I've been using DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine for almost three years.
It's improved fairly steadily in that time (as measured by how often I end up falling back to appending "!g" to my search), but this is the single biggest improvement I can remember in my time as a user.
Aside from the auto-complete (which is nice), it feels significantly faster, and it's also easier to parse visually.
My need for !g has certainly decreased, but I also find that when I do use it I often feel that the DuckDuckGo result was actually closer to what I wanted.
DuckDuckGo seems to be getting better, while Google is getting worse in some areas. The results that I get from Google is still impressive, but more and more it seems that they are making wrong assumptions about my wishes.
Is there anyway you know of to use DDG in the omnibar with some kind of autocomplete? That's the dealbreaker for me right now...I tried installing the chrome extension but it only lets you search in the omnibar by typing 'd'+space first, and still uses google's autocomplete (for "d [your search term], no less")
To clarify, this is not a DuckDuckGo product and having your autosuggestions come from Google means passing your searches to them as well.
The next version of DuckDuckGo was released today: https://duckduckgo.com/
and includes our own autosuggest (with !bang autosuggest as well--just type !) . You can get autosuggest in your browser's address bar with some of our browser addons like the Firefox one: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/duckduckgo-fo...
Still not totally in love with it, but it's still my primary search engine. While looking for ways to alter the UI, found the Dark theme -- so that was a plus.
Really like the new update, but I still don't like how there is a dead click space between the results, and I find the background hover to be unnecessary.
We also added themes (in the side menu) to address some of the feedback on contrast. Classic theme reverts to the color scheme of the old site. And you can fine tune the individual colors further in Settings.
I can't express how much I like having a dark theme. Thanks so much for making a page I can refer to at night that is both clear and doesn't feel like I turned a lamp on two feet from my face!
Thanks! I'd totally miss the themes functionality if not for your comment. Just switched to Dark to match my desktop theme and it looks perfect. I hope more themes will be added in the future.
I hope a setting gets added to make the images and videos tab always display fullscreen results. The default display of only 4 images at a time is pointless to me. Good work otherwise.
I've never really bought into DDG, especially for its lack of features. It still can't match Google, but this is certainly a step in the right direction and gives me pause to think about using it at least once in a while now. Glad to see progress in search outside of Google for a change.
This post made me finally create an account here.
I do admit that personalized searches improve result quality a lot, at least for some topics. But after using DDG as my main search engine for about a year,
> especially for its lack of features
just sounds wrong. On the contrary, I tend to feel really helpless when using Google because of the lack of DDG bang syntax. For me, DDG is like my perfectly customized search engine with all the features I need - without actually customizing anything. This enables me to have the same, good search experience wherever I am (notebook, desktop PC, tablet, some else's machine...)
So to conclude this: Not relying on the search engine to guess your intention based on personalization takes some time to get used to, but for me it definitely payed off.
https://duck.co/help/features
seems to be a good starting point, since it has links to the bang syntax(e.g. '!gh junit', '!a sicp'), instant answers('4 euros in €') and more.
I learned most of the things I use today by experimenting and trying some bang-keywords I considered feasible before actually checking DDG documentation.
Instead of putting a large box at the top of some search results with what you think I want, why not put it to the side (the way Google does) and make use of the large amount of waster whitespace. I have tonnes of horizontal space available, not much vertical.
This would also mean that the results don't suddenly jump position when the top box loads. Many times I've mis-clicked because of the page flow change.
Yes, this always seemed like a gross usability faux pas to me. If you don't wait for some unknown period after you see the first result, you risk clicking on an unwanted link that unexpectedly appeared under your cursor.
I agree entirely. I really liked the instant answer boxes above the search results in the old design, but using the same box to present images and videos in a film-strip design feels awkward. (And that box doesn't support horizontal scrolling, either.)
I do really like having the images and videos readily available; I just don't feel like the current presentation strikes the right balance between the text search results and "hey, you might want these images or videos", unlike the extremely valuable instant-answer boxes, which when present are almost always what I want.
Not sure if anyone at DDG would ever read this, but my comments on the preview are still valid.
The contrast is way too low, it prefers vertical over horizontal (I, like any people, have a widescreen monitor. Displaying 3 search results by default is a little absurd), a couple other issues.
It feels like a mobile interface.
Oh, and there's no way to revert to the old version. The options merely change the color scheme, as far as I can tell.
I don't get this contrast thing everyone is saying. My eyes are shit, and the "light grey on white" pops out fine. Any darker and it would be annoying. I really like the current color scheme.
My 'puter is a mac with retina screen - so maybe it's a monitor thing? Are there any "progressive desaturation" or "color calibration detection" tricks available to web devs in these situations?
Maybe we just look at different parts of the UI when complaining about the contrast.
The contrast for the search results is fine, the low-contrast is the 'The search engine that doesn't track you.', and the 3 buttons at the bottom.
As I said in another comment the theme 'Dark' seems to fix all the contrast issues for me. How does that theme look on your monitor?
I'm in the prime of my life, and I have issues with the color. That being said, I use a laptop - a combination of not the best monitor and reflections off the screen. In a dark room, it's fine. But I don't use the internet primarily in a dark room.
It's customizable, so it's not the part of the redesign that I have the most issues with, but still.
Since this thread is potentially used for feedback, and no upvote numbers are provided, let me say: this.
While the new features are welcome, the new presentation is not, at least for me. Now I can't even describe the old format, or create a clone front-end, or ANYTHING because there was no formal cutover date given to users.
Yeah looks like it's a typo in the CSS. There's a unitless height value that's generally ignored but causes problems for some browsers apparently. A fix should go out in the next deploy, but in the meantime you can apply a local style to fix it (for the curious)...
Personally I am not a fan of horizontal navigation that breaks scrollwheels.
People get through websites with scrollwheels. Forcing people to use non-standard scrolling (left right) AND forcing them to do with click handles... I wonder if they're keeping data on how many people see the main preview and quit out versus how many actually see the other 5+ slides...
I clicked on "press" at the bottom (which happened to be at the bottom left of the screenshot on my device). Thinking it meant, "press me to continue" (which seemed a bit weird). Nope. It's their press page.
So, yeah, the "what's new" page is real clunky, but I haven't, so far, been offended by the changes to their actual design. I haven't used it much since the changeover, but DDG is my primary search engine, so I'll probably have opinions on it soon.
I feel like this hasn't been really tested in Chrome on Windows. The gray, detail information on search results is pretty hard to get past. I kind of just give up using it halfway though, looks like it might be better on other browsers though.
You can change the default theme using the menu icon in the right hand corner. We have a couple of themes preset, you can try implementing your own color scheme by selecting the "Settings" option.
The detailed descriptions on DDG and Google are both exactly the same size, 13px. I think the people complaining about these visual issues are imagining things.
Font size isn't exactly comparable across different font families. In the case of DDG they are using DDG_ProximaNova, while in the case of Google they are using Arial.
Arial is much easier to read on Chrome for Windows over DDG_ProximaNova.
I also just noticed that we can change the font on the settings page, just feel like it shouldn't be necessary.
I suppose given an assumption of who uses DDG it's okay to use the icon, but my core point is really that it's not as common as one may think.
In general, solely using an icon instead of text (or a combination of the two) is poor from a usability standpoint. Within a mobile context, I can understand the general push towards more compact treatments, but an icon with three lines does not intrinsically have any definitive meaning. While the icon may be aesthetically pleasing, I always felt there were some more effective alternatives.
There's been some recent discussion and data generated related to this icon (1,2), some of which can obviously be debated, but I think it's safe to say it's not as ubiquitous as you may think.
Overall, I don't think the hidden drawer pattern (and the associated menu icon) are appropriate for the site when it's being used on a desktop. But, it's OK given the contents of it and understandable when the site seems to have been designed mobile first and responsive. I do think more time should be given to the final 'desktop' state for a lot of responsive designs these days, though.
I like the arrowed version that DDG uses; I haven't seen that elsewhere (that I can recall) so far. I think the arrows encourage clicking on it to find out what is behind it, and most folks will probably not want or need to access the information behind it anyway. I prefer less text clutter personally. My personal favorite menu indicator is a small triangle in the corner of the screen (that you mouse over to get to the menu), but that is even easier to miss if you aren't expecting it (the triangle needs to be large for touch interfaces but if standardized could be set to be tiny or not graphically displaying for folks who know it is there and have a mouse).
Also, even if not perfect, I would love if sites that use infinite scroll would standardize on something to get to the stuff that is usually in small text at the bottom, and that icon seems as good as anything to me.
Firefox just changed to the three lines menu icon for the main menu so a bunch more people who haven't noticed it before will be forced to figure out what it means.
Thank you to everyone who provided feedback to us during our public beta period! Please keep the feedback coming so we can quickly iterate. We really do listen to it all.
I love this. I'm excited to share with friends. In fact I looked for a sharing button. Anyway, looks nice. It wouldn't scroll on my iPad and a button for Press at bottom right is cut off, but maybe those are known issues.
Carousels are definitely overused, but they can still be a solid choice, depending on your design goals. If you just want to make people look at more ads, then most people will not bother.
But, I clicked all the way through before reading the comments here because I found it a compelling way to tell their story.
edit: actually, I happily clicked through this: https://duckduckgo.com/about The "what's new" carousel did feel a little tedious.
That's awesome! I've been using the beta for a while and it's been much better than the old site.
A bunch of ideas/complains:
- It's awesome that you're showing me a nice map when I search for places/address, but let's be honest, I'll probably need to load it into an online map (OSM, MapQuest, Google Maps) to get directions. So a "open in map" button would be great (yes, I can copy/paste the address and !bang it, but it's not exactly a great experience)
- Sometimes I just want to search for images or videos. Yes, I can search "Images X" or "Videos X", but it's not nice. Also you get the minimized image/video box. I'd add two bangs, !i and !v (those right now alias to Google Images and Youtube, which have !gi and !yt anyway) to search for images/video and that will auto-open the images box.
- Auto-suggestions are neat, but please add an option to remove the "select-on-hover" behavior. It's really annoying to casually move the mouse and select something else.
That's mostly it, otherwise I'm really, really happy with DDG. Thanks, and I wonder what the future will reserve!
So the maps did work for you? I looked up a few places just to test it out and most of them were not found or not identified as places. I am living in New Hampshire, so perhaps they just haven't done much with NH addresses yet. I love duckduckgo and I am glad that they are making improvements but I currently can't use the map feature reliably.
I found that for the maps to work you have to be really specific. Which I would say is a knock.
For example, a local bar here where I live is called Old Hickory Whiskey Bar. If I search for "Old Hickory <City>", I get a bunch of pictures of houses, but if I search for "Old Hickory Whiskey Bar <City>", I get a map result.
Also not working for me if I search for some random street address (which works well on Google), even if I add a zip code to the end. Even if it isn't possible to be confident enough to show the map first thing like Google does, at least adding a map tap on any search that looks like it could possible be interpreted as a map would be cool (though I could fairly easily just add !map, so it isn't that important).
Edit: tried a few more and some of them work. It seems like intersections may never work and some addresses don't work.
Other suggestions for DDG:
Speaking of !bang!, did you consider making the tabs !images, !video, etc.? That might help more people discover that really cool feature that I didn't know existed until folks here mentioned it (and is why I switched to DDG as my primary search engine). Similarly, the "try these other search engines" section at the end could have !g, etc. in parentheses.
I'd also suggest keeping the X in the search bar visible all the time, at least if the page is wider than some minimum width.
I like the few orange lines at the top of the page as the only header to make it easier to identify the page. I just noticed the up arrow off to the right when scrolled down, which is helpful too.
I really like that you just show the site rather than the full url until I mouse over that result.
The one thing I miss is the longer text list of meanings; only being able to scroll three at a time isn't fun if I'm looking for number 11, but before it was easy to pick out #11 even if I had to click once to expand the results.
Edit: I just noticed the result site favicons, which is nice too. I don't remember if that was there before, but I hadn't explicitly noticed it. I use the FaviconizeTab extention on Firefox so I appreciate wider use of favicons :).
Yeah, I think it's not DDG's fault. It looks like they are using OpenStreetMaps, and OSM is not finding the address that I look up either. It's definitely an admirable project that I look forward to using eventually.
Thanks, that seems to be the case for me as well testing on openstreetmaps.org. In one case I tried openstreetmaps.org is returning two options (one of them being what I entered :/), so it seems like in that case DDG also just doesn't show a map tab.
(this reminds me why I never try to use OSM more than once every year or two; I hit too many cases too easily where it doesn't work; maybe I can just use DDG results to determine when OSM is worth trying :) ).
Hey guys, if you're looking for an alternative search engine with a different flavor, we came up with a discovery search engine that allow you to preview results before getting there and overall an upgraded user experience. oh We're in the process of going https and we don't track your search as well;-)
Your feedback would be very helpful.
This way: http://www.psykoo.com
Come on, DDG is not storing datas, neither do we. This was a good feedback and we're looking for more?
Beside you know how hard it is to get just a fraction of attention from the community unless you game the stats...
Thanks for downvote :-S
Sorry, but I have to agree with malnourish here. I could understand you posting this, but not as a reply to my comment, which happen to be at the top of the page. If you think it's interesting enough for HN, submit it as a "Show HN".
But if you want my feedback, have it: for your "don't track" claim, I could trust you (after all, I have to trust someone in the end), but just loading the homepage send my data to Youtube (video) and Mixpanel (analytic).
Even your advertised feature, "preview the site before you browse it" is not exactly privacy-friendly. It just load the page in an iframe (if you guys want to do it right, see the ixquick-proxy on startpage and ixquick).
Also about the design, I don't think everything should be flat, but I just can't bring myself to like it. It feels like a '90s site.
Sorry for being harsh, but you pretty much asked for it.
No problem. I like honest feedback. That's very helpful.
In fact we do show the website in an iframe only if we don't have the thumbnail. Then next time user visits we show a thumbnail. You can be sure iframe content is very restricted by all browsers. And we will proxy the sites that can't be accessed. (To not use your own account), so it's a lot more work than meets the eyes.
As for the look. That's personal I guess. We'll keep improving it though to make it more universal.
Thanks for taking the time to give us some feedback though. It's very appreciated.
If you consider it a "game" you should probably attempt to understand the rules of the "game". In this case, replying to the top comment with a non-sequitur self promotion is going to get you downvoted, and it did.
Since I won't see this again I thought I'd mention it - just becareful you might be violating a patent by displaying the resulting webpage of a link as an image. And I agree with the rest, this isn't the place for that.
The first time I saw that (so called) design I literally hit refresh 5 times to hopefully get that missing CSS file. Having all in just light grey and white doesn't really help finding anything quickly and why hide the path of the url onMouseOut is beyond me.
DDG is my search of choice and the pain induced yesterday is not enough to swap back to google but still, not happy at all :(
Small but surprisingly annoying thing about DDG: I have to hit TAB too many times to start cycling through search results, on google one TAB takes me to the first search result, on DDG it's an unintuitive series of links.
Unfortunately, I use vimperator so j and k scroll for me. I'm glad to see some sites incorporating some good keyboard shortcuts, though! Maybe one day I can ditch vimperator in favor of common keyboard commands in my favorite sites.
I imagine it all still goes through DDG, so it would be very difficult for Yandex to disambiguate more than a short stretch of a stream of search queries (let alone associate them with a person) even if they wanted to.
There's still the issue of individual queries revealing something that the user doesn't wish revealed. It would be interesting to see how exactly DDG uses these other search engines as sources (and if they are able to make demands with regard to logging), but it's worth noting that DDG logs search queries itself (just not associated with a person), so that may not be possible to ask for.
All the more power to competition and diversity of choices. But I see these reinventions and makeover campaigns and I really wonder if things are going well or not.
I use search engines for a niche blog, and I have a need to keyword search certain specific terms which are not common words. I have consistently tested all the available search engines (there aren't many). And I have always arrived at the same conclusion: there is no better search engine out there then what Google maintains.
I am no blind Google lover, but when it comes to practicality of effective and useful products, you have to have the best, in order to make your case.
Just switched my default search engine to DuckDuckGo for a self-initiated 10 day trial. All the work you've put into the new layout / results look great.
Very good job DuckDuckGo team! I was just thinking that I'd have to switch back to Google because of the poor results... but this new experience has given me some hope.
What saddens me though is that we (as in "the users") still don't have a strong guarantee on the respect of our privacy. We still have to trust the DDG team. I know there is no easy technology to do it, but still, the whole thing is only marginally better than using Google.
In the old version, the instant answer box would usually load after the results and with some delay. Very often it would materialize the very moment I click on a result, causing the content to move, leaing me to a place I did not want to visit. That was my biggest issue actually.
I can't seem to trigger it now. So I guess it's an improvement.
I am a not a big fan of all the results being down the left hand side of the page. Considering how the top fancy gadget thing seems to extend well past the right of my page with silly right arrow buttons it seems a lot of the screen is just being wasted and it would be nice to have the results at least centred.
I use <alt>d to select the text in my address bar. If I am on a duckduckgo search results page, it seems this keyboard combination is intercepted and I'm bounced off to one of the results (well, the 'd' on it's own does this too). I can also use <ctrl>l, but I've gotten use to using <alt>d.
[edit] I have bug reported this. They have a very good feedback system on their website.
224 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 165 ms ] threadIt's improved fairly steadily in that time (as measured by how often I end up falling back to appending "!g" to my search), but this is the single biggest improvement I can remember in my time as a user.
Aside from the auto-complete (which is nice), it feels significantly faster, and it's also easier to parse visually.
I'm really excited about seeing DuckDuckGo evolve, and it seems more and more people are as well: https://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html
DuckDuckGo seems to be getting better, while Google is getting worse in some areas. The results that I get from Google is still impressive, but more and more it seems that they are making wrong assumptions about my wishes.
We also added themes (in the side menu) to address some of the feedback on contrast. Classic theme reverts to the color scheme of the old site. And you can fine tune the individual colors further in Settings.
So to conclude this: Not relying on the search engine to guess your intention based on personalization takes some time to get used to, but for me it definitely payed off.
all of the boolean and ':' filters from google work also.
[edit] I had included the features-link again and this reply was hidden.
[edit2] Still hidden... HN doesn't like me
Maybe this is fixed with the redesign?
I do really like having the images and videos readily available; I just don't feel like the current presentation strikes the right balance between the text search results and "hey, you might want these images or videos", unlike the extremely valuable instant-answer boxes, which when present are almost always what I want.
The contrast is way too low, it prefers vertical over horizontal (I, like any people, have a widescreen monitor. Displaying 3 search results by default is a little absurd), a couple other issues.
It feels like a mobile interface.
Oh, and there's no way to revert to the old version. The options merely change the color scheme, as far as I can tell.
My 'puter is a mac with retina screen - so maybe it's a monitor thing? Are there any "progressive desaturation" or "color calibration detection" tricks available to web devs in these situations?
It's customizable, so it's not the part of the redesign that I have the most issues with, but still.
While the new features are welcome, the new presentation is not, at least for me. Now I can't even describe the old format, or create a clone front-end, or ANYTHING because there was no formal cutover date given to users.
http://cdn.fansided.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/317/files/2014/...
And I agree. Random mandatory switchovers to new interfaces are a good way to make me stop using a product.
(Edit: How odd; a reload caused the page to be displayed differently, with the images below the text and icons.)
.page-whatsnew .site-wrapper--static, .page-whatsnew .content-wrap, .blk--whatsnew { height: auto; }
People get through websites with scrollwheels. Forcing people to use non-standard scrolling (left right) AND forcing them to do with click handles... I wonder if they're keeping data on how many people see the main preview and quit out versus how many actually see the other 5+ slides...
So, yeah, the "what's new" page is real clunky, but I haven't, so far, been offended by the changes to their actual design. I haven't used it much since the changeover, but DDG is my primary search engine, so I'll probably have opinions on it soon.
Arial is much easier to read on Chrome for Windows over DDG_ProximaNova.
I also just noticed that we can change the font on the settings page, just feel like it shouldn't be necessary.
In general, solely using an icon instead of text (or a combination of the two) is poor from a usability standpoint. Within a mobile context, I can understand the general push towards more compact treatments, but an icon with three lines does not intrinsically have any definitive meaning. While the icon may be aesthetically pleasing, I always felt there were some more effective alternatives.
There's been some recent discussion and data generated related to this icon (1,2), some of which can obviously be debated, but I think it's safe to say it's not as ubiquitous as you may think.
Overall, I don't think the hidden drawer pattern (and the associated menu icon) are appropriate for the site when it's being used on a desktop. But, it's OK given the contents of it and understandable when the site seems to have been designed mobile first and responsive. I do think more time should be given to the final 'desktop' state for a lot of responsive designs these days, though.
[1] http://jxnblk.tumblr.com/post/82486816704/an-update-on-the-h... [2] http://exisweb.net/menu-eats-hamburger
Also, even if not perfect, I would love if sites that use infinite scroll would standardize on something to get to the stuff that is usually in small text at the bottom, and that icon seems as good as anything to me.
Firefox just changed to the three lines menu icon for the main menu so a bunch more people who haven't noticed it before will be forced to figure out what it means.
Thank you to everyone who provided feedback to us during our public beta period! Please keep the feedback coming so we can quickly iterate. We really do listen to it all.
Related: I've spent more than a few minutes on sites unwrapping carouseled content to just display stacked on the page. It's fucking annoying.
But, I clicked all the way through before reading the comments here because I found it a compelling way to tell their story.
edit: actually, I happily clicked through this: https://duckduckgo.com/about The "what's new" carousel did feel a little tedious.
A bunch of ideas/complains:
- It's awesome that you're showing me a nice map when I search for places/address, but let's be honest, I'll probably need to load it into an online map (OSM, MapQuest, Google Maps) to get directions. So a "open in map" button would be great (yes, I can copy/paste the address and !bang it, but it's not exactly a great experience)
- Sometimes I just want to search for images or videos. Yes, I can search "Images X" or "Videos X", but it's not nice. Also you get the minimized image/video box. I'd add two bangs, !i and !v (those right now alias to Google Images and Youtube, which have !gi and !yt anyway) to search for images/video and that will auto-open the images box.
- Auto-suggestions are neat, but please add an option to remove the "select-on-hover" behavior. It's really annoying to casually move the mouse and select something else.
That's mostly it, otherwise I'm really, really happy with DDG. Thanks, and I wonder what the future will reserve!
It does seems to work with streets too (taken from the first results of restaurants, https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Corso+Giuseppe+Garibaldi+68%2C+Mil...) but only big ones, It couldn't find my home.
For example, a local bar here where I live is called Old Hickory Whiskey Bar. If I search for "Old Hickory <City>", I get a bunch of pictures of houses, but if I search for "Old Hickory Whiskey Bar <City>", I get a map result.
Edit: tried a few more and some of them work. It seems like intersections may never work and some addresses don't work.
Other suggestions for DDG:
Speaking of !bang!, did you consider making the tabs !images, !video, etc.? That might help more people discover that really cool feature that I didn't know existed until folks here mentioned it (and is why I switched to DDG as my primary search engine). Similarly, the "try these other search engines" section at the end could have !g, etc. in parentheses.
I'd also suggest keeping the X in the search bar visible all the time, at least if the page is wider than some minimum width.
I like the few orange lines at the top of the page as the only header to make it easier to identify the page. I just noticed the up arrow off to the right when scrolled down, which is helpful too.
I really like that you just show the site rather than the full url until I mouse over that result.
The one thing I miss is the longer text list of meanings; only being able to scroll three at a time isn't fun if I'm looking for number 11, but before it was easy to pick out #11 even if I had to click once to expand the results.
Edit: I just noticed the result site favicons, which is nice too. I don't remember if that was there before, but I hadn't explicitly noticed it. I use the FaviconizeTab extention on Firefox so I appreciate wider use of favicons :).
(this reminds me why I never try to use OSM more than once every year or two; I hit too many cases too easily where it doesn't work; maybe I can just use DDG results to determine when OSM is worth trying :) ).
But if you want my feedback, have it: for your "don't track" claim, I could trust you (after all, I have to trust someone in the end), but just loading the homepage send my data to Youtube (video) and Mixpanel (analytic).
Even your advertised feature, "preview the site before you browse it" is not exactly privacy-friendly. It just load the page in an iframe (if you guys want to do it right, see the ixquick-proxy on startpage and ixquick).
Also about the design, I don't think everything should be flat, but I just can't bring myself to like it. It feels like a '90s site.
Sorry for being harsh, but you pretty much asked for it.
As for the look. That's personal I guess. We'll keep improving it though to make it more universal. Thanks for taking the time to give us some feedback though. It's very appreciated.
DDG is my search of choice and the pain induced yesterday is not enough to swap back to google but still, not happy at all :(
:ignorekeys
[1] http://imgur.com/3tBrS7h
Has Yandex ever had any privacy concerns? How did this partnership come about?
Why is DDG leveraging Yandex?
There's still the issue of individual queries revealing something that the user doesn't wish revealed. It would be interesting to see how exactly DDG uses these other search engines as sources (and if they are able to make demands with regard to logging), but it's worth noting that DDG logs search queries itself (just not associated with a person), so that may not be possible to ask for.
I use search engines for a niche blog, and I have a need to keyword search certain specific terms which are not common words. I have consistently tested all the available search engines (there aren't many). And I have always arrived at the same conclusion: there is no better search engine out there then what Google maintains.
I am no blind Google lover, but when it comes to practicality of effective and useful products, you have to have the best, in order to make your case.
I agree that there should be a link on duckduckhack (or, if there is, it needs to be more prominent and I couldn't find it too).
What saddens me though is that we (as in "the users") still don't have a strong guarantee on the respect of our privacy. We still have to trust the DDG team. I know there is no easy technology to do it, but still, the whole thing is only marginally better than using Google.
I can't seem to trigger it now. So I guess it's an improvement.
[edit] I have bug reported this. They have a very good feedback system on their website.
Regardless, he shouldn't have to change his shortcut because a website (a search engine, no less) hijacks his keys. That's bad UX.