359
Anon has a tip (lemmy.world)
submitted 9 months ago by to c/greentext@sh.itjust.works
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[–] 63 points 9 months ago (5 children)

Google's been getting worse, but it's not like Bing has been getting better. Maybe it's just the way I search for things, but I can never get Bing to work.

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  • [–] 12 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    I use DDG, which works for about 90% of my searches, but when it doesn't work, I go back to Google, often in a private window. I do agree that Google is still just, I dunno, better?

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago

    Idk what I'm doing wrong, but any time I can't find something in DDG and turn to Google, I get exact same results.

    Exceptions are:

    • localized search (obviously), however I don't use that in Google either and just do ‘searchterm cityname’ or use the local map service instead.

    • searching on Reddit: Google has an agreement with Reddit for vacuuming all new content immediately.

    • looking for a meme image by its description or caption. This definitely works in Google and pretty much doesn't in Bing/DDG.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago

    When I used DDG, the !g bang to search on Google became wired in my brain to "get me better results, please", so much that I sometimes tried using it in Google search too.

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    • [–] 41 points 9 months ago (15 children)

    Looking over their Wikipedia page, DDG looks like they're reasonably independent.

    Why is everyone saying they're just Bing?

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  • [–] 69 points 9 months ago* (2 children)

    DDG gets its results from other search engines. Bing is one of them.

    There was also a big thing about DDG allegedly selling user data to Microsoft, which the living brain donors of 4chan probably interpreted as DDG being a different front-end to Bing.

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  • [–] 29 points 9 months ago

    It wasn't exactly selling, but it also wasn't alleged. They made an exception for Microsoft's tracking scripts in their tracking script blocking settings on their phone apps and extensions in exchange for utilizing bing as a backend. Here is the blog post where they walked it back after backlash.

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  • [–] 24 points 9 months ago (6 children)

    My understanding is that they outsource the search part to bing's search back-end. Saying DDG is just Bing is like saying two butchers are the same because they get their meat from the same supplier.

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  • [–] 12 points 9 months ago* (3 children)

    With all due respect, I don't know enough about butchering but it sounds far less complicated than what we're talking about

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  • [–] 8 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    Outsourcing back ends is one of the key parts of being a butcher.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (1 child)

    I can't find any sources to corroborate this claim. Can you link some sources?

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago

    It looks like Bing is just a part of the answer: https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources

    Most of our search result pages feature one or more Instant Answers. To deliver Instant Answers on specific topics, DuckDuckGo leverages many sources, including specialized sources like Sportradar and crowd-sourced sites like Wikipedia. We also maintain our own crawler (DuckDuckBot) and many indexes to support our results. Of course, we have more traditional links and images in our search results too, which we largely source from Bing. Our focus is synthesizing all these sources to create a superior search experience.

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  • [–] 18 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

    There are really only two usable search engines actually indexing the entire Internet: Google and Bing. Yandex also does but I've never seen it recommended for anything other than Russian language content (the company itself seems to be falling down a mineshaft at the moment). Baidu also does some although every Chinese exchange student I talked to about it (admittedly not many) advised only using it when Google is blocked. Every other engine is just wrapping Google or Bing (yes that includes Yahoo and DDG)

    This is the kind of ugly truth of the search engine business. It's a duopoly at least in part because the indicies are expensive to scrape, build, and run. You need to continuously run a large number of servers loading web pages and often running scripts. You need to be large enough to negotiate with content providers not to block you. Keep in mind paying them may bankrupt you as your margins will be thin. Google has a huge advantage here they own a good chunk of the online advertising industry and can afford to throw money around in a way a search only company wouldn't be able to (this is why the European and Canadian link tax schemes ironically cement the existing monopolies). You need to continuously run large linear aglebra transforms on the results (PageRank is expensive). You need to store all your indicies on large expensive servers with a lot of memory as hitting disk may take too long. Results need to be fast and you will make next to nothing on each search.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    Can you link any sources on this?

    I think that's my big hesitance to believe it, there just doesn't seem evidence (besides other commenter mentioning an anecdotal tank man reference).

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago

    In the wikipedia article:

    DuckDuckGo's results are a compilation of "over 400" sources according to itself, including Bing, Yahoo! Search BOSS, Wolfram Alpha, Yandex, and its own web crawler (the DuckDuckBot); but none from Google.[69][7][70][71][72] It also uses data from crowdsourced sites such as Wikipedia, to populate knowledge panel boxes to the right of the search results.[71][73] During a Bing API outage in 2024, DuckDuckGo stopped showing results, indicating that Bing provided a substantial portion of DuckDuckGo's results.[74][75]

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  • [–] 17 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    Nobody else has mentioned this but there have been several times that Bing censored something and it propagated to DDG, most notably when Microsoft censored Tank Man (intended for China, probably) but then Tank Man also was censored on DDG.

    Partly because of these incidents, I could never consider DDG reliable.

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    • [–] 31 points 9 months ago (6 children)

    I use DDG just because they have !bangs and it saves me so much time.

    !yt searches YouTube !imdb searches IMDb

    And so on.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    If bangs are used for positive searching how do I search for things without the name. I thought !youtube filters out YouTube.

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    • [–] 16 points 9 months ago (4 children)

    Bing, the porn search engine of your dreams.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago

    just Bing it bro!

    for real though if you ever want to watch a movie for free online it is by far the best for finding copywrited material (due to not filtering it out and letting you search for videos > 20 mins in length)

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    • [–] 14 points 9 months ago

    ddg has always been bing, but it's always been pointless pointing. They laugh at maga, though, and wonder about sheep.

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    [–] 25 points 9 months ago (5 children)

    DDG has the ai summary too

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  • [–] 5 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    I fucking hate ai but ddg's ai summary is the one place I don't mind it. It doesn't open unless I click it, and I only click it when I don't actually give a shit about the correctness of something. It's great for throwaway factoids that you're curious about in the moment but won't remember or care about an hour later lol. Often saves me from wasting time going down a wikipedia rabbithole when I need to be doing something else

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago

    It's great for throwaway factoids that you're curious about in the moment but won't remember or care about an hour later

    Not even the greatest Sci-Fi writers of, this, and all future times could ever hope to conceive an idea of an intelligence, not of human origin, that would be able to answer such riveting questions as "what's the name of that guy in that movie?". Cutie, eat your positronic heart out.

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    [–] 12 points 9 months ago

    in bings credit, it gave me the archive links to rock band 4s removed content for uhh... file existance purposes that google outirght scrubs out.

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    [–] 11 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    They could use Google as far as I'm concerned. From a privacy perspective if 1 million people are proxied through DDG, Google won't be able to collect any personal data as long as DDG can be trusted with their security. And as far as I'm concerned they can be.

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    • [–] 11 points 9 months ago

    DDG is not bing. using bing's index and being bing are two different things, and by the way, I'd use bing over Google's shitty ass shit every day.

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    [–] 10 points 9 months ago (14 children)

    Does Bing not work? Because DDG gets results for me

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  • [–] 12 points 9 months ago

    At least as good as google. The belief that google is a better search engine is antiquated, based on a situation that no longer exists. Google has long since fallen to ad algorithms and bloat.

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  • [–] 0 points 9 months ago (12 children)

    People have this weird fetish for "Microsoft Bad". If it comes from Microsoft, it's bad by default. Reality doesn't matter.

    The fact that Edge is just objectively a better browser than Chrome is irrelevant, because "Microsoft Bad".

    The fact that Bing now provides just as good, if not better, results as Google, because Google enshittified its own product is irrelevant, because "Microsoft Bad".

    The fact that Copilot runs on the exact same models as ChatGPT and gives practically identical results is irrelevant because "Microsoft Bad".

    Etc., etc.

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago (9 children)

    microsoft is bad. google is too. and so is openai.

    edge used to be internet explorer, which used to be known as the worst browser ever. and if you care at all about privacy, the chrome-based microsoft browser isn't a good idea.

    bing used to be really bad.

    copilot gets shoved down every window user's throats.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago (8 children)

    edge used to be internet explorer, which used to be known as the worst browser ever

    And Linux used to not have a GUI. Are you going to complain that Linux is too difficult to use because it used to be command-line based? What even is this point?

    and if you care at all about privacy, the chrome-based microsoft browser isn’t a good idea.

    When comparing Chromium-based browsers you don't expect much privacy at all. But even comparing Chromium-based browsers people will still go "ughh, Chrome is better because Microsoft Bad", which is just a stupid thing to say considering Edge has everything that Chrome has and then a bunch of features on top of that. Including better resource utilisation.

    bing used to be really bad.

    See first paragraph.

    copilot gets shoved down every window user’s throats.

    What's the point you're trying to make here?

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    And Linux used to not have a GUI. Are you going to complain that Linux is too difficult to use because it used to be command-line based? What even is this point?

    When do you think Linux didn't have a GUI? CDE was released in 1993, and let's be honest: nobody used Linux before 1993.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (5 children)

    edge used to be internet explorer, which used to be known as the worst browser ever

    what i meant by that is: people used to hate internet explorer because it was the worst. even though it changed completely, people still hate it because of it's history.

    And Linux used to not have a GUI. Are you going to complain that Linux is too difficult to use because it used to be command-line based? What even is this point?

    yes, indeed. i'm not sure about GUI since that's so long ago and windows used to be MSDOS, but similarly to edge, people think linux is hard because of it's history of requiring the terminal for basic functions.

    When comparing Chromium-based browsers you don't expect much privacy at all. But even comparing Chromium-based browsers people will still go "ughh, Chrome is better because Microsoft Bad", which is just a stupid thing to say considering Edge has everything that Chrome has and then a bunch of features on top of that. Including better resource utilisation.

    honestly, idk much about edge, though i've also never seen anyone complain about edge simply because of "microsoft bad".

    bing used to be really bad.

    See first paragraph.

    you too, i guess

    copilot gets shoved down every window user’s throats.

    What's the point you're trying to make here?

    people don't want stuff shoved down their throats without consent, which seems to be what microsoft is really good at doing. actually, now that i think about it, that's the same issue with edge, since whenever you uninstall it (which has to be done through unconventional means), it'll just reappear the next time the system updates.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (4 children)

    what i meant by that is: people used to hate internet explorer because it was the worst. even though it changed completely, people still hate it because of it’s history.

    That's precisely my point though. People are not talking about the product, they're talking about the company/history. Not only was the original Edge very much "not Internet Explorer", but nowadays Edge is running on Chromium, making the whole comparison to IE even stupider. But people still do, because "Microsoft Bad".

    people think linux is hard because of it’s history of requiring the terminal for basic functions.

    People think Linux is hard because it still requires terminal for basic functions. Source: a guy who moved to Linux full-time over a year ago.

    people don’t want stuff shoved down their throats without consent, which seems to be what microsoft is really good at doing

    I get that, but what's the relation of that to what I was talking about? I'm talking about comparing the capabilities of various LLMs where people will swear on their mothers that Copilot is the worst shite they ever saw, not realising that it's essentially the same as ChatGPT.

    Source: ran LLM testing and implementation in two different companies.

    that’s the same issue with edge, since whenever you uninstall it (which has to be done through unconventional means), it’ll just reappear the next time the system updates.

    Yeah, that's not the case for years now.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (3 children)

    That's precisely my point though. People are not talking about the product, they're talking about the company/history. Not only was the original Edge very much "not Internet Explorer", but nowadays Edge is running on Chromium, making the whole comparison to IE even stupider. But people still do, because "Microsoft Bad".

    yeah. idk where you keep seeing this "microsoft bad" thing. people don't like it because of its history. people still mostly use chrome because they learned it was faster than firefox, and now that they're equal in speed, people still think of firefox as slower. not wanting a company's product doesn't have to mean they hate the company.

    People think Linux is hard because it still requires terminal for basic functions. Source: a guy who moved to Linux full-time over a year ago.

    if you don't use one of the distros that come preinstalled with a bunch of ui apps that do stuff that used to require a terminal, sure.

    I get that, but what's the relation of that to what I was talking about? I'm talking about comparing the capabilities of various LLMs where people will swear on their mothers that Copilot is the worst shite they ever saw, not realising that it's essentially the same as ChatGPT.

    if you get orange juice shoved down your throat, you probably won't like it, even if you generally like orange juice.

    Yeah, that's not the case for years now.

    oh well, it is true that i haven't used windows for years now.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago* (2 children)

    yeah. idk where you keep seeing this “microsoft bad” thing

    *points at this thread*

    I also gave you a bunch of examples already. Just visit r/Windows or r/Windows11 and you'll get an eye full.

    if you don’t use one of the distros that come preinstalled with a bunch of ui apps that do stuff that used to require a terminal, sure.

    That's just completely wrong. You can't set a secondary drive to auto-mount on boot without CLI, fixing a failing BT device connection requires CLI, if an AppImage fails to launch due to AppArmor, you need the CLI to fix it, can't prevent the OS from switching a BT headset to the "hands free" mode without CLI, etc., etc., etc.

    EDIT: some distros maybe allow changing this stuff through the GUI - I went through three, all with KDE, so maybe that's why I needed CLI, but that's also kind of the point - unless you really spend time to learn about the particular distribution, you never know what you're going to get. Which, to the new users who will not want to spend time to doctorise themselves on the subject, means that it's an added difficulty layer.

    if you get orange juice shoved down your throat, you probably won’t like it, even if you generally like orange juice.

    If you're talking about the nutritional value of different juices, you wouldn't say "orange juice is shit, has zero nutritional value" just because you don't lie it, would you?

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (1 child)

    I also gave you a bunch of examples already. Just visit r/Windows or r/Windows11 and you'll get an eye full.

    ok yeah. microsoft being bad is a reason not to use their stuff

    That's just completely wrong. You can't set a secondary drive to auto-mount on boot without CLI, fixing a failing BT device connection requires CLI, if an AppImage fails to launch due to AppArmor, you need the CLI to fix it, can't prevent the OS from switching a BT headset to the "hands free" mode without CLI, etc., etc., etc.

    EDIT: some distros maybe allow changing this stuff through the GUI - I went through three, all with KDE, so maybe that's why I needed CLI, but that's also kind of the point - unless you really spend time to learn about the particular distribution, you never know what you're going to get. Which, to the new users who will not want to spend time to doctorise themselves on the subject, means that it's an added difficulty layer.

    yeah i never ran into any of those issues, and i kinda doubt any unexperienced user would do any of that. except for the bluetooth thing, since i know a lot of people use bluetooth (though i honestly didn't even understand what that issue was)

    If you're talking about the nutritional value of different juices, you wouldn't say "orange juice is shit, has zero nutritional value" just because you don't lie it, would you?

    i'm talking about the choice to drink it or not, but whatever. is there a reason to ever use copilot over chatgpt? i don't use either

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

    i kinda doubt any unexperienced user would do any of that. except for the bluetooth thing, since i know a lot of people use bluetooth (though i honestly didn’t even understand what that issue was)

    Anyone with a secondary drive to store their documents and games library on (which is a lot of users) will run into the issue with the drive not being mounted on startup. Which means that every time you launch Steam and forget to mount the drive first, it throws errors and you can't launch your games. Then you have to quit Steam, mount the drive manually, re-launch Steam, and hope that it will remember where your library is. Or, if you're installing a new game, that it will remember to use your secondary drive as the default installation location.

    i’m talking about the choice to drink it or not, but whatever

    Yes, I know, you're talking about something completely different.

    is there a reason to ever use copilot over chatgpt

    I was running the tests in two companies, basically sending identical prompts to both, comparing results. Sometimes one gives the better answer, sometimes the other. Often Copilot will start with less precise answer and you need to prod it to elaborate and it ends up with a near-identical answer as ChatGPT.

    So, for personal use - might as well use Copilot since it's already there. On top of that, if you have an M365 subscription, you get its integration with Office apps, which is actually kinda' amazing. For example, you can ask Copilot to generate a table with formulas in Excel. Of course you need to check and verify if the formulas are correct, but that's the case with all LLMs.

    In a business setting, though, ChatGPT is hot garbage unless you're a massive company. I was in a company of around 500 users and they weren't even interested in giving us the Enterprise-tier license. The Teams-tier license didn't have any form of user management. As in: the Owner or Admin could bulk-invite people through a CSV, and that's it - no reporting, no sorting by activity, nothing. On top of that any user could invite anybody to the same tenant. I had an Admin account, invited my company email address as a Member, switched sessions, and invited my personal gmail account as a Member, which worked. What's even worse, there's no domain control or anything - I switched to the gmail account, and invited another personal email address.

    So, if you're a disgruntled user, you just download a CSV of a billion email addresses, upload that, and voila, you just bankrupted your company, because invoicing starts at invitation, not after the invited user activates the account. And since there's no reporting, the admins won't even realise they now have a billion accounts until the invoice hits the Finance department.

    It was 100% insanity.

    And Copilot, again, integrates with all MS products, so it can, for example, remind you that you had a conversation on Teams with someone about a topic you're asking it about.

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    • [–] 6 points 9 months ago

    There are other options, qwant, ecosia…

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    [–] 10 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    Fuck everything, I'm going back to Ask Jeeves.

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    • [–] 5 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    God I love searx

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    • [–] 9 points 9 months ago (4 children)

    DuckDuckGo has ai btw

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  • [–] 16 points 9 months ago (3 children)
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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    I'm aware. To be clear, I use DuckDuckGo. But I think it's disingenuous to recommend it to people who are looking for a browser without ai without also warning them that you need to type in the special codephrase to remove its ai as well

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    • [–] 3 points 9 months ago

    I only use ddg to watch youtube from their video search tab

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    [–] 3 points 9 months ago (4 children)

    Ok fine, point me to where I should be searching?

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    • [–] 2 points 9 months ago

    Bring back Infoseek

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    [–] 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

    Didnt DDG get in trouble for selling/tracking user data without telling anyone? Or was that Brave Browser? Maybe it was both, I don't remember...

    EDIT: Both. DDG made a deal to sell tracker data to Microsoft, and Brave Browser sold user data for AI training.

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    • [–] 1 point 9 months ago

    Wow, turns out I've fucking Anon's mum all these years? Amazing!

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    [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    DuckDuckGo: The coolest way of using Bing and Apple Maps. Now with AI summary!

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