It looks absolutely beautiful! That really puts the interface of the Google search in a tight spot.
Only one remark: While I like the effect that the full URL shows up when the mouse is above a search entry I would personally prefer to see the full URL all the time. I would be very happy if you could add an option to change that.
Agreed. For example, search for 'anaconda python'. In google, the second result is very obviously the download page for anaconda. In DDG? Good luck discovering that. Just one example that popped immediately to mind.
The auto-suggest feature feels like a step backwards in terms of privacy:
- it indicates that there's a fairly thorough recording of searches going on, and acknowledges a reasonable possibility of keypress-by-keypress recording, and
- it doesn't work as well as google's version which accounts for local variation, and which formed part of my decision to reject google in favour of ddg.
Overall this feature creeps me out, in an "uncanny valley" kind of way. It makes me uncomfortable.
To be clear, we still don't collect or share personal information and auto-suggest does not impact that at all. I appreciate it may make you and others uncomfortable and we're sensitive to that, but it is not a change in terms of privacy. We simply do not associate queries with personal information (e.g. IP addresses) and in fact don't store any of it at all.
Could this be a feature that is disabled by default, but that can be easily enabled if a user does wish to use it?
I don't know the best way to do this, but I'm thinking a checkbox somewhere near the search bar, or perhaps a prefix similar to "g!" that'll enable it for any further text that's entered, or something along those lines.
Not yegg, but if you store a database of queries, along with frequencies, you can do a prefix match on what's already in the search box and return that. I'm speculating that DDG does something that. It doesn't take any PII to do that unless the query itself includes PII. E.g., "websites operated by paul nathan" is pretty PII. :)
Saving - and now seemingly publishing - search queries is saving and publishing PII.
http://donttrack.us directly acknowledges that search queries can be used to personally identify individuals.
I therefore understood from the later statement on that site, "[ddg doesn't] store any personal information at all", that this would include search queries: ddg almost literally advertises itself on the fact that it doesn't save search queries. (According to the small print, I understood this wrong.)
It would be a shame if your explanation was the correct one.
I think the difference here is that there is no association of the search term with a specific search. If they see a term, they simply add 1 to the counter. Of course, that is probably vastly simplifying it. Basically, your search is thrown into a pool with all of the other searches. It possibly never even has an id associated with it. Just a frequency number.
For example, say I start to type "movie t", it'll see that often times after the word "movie", "times" appears at a high frequency so that could be one of the suggestions. I don't see how this introduces a privacy issue unless they are saving the searches by some personal identification number (whether thats an ip, user id, computer, etc), which they specifically deny. Without the specific identifier, there is no way to say it was user A who searched for "movie times" 300 times in a row and not 300 different users searching for "movie times"
By the grandparent's description, the difference would be that DDG is not saving the ip address and browser information associated with the search query. If they're only saving the frequency of each search query and nothing else, then there would be no way to see for a particular user/browser/ip address what search queries have been performed because that dimension to the data simply doesn't exist.
I'm not prepared to defend DDG in depth, as I'm not a representative. Nor is my research area inferring PII.
But I want to point out that doing a standard ddg search gives me `https://duckduckgo.com/?q=seattle` , which is a GET command, visible across the entire network as it percolates through, unencrypted.
That's a secure URL. HTTP requests and responses are encrypted, and nobody other than you and the server know what they contain. Nobody between you on the network can tell what URLs you're accessing over SSL.
I'm sure you realize this, but to clarify a bit for the parent commenter: Although the URL is encrypted, anyone watching the connections on the network can still tell what IP address you're connecting to and usually be able to infer the domain name from the IP address.
To state it simple terms: HTTPS protects the URL and all the contents of the connection, but does not protect the fact that you're connecting to a particular domain, the duration of the connection, and the volume of data.
Fully agree, these were the same things that popped in my head when I saw it. Though I have to say autocomplete for !commands is an excellent addition.
I just tried it out. Wanted to find "phpng" that was released just now. Search returns results for "phong" and no way to force it to use the term phpng. Otherwise, it looks good and works as well as the other "older" one. Good job.
I don't know what you mean by 'released'. If we're talking about the same thing, it's a) a single mailing list thread and b) a wiki page, which google finds.
Hi Yegg. Very interesting update. Two suggestions for places..
1) If I search "self storage columbia mo" I get place results but if I "search self storage 65203" I do not get place results. I noticed this does work for food using a more familiar zipcode like 90210.. but maybe still a little zip code work to be done.
2) What about when I search "thai" or "self storage" in general. DuckDuckGo is known for not tracking the user, but if I search something that with location information would most likely provide place results, shouldn't I be given some type of indicator that with just a zipcode or city name I could be given better results? That way you are educating new users while still providing them the results they need and the privacy DuckDuckGo is known for.
In my experience, the problem with code searches is the extra work you have to go to to force a precise search. The above example of phpng, for example. I'm totally fine with being told I might find more results with a slightly different search, but it's infuriating to not at least be given the benefit of the doubt that I know what I actually want.
Unlike the GP, this bothers me about google as well, though.
1. I search for "ng angular", which takes me to https://next.duckduckgo.com/?q=ng%20angular
2. I've been to the top link before (http://angular-ui.github.io/ng-grid/).
3. I hover over the 'Visited Site' checkbox icon, and the hover text is obscured by the search area (specifically around the Image and Video tabs).
On a related note, I find the interaction with checkboxes a little bit confusing. They disappear on hover when the text shows up (seems unnecessary, I'm left wondering why my icon disappeared). You can also hover over them on unvisited links and get the same message. Personally I'd prefer to see them as static icons, only shown on visited sites. I can hover over existing ones to get a message "you've visited this site before", which is clearer than "your browser indicates...". They do send a very clear message and are a great addition to the UI.
Overall great job. Looks super clean, I love the image and video dropdowns... keep making it easy for me to use DDG!
Edit: also submitted through your feedback system. Just gotta grab those hacker news points while they're there for the picking right? ;)
1) The checkbox for visited links. However, I think there should be an infobox (visible by default) explaining what it is the first few times you search. A link explaining how it works (for the privacy conscious) would also be good.
Things I don't like:
1) Moving the favicon below the page snippet. I think it should actually be up top and larger, since it's useful for skimming results.
2) Lack of color/contrast. Feels like someone sucked the life out of the site. This is important, because (for example) when I'm skimming results it's helpful to have the page titles (blue) stand out from the snippet (black).
3) Left-aligned results. I find it easier to skim the results when they're centered, rather than left-aligned. This is something people who have been using Google won't notice, but after reading DDG's centered results for a year or so, going back feels jarring, like I'm going out of my way to read them there. The center of the screen seems to be where I look first for content.
4) Larger header. Vertical space is precious, especially when you consider how much is already consumed by an OS menu bar, browser chrome (titlebar, address bar, bookmark bar, tab bar, status bar) and (on Mac OS) the Dock at the bottom of the screen.
Hi yegg, I want to express one wish I would like to see Duck Duck G0 maybe considering: I use duck duck go for its privacy, but it seems like duck duck go assumes I want absolute anonymity which is not necessarily right. I just want my own controlled privacy, and I want a good search engine that know me a bit. and I wish to give some of my privacy for that. what do I mean? if there will be an option to tell duck duck go what "categories" I'm interested in, so that it will use this data to give me better results I would love to do that. say, I can mark 'technology' and 'science' under my subject of interest and 'celebrity' and 'sports' under my subjects of disinterest.
Do you think something like that might be possible someday or it completely goes against your philosophy?
The Install in Chrome thing doesn't appear to work. Won't allow me to save even when the Keyword field is empty. Not sure if that's a Chrome thing or DDG thing.
EDIT:
Sorry, it looks like it installed the first time. I tried to do a search. It kept using Google. So I thought it didn't install. I tried again. The keyword had already been installed, so it didn't work. Turned out it was already installed and I had to manually set it as my search provider.
Having Image search is the best feature of all. Can we get a search page exclusively for images? I mean having that images popup occupy the entire page.
As for the rest, as long as the dark/terminal themes still work (there are small bugs), that's fine by me.
Bug Report: If i play a video in the webseite, stop it, go to the video grid and then replay it, i have an echo. Tested with Chrome on Ubuntu. I also sent this via the feedback button. :-)
For the love of christ, whatever you do, please don't ever implement "DuckDuckGo Instant®".
This auto-complete predictive suggestion list business isn't half bad, but there's nothing I hate more about Google than their bloody "Instant" features.
Are you currently seeing that option somewhere? I looked in the settings, but I did not see it there, and I do not see any other way to disable that functionality.
We were on the fence about autocomplete for a variety of reasons, but tried to be careful about minimizing distraction. It was too great a vector to introduce !bang autocomplete :). As always, please let us know what you think as it evolves!
Google Instant is irritating because I'm trying to type a search string into a field in the middle of the page, and as soon as I enter a single keystroke, my entire thought process is interrupted when the field I'm focusing on is thrown upwards to the top of the page, without waiting for me to confirm that I'm finished typing.
So I want to search for "apple" and guess what:
I type the letter "a"...
Now the whole page is disrupted, and I have to stop, and check the page, to make sure the sudden change is what I expected it to be. Is the page doing what I intended? I only typed one letter...
Did I actually type the letter "a", or did my finger slip and type the letter "s"? Wait, where's the field? Oh, it's up at the top of the page now... What was I doing? Oh, right, I was going to search for "apple"...
Why did the page change, when I wanted it to stay put, while I complete my thought? Why didn't the page wait until I pressed the enter key, to confirm that I was finished, and ready to search for the intended query?
Do I care about whether the page sends an ordinary post with a form submission, and reloads the page? No.
Do I care about whether the page sends an AJAX request, and is re-rendered by a JavaScript library? No.
I want the page to remain static and reliable while I perform my task. After I'm done typing, it can go crazy, and do whatever.
There are still a lot known issues that we're still working through before we can make the transition. I'm sure this thread will uncover more :)