DuckDuckGo Launches Redesigned Privacy Browser Extension and Mobile App With Anti-Tracking Features

A good move. Tiring of Google tracking my every move, I switched The Duck and soon found myself happy with the search results. This ranking feature will make it even better.
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Is there anyone who uses DuckDuckGo as their daily search engine and used Google before?
How was the transition? Did they improve?
!

I switched about a year ago and after the usual transition to something new, found myself happy with the search results. It feels good not to be feeding Google's massive people-tracking machine.

Is there anyone who uses DuckDuckGo as their daily search engine and used Google before?
How was the transition? Did they improve?

Thanks!

Yes, and I've noticed something, it's been a continual topic of conversation for middle aged people. We're not old enough to be technically disinterested and not young enough to trust any organizations with access and control over our personal information.

The kids don't seem to care, and think everything will be fine and dandy, as if thousands of books and movies over the last century exploring the fickle nature of human organizations, and all the many ways you can wind up under foot, have made no impact whatsoever.

Perhaps it's been too long, and a new generation needs to learn by experience again.

Is there anyone who uses DuckDuckGo as their daily search engine and used Google before?
How was the transition? Did they improve?

Thanks!

I have been using DuckDuckGo for several years as my primary search engine and I can say that it's great for the majority of my searches. One nice feature (https://duck.co/help/features) is that you can include "!g" in a search and it will submit the search to Google instead. I do this a few times a day when any search on DuckDuckGo just seems to be coming up short on details. In many cases, DuckDuckGo exceeds my expectations and returns exactly the relevant results that I want with far less junk that Google or Bing.

I do however, have really mixed feelings about this new DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials. What I have a problem with is that they should have known better than to force a complete extension replacement onto users through an update -- unannounced. REALLY DuckDuckGo! What an idiotic decision for a privacy company who's reputation is everything. For this reason alone, I'll be waiting a while for them to explain themselves before recommending this new extension to anyone. Such a decision really makes me wonder about their management's ability to make trustworthy decisions. In the meantime, configuring DuckDuckGo as the default search provider in Firefox without using an extension to do so is the way to go.

I may eventually recommend it to all of my less technically savvy colleagues and clients as it will likely be an easier to use extension than a combination of EFF HTTPS Everywhere, EFF Privacy Badger, and uBlock Origin. The combination of these multiple extensions is simply too much for that majority of users to use without "breaking" their interweb and social media experience. Hopefully DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials can fill the same niche in a single, easy to use extension.

For those that understand how the web works though, I'm not going to change my extension recipe for browsing bliss. In my opinion it's hard to beat the combination of EFF's HTTPS Everywhere, uMatrix (with JS blocked in global scope), and just configuring DuckDuckGo as the Default/only search provider. Although it certainly takes some initial configuration for each site, I find that this is the best winning combination for security, privacy, and ad-blocking that I can come up with.

So, how many of you will give "DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials" a try as a replacement for the extensions you currently use? If not, what is your current combination of extensions that you find to be the best-of-class for security, privacy, and ad-blocking?

Is there anyone who uses DuckDuckGo as their daily search engine and used Google before?
How was the transition? Did they improve?

Thanks!

I trust Google to do what’s best for Google, like all companies. In Google’s case, their goal is to monetize as much information about me as possible. Given that, I set my default iOS search engine to DuckDuckGo. For routine searches it’s fine, but the truth is that Google’s better for more obscure hits, business searches (where hours and contact info are better presented), and image searches (where the interface is less awkward on iOS). The latter two may be better on DDG’s dedicated browser, which I’ll now try, but the price would be less seamless integration into the iOS experience since we can’t change the default iOS browser.

Right now I’m using the excellent 1Blocker, which includes as part of its comprehensive privacy suite pretty robust tracker blocking integrated into iOS Safari. Users of good blocker utils may not need the DDG browser or extension. I’d be interested in a comparison.

I've had the exact same experience. You can even do a quick G* search by using the DuckDuckGo "Bang" !g before your search (which I rarely need to do as well.) Bangs by the way for me are the thing I absolutely would miss most when switching to any other search engine.
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Bangs! ('https://duckduckgo.com/bang') :)

Even better, use !sp for StartPage which gives you Google's results without Google being able to track you.

When resigning myself to a Google search I still use the DDG window, following the term with !g.

I am also primarily using DDG now, but for the rare occasion I need to search Google, I've been using Startpage. It gives you Google search results without all the tracking.

https://www.startpage.com/