what I am looking for.

One day I complained loudly at home that I was searching for maths related things, but was getting adverts for socks, and my young son demonstrated to me that DuckDuckGo gave me what I wanted.

Show threadJohn Carlos Baez
@MartinEscardo - At first I felt DuckDuckGo wasn't as good as Google. But since Google keeps getting worse I've switched to DuckDuckGo.
Oct 4, 2023 at 9:06pmWeb
Show threadBill RickerOct 4, 2023

@johncarlosbaez @MartinEscardo

At first, DDG was NOT as good as Google.
DDG has gotten less bad,
and Google has gotten worse.

I still miss AltaVista.
I got a hint of why it was so good so early (besides trusting its remote users with professional document-retrieval power) from <Computerphile>
"How Bzip2 Works (Burrows Wheeler Transform)"
https://youtu.be/GYbCttCF25A?si=rXo22ZcvQpBINt8m

How Bzip2 Works (Burrows Wheeler Transform) - Computerphile

YouTube
Show threadJonathan SchofieldOct 5, 2023
@BRicker @johncarlosbaez @MartinEscardo I had this thought a few days ago https://mastodon.social/@urlyman/111161873042582109
Show threadBill RickerOct 5, 2023
@urlyman @johncarlosbaez @MartinEscardo
Well, human-curated and AltaVista are radically different.
But more to the point, scaling without sponsorship of some sort is hard.
Maybe combining censor-proof distributed storage model with the Screensaver distributed processing model?
Show threadTortipedeOct 5, 2023
@BRicker @johncarlosbaez @MartinEscardo I used to like its proximity operator. I also miss the days when you could, for example, search for "Kosov@" (a deliberate compromise between Albanian & Serbian spellings) and have search engines just do what they were told to.
Show threadBill RickerOct 5, 2023
@tortipede @johncarlosbaez @MartinEscardo
Excellent examples of what we've lost.
Show threadJames WoodOct 5, 2023
@johncarlosbaez @MartinEscardo I've used DuckDuckGo for a while now, but I don't entirely trust it to stay good. I've seen adverts around for DuckDuckGo Browser, which strikes me as a land-grab rather than a worthwhile project (given that Firefox is already a perfectly acceptable browser, once you change the default search engine). It also promotes this weird conflation of browser and search engine that a lot of people seem to have picked up recently.
Show threadDaniel SchildtOct 8, 2023
@mudri @johncarlosbaez @MartinEscardo Windows version of DuckDuckGo Browser is built on top of "Microsoft Edge WebView2" https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/webview2/ library. Essentially it is a somewhat minimalistic UI wrapper with ads filtering, but I don't quite understand why it's so slow (when compared to other browsers).
Microsoft Edge WebView2 | Microsoft Edge Developer

Show threadApostolisOct 5, 2023

@johncarlosbaez

For me google is better. I use duckduckgo too, but I have to switch to google on many ocassions.

I have the same experience with google, searching for a subject, and getting a similar subject which happens to be a product I can buy.