I have been switching back and forth between google and DuckDuckGo for searching for a while now.

If you have never heard of it, it’s a search engine, kind of like Google. Yes, how original. 

It’s created by a Hacker News individual as his startup. he has been at a while now and has an impressive list of accomplishments. Can I say I’m jealous?

It works especially awesome if you use Chrome and set it up as your default search. What really attracts me to DDG is the nice list of goodies built in. I don’t think google has anything like.

Here is the full list: http://duckduckgo.com/goodies.html

My current favorite (I use this alot): pw

If you use Chrome and have DDG as your default search, just type pw into your address bar. It will generate a random password for you. You can optionally add a length and strong, weak, or average. Like so:

pw 15 strong

The site specific search is also very handy (called bang).

Here is a list of sites they support, among other uses: http://duckduckgo.com/bang.html

Some notes they mention in case you don’t visit the link:

It works on most big sites, for example: !amazon Goldeneye Controller

There is a shorter version for many bangs too, such as !i !images, !so for !stackoverflow, or !yt for !youtube.

You can even search using google: !g Goldeneye Controller

It also works for programming languages: !c anonymous struct

Images: !images metroid

Other notables:

regex checker: regexp /^(.+)@.+/ myname@mydomain.com

Would return ‘myname’ without the quotes. If your regular expression has no matches it returns no results.

For your current ip just type: ip

Feeling Ducky? Precede with a /: /mario

Can’t make up your mind on something? Let DDG decide for you: yes or no

Feeling heavy after a big meal?: calories in 12 eggs

Anyway, I encourage people to try it out. The guys working on it seem very responsive to feedback and are overly positive about it. Over time I’m sure DDG will catch on if more people know about it. I have been using it a while now and I absolutely love it!

If you use Chrome, click the “Add to Chrome” link at the top of the page when you visit: http://duckduckgo.com

Thanks Gabriel! Keep it up!