19 ms·
Google transferred ownership of Duck.com to DuckDuckGo
- jerrre 8y agoMight be a nice step towards rebranding for a bigger audience? I use DDG as a default search engine, but the name doesn't roll off the tongue nicely at all... Edit: It doesn't roll of my fingers either, I didn't even type out the full name...
- electrograv 8y agoI love DuckDuckGo and use it on all my devices, but, WOW what a horrible name/branding. What were they thinking? Every time I mention/recommend it to someone the response is always a blank stare followed by something along the lines of “I would never use that if only to avoid that horrible name / brand URL”. And I can’t say I blame them.
- rpeden 8y agoMaybe it's a geographic thing? I feel like anyone who grew up in a region where duck, duck goose was a common game for children to play wouldn't be too confused about the name. Not that being confused about the name or disliking it is a bad thing. But I like the name, and it's part of the reason I chose to start using DDG. If they changed it to something more generic, I'd be less likely to keep using it because I'd feel less of a connection to the brand. If I'm going to use something that generic and corporate, then Binging sounds more fun than Ducking. I do realize that potentially losing me as a user doesn't mean this would be a bad move for DDG overall.
- robin_reala 8y agoI’d never heard about the game until I started using DDG, and ducks are definitely a thing in the UK.
- rpeden 8y agoRight, that's why I think familiarity with the game might be geographic - it seems like one of those games that's played in some places, but not others. Or it could also be the case that the same game is played, but with a different name. Tracing the etymology of the name would be pretty interesting. As you mentioned, the game of duck duck goose is unheard of in many places that have plenty of ducks and geese.
- simias 8y agoI'm not a native English speaker and "duck duck go" doesn't evoke anything at all to me. I learned the reference from your comment even though I've been using DDG for years. If they want to expand to non-English speaking countries having a long and somewhat complicated name like "duckduckgo" seems like a liability.
- rpeden 8y agoYou could certainly be right! Maybe it is one of those names that could endear your company to a certain audience, but alienate it to a wider audience.
- basil-rash 8y agoI am a native English speaker, and I played duck duck goose as a kid, and I didn't make the connection until just now. Part of the reason I use Bing is the name is nicer in my head. Also the background images are cool (it's my homepage).
- efreak 8y agoI always thought it'd be amusing if their logo was a goose instead of a duck...
- mortenjorck 8y agoI played the game as a child, and so the reference wasn’t lost on me the first time I encountered DuckDuckGo – yet I recall my first reaction being “wow, what a clumsy, awkward name.” It’s cute, but it’s antithetical to the idea of becoming a household word.
- electrograv 8y agoOh, I'm fully familiar with the game it's referring to. I just don't understand the connection between a serious search engine and a silly child's game. Is it some kind of inside joke? I just don't get it. I have nothing against the child's game; it just makes no sense to anyone that they named it after that, and it's not an easy name to pronounce or type. Bottom line: It sounds, feels, and looks bad on them.
- jfarlow 8y agoI still remember when 'googol' was my 2nd grade answer to 'no, I like it thousands better, no millions better, no billions better, no googol better!' And somehow that silly abstraction for "a big number number than yours" became a mega-behemoth of a corporation.
- adventured 8y agoKeep in mind, Google was roundly mocked initially as a ridiculous name that sounded like a word a baby/child might say. Google, Bing, Yahoo!, A9 Search, Excite, AltaVista, Overture, Inktomi, Lycos, HotBot, DogPile, Mamma.com., Teoma, Ask Jeeves, Cuil. Those are all ridiculous names if you want to scale them by seriousness. Then you have MSN Search, AOL / NetFind, InfoSeek, GoTo, LookSmart, WebCrawler, alltheweb. Slightly less ridiculous sounding, which ultimately that didn't make any difference.
- simias 8y agoI agree. I don't like super generic names like "Signal" or "Go" because they're often ambiguous but some people really go too far the other way. An other example that comes to mind is "SpiderOak". I don't know if there's a reference I'm missing here but it's just a weird and obscure name for an online backup tool.
- SlowRobotAhead 8y agoAccording to the founder’s AMA, they weren’t thinking. He had acquired the name Duck Duck Go before deciding to create a search engine. So when he started he just used that name for his next project and it stayed. It’s clearly due for some rebranding. Duck alone works great for that. It’s got some relavance to their current name, it’s short, there will never be a shortage of puns and word play.
- bhandziuk 8y agoWhat is a "Google"? It's not even a word. It caught on though.
- arthurcolle 8y agoIts from googolplex, the name of a very large integer that is equal to 1 followed by 10100 zeroes
- bhandziuk 8y agoThat word is "googol". Google is nothing. It's a play on words we've gotten used to like DuckDuckGo.
- pxtail 8y agoI think that it can also be perceived as derivative from goggles[0], and it fits pretty good. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/goggles https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/goggles
- electrograv 8y agoThe most important thing for a brand name like this to be is: 1. Simple to remember and easy to pronounce. 2. Unique and stands out from other generic names. 3. Aesthetically sounds/looks good. Under this criteria: "Google" works. "Bing" works. "DuckDuckGo" does not work.
- bhandziuk 8y agoI always figured it was simple because of the Duck Duck Goose correlation. It certainly stands out. And I do like it because of the Duck Duck Good implication. I think fitting those 3 criteria is personal taste.
- pxtail 8y agoAgree, this name is terrible and I think that it seriously damages whole search engine/company and lowers it's popularity. This name gives impression that it's something made for fun and one shouldn't expect serious results out of it. Moreover I think that it actively prevents popularization - you mentioned that after your recommendation response is blank stare etc. - for me and I suppose that for many others it works differently: I don't event recommend it to anyone because I know/predicted result similar to yours.
- babuskov 8y agoNo details? I need to duck the web to find out more about this. :)
- projectramo 8y agoDon't fall for it duckduckgo! If you change your name to duck, your name will no longer be searchable! It's a trap!
- jerrre 8y agohttps://duckduckgo.com/?q=duck&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=duck&ia=web works fine for me ;)
- projectramo 8y agoYou had to already know about it though. That is a foul. Or, more accurately, a water-foul.
- kevindqc 8y agoIt's the second result on Google, too: https://www.google.com/search?q=duck https://www.google.com/search?q=duck Using an incognito window
- stetrain 8y ago7th for me (not counting the callout stories/maps/videos sections that split up the results)
- awestroke 8y agoPersonalized results
- kevindqc 8y agoHow? I'm at work (so tracking me personally by IP is probably hard since there's hundreds of different people using the same IP) and using an incognito window. Using a different browser (that I used once or twice), incognito again, gives me the same result.
- dplgk 8y agoIs this to fein competition?
- gnode 8y agoProbably more to allay any narrative that Google is being anti-competitive by reserving a domain that could be useful to their competitor.
- simias 8y agoI'm guessing that's it's more like a PR move to show that they're "playing fair" that doesn't cost them much. Or alternatively, a way to avoid bad PR from squatting a domain that would be beneficial to a competitor.
- _puk 8y agoInterestingly transferred, not bought. Does Google buying DDG at this point make sense? Given their stance on privacy, it would allow Google control of the narrative..
- sjroot 8y agoI don't think Google would ever be able to acquire DDG. Their brand identities couldn't be further apart.
- forgotAgain 8y agoI don't see it. Google needs an independent DuckDuckGo to show it does not have a monopoly on search.
- abhiminator 8y agoDuckDuckGo's main selling point [0] is the fact that it doesn't track and collect ad-targetable data on users unlike Google. The hypothetical acquisition is therefore nonsensical. [0] https://donttrack.us https://donttrack.us
- liotier 8y agoIn Europe, Google's search business' market share is above the threshold at which a concentration would automatically require antitrust approval - which it has, of course, no chance of obtaining.
- 8y ago
- ddtaylor 8y agoDDG is great - have been using it for months and I really enjoy the results. Google searches seem to be more of an echo chamber whereas DDG results seem to be more representative across a broad spectrum of sites.
- skolos 8y agoFrom time to time I'm trying to switch to DDG. However I found its utility very limited by the fact that they don't show time-stamp for search results and there is no "Past Year" time filter.
- bad_user 8y agoTo be honest I've never noticed the filter bubble everybody is talking about with Google. They can infer a lot from context, like city or previous searches, however that's primarily helping users, because coming up with precise search queries is not something that normal people can do and even power users like us fail at it. I have been using DuckDuckGo because I'm making health related queries and I'm pretty scared of companies profiling me based on that. But the experience with DDG has been worse, although it is definitely improving. And it's bearable, plus protecting my privacy is worth it.
- brink 8y agoNo mention of a sale? That seems so strange. I cant think of any other times that a business has given charity to a direct competitor like this.
- TomMarius 8y agoIs it really a competitor? IMO from the point of Google's view DuckDuckGo is a very small niche service that doesn't really endanger them and they can win a few bonus points with their community.
- fosco 8y agoalso some people use bangs [0] like !g !b !yt and other bang's to redirect search another website directly from ddg. (I use this when I do not like the responses and want to check another search engine) sort of like google giving money to wikipedia, I suspect they do infact collect information on ddg searches and can aggregate it and make something useful from the information. in fact, they can probably infer that ddgs initial response was poor and determine their weaknesses etc [0] https://duckduckgo.com/bang https://duckduckgo.com/bang
- chadash 8y agoI wonder if Google wants them around so that they can point to them as a competitor when anti-trust suits come up in court.
- Phr0ztByte 8y agoAnd get some positive optics.
- pentae 8y agoDing ding ding.. we have a winner
- hoffs 8y agoBing exists?
- abhiminator 8y agoThough this is a good move, DuckDuckGo should really try and work toward taking ownership of http://ddg.com http://ddg.com. With the 'D' and 'G' key separated by just one key in between on a standard QWERTY keyboard, this should really make it exponentially easier to get to DuckDuckGo's homepage.
- alpaca128 8y agoThey already have ddg.gg which is even easier to input. Not that owning ddg.com as well would be a bad thing, though.
- amvalo 8y ago"ddg.gg" is quite awkward if you ask me... or am I the only one who finds repeated letters harder to type than alternating ones?
- dcchambers 8y agoAlso ddg.co ddg.gg is the easiest to type, but would be a strange URL to send to a (non technical) person.
- Arubis 8y agoIt’s definitely a “you need to know in advance” rather than an easily discoverable feature, but they do own ddg.gg.
- dwighttk 8y agoalso ddg.co
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Tactic 8y agoTangential to your point (.com is far more widely recognized) ddg.gg is what I use because it is so much easier.
- sjroot 8y agoThis is cool and I hope it leads to a rebranding. While I like DDG a lot, the name has always felt off-putting to me. I'd much rather say "I'll just search Google" than "I'll just search DuckDuckGo." Does an extra syllable really cause that much additional friction?
- electrograv 8y agoAlso, rather than saying “Google it” maybe we can now say “Duck it”.
- JacKTrocinskI 8y agoHaha, yes!
- vackosar 8y agoDuuckle it!
- dweekly 8y agoSuggested title of blog post announcing change: "Duck Yeah!"
- barrow-rider 8y agoI rarely use the term "ducking" in conversation, though auto-correct thinks otherwise. Maybe now I will. "I was ducking around and found a few good resources for fixing the OSPF problem."
- Arkdy 8y agoIn Trinbagonian dialect, "ducking" is the act of skipping work/school. See: https://youtu.be/2qunog47EVo https://youtu.be/2qunog47EVo for musical reference.
- owaty 8y ago"Ducking" is also a term used in audio mixing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ducking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ducking
- Tobaz 8y agoI'm hoping the phrase "duck it" will become as widespread as "Google it"
- djsumdog 8y agoI always say, "Search for," e.g. "I searched for it online" I hate how Google has become a verb and I don't want to see another one named after a company. I miss the days of Lycos, Hotbot, Dogpile, Excite and where you could search for terms on different engines and get different results.
- craigsmansion 8y agoUsing, "google" as a verb pretty much started out as a meme-like phenomenon; a bit of an in-joke for the more tech savvy when Google was still rising to prominence. As these things sometimes go, mass adoption happened. What used to be cute and funny is now free marketing for a search tech behemoth but with people unwilling to give up this initial connotation of "tech savvy." I've long since reverted to "search online" or "search the web", but I do hope "to duck" gains some prominence; it could be the new "tech savvy" verb to use.
- h1d 8y agoWill people start saying, "your product's duckability sucks"?
- stevespang 8y agoBe interesting to know how much $$$ passed hands on that deal - - - I don't think duck.com is similar enough to duckduckgo for a trademark dispute to rule in favor of duckduckgo, plus no smaller fish would go up against Google's legal ability . . . . now if they could just bag the URL for duckdynasty . . .
- glenrivard 8y agoNice of Google. Not surprised.
- pcmaffey 8y agoWhy did google own duck.com? Edit: lol
- hknd 8y agoThe article is literally 3 lines and says: Search giant Google acquired the Duck.com domain name in 2010 with the acquisition of On2, a video codec company.
- dweekly 8y agoThey bought On2, which was The Duck Corporation. https://mobile.twitter.com/robshilkin/status/1020458019174223872/photo/1 https://mobile.twitter.com/robshilkin/status/102045801917422...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- wastedhours 8y agoFrom the article: "Search giant Google acquired the Duck.com domain name in 2010 with the acquisition of On2, a video codec company."
- glenneroo 8y agoFTA: > Search giant Google acquired the Duck.com domain name in 2010 with the acquisition of On2, a video codec company.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- drpgq 8y agoI'm curious who owns the other animal domains.
- scns 8y agoClassy move.
- dominicr 8y agoHow nice it must be to be so big that you don't have to worry about helping the "competition".
- rileyphone 8y agoIt's probably to help stave off the crescendo of EU antitrust cases.
- sct202 8y agoIt's also funny when Google does 'nice' things, it still gets attacked, even though they don't seem to have bought the domain to be malicious.
- ric2b 8y agoI don't see what's so nice about this if all they were doing was squatting on the domain. It's good that they stopped squatting, let's leave it at that.
- Oletros 8y agoWhy it was squatting?
- ghostly_s 8y agoIf you own a domain you have no intent to use, which someone else may conceivably want, you're squatting.
- jonas21 8y agoGoogle owned the domain because they acquired a company that used to be named "Duck Corporation" and predated DuckDuckGo. A few months ago, DuckDuckGo asked for the domain, Google agreed to give it to them for free, and the transfer took place today. That doesn't really seem like squatting, at least not how the term is generally used.
- deleted 8y ago
- gesman 8y agoWelcomed change! I never remembered whether to type duckgogo.com or duckduckgo.com - either of them i had to type twice due to normal fat-fingering :)
- krylon 8y agoddg.gg is still easier (and for some reason more fun) to type. It might sound silly, but that's what won me over in the beginning.
- phoe-krk 8y agoAbout time!
- ConfusedDog 8y agoI do feel like DuckDuckGo is too long to type. That's a barrier for me. Rebranding to just Duck might be a good thing, but why "duck" ... not my favorite animal, or why animal at all...
- RandallBrown 8y agoWhy Duck? Because it's already part of their name and their logo.
- quakeguy 8y agoTry ddg.gg.
- rlv-dan 8y agojust type ddg.co/what you are searching for
- FabHK 8y agojust switch your default search engine to DDG, and append !g when you prefer google (or !s for the anonymous startpage version).
- kowdermeister 8y agoThat would be D+Enter if you indeed use it regularly. Add it yo your bookmark bar => no typing :)
- ConfusedDog 8y agoI did. My D+Enter is draw.io...
- MildlySerious 8y agoI type out DuckDuckGo once per browser I use, make it the default search engine, and never worry about the length again. The concern about the branding is understandable, but I haven't typed "Google" or "DuckDuckGo" when I want to use their services in aeons, and I don't even make use of bookmarks.
- b0bby_tabl3s 8y agoDilly, Dilly!
- kevmo 8y agoThis is not charity. Google needs DDG to exist, because Google is a monopoly. That economic reality is increasingly translating into political calls for GOOG to be broken up. Supporting DDG is just Google preparing for future legal and legislative/regulatory battles. They can point to DDG and say, "Look! There is another search company!" Google also probably accelerated this potential action to this week because they're taking so much heat and needed positive press.
- ars 8y ago> Google needs DDG to exist DDG is just a frontend to Bing. They need Bing to exist, not DDG.
- duckit 8y agoWhatever
- brokensegue 8y agois that literally true? I thought not
- Kiro 8y agoIt's true. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18664967 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18664967
- tombert 8y agoI thought DDG had its own indexer as well, and aggregated from several sources, including Bing.
- Kiro 8y agoTheir own crawler is only used for widgets and stuff. All the organic results are from Bing and Yahoo. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18664967 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18664967
- mcintyre1994 8y agoI'm quite surprised there's no .go tld, I could see it being used quite a lot.
- ealhad 8y agoEspecially considering there is .rs
- r3bl 8y agoTwo-letter TLDs are country codes. Republic of Serbia isn't that big of a stretch, especially since it's relatively new (2008) and there are already so many that follow .s* pattern. Unless you create a new country, .go ain't happening. That being said, Montenegro scored a freaking gold mine with .me.
- jonas21 8y ago> Montenegro scored a freaking gold mine with .me. Also Tuvalu, which gets 10% of its total government revenue from selling .tv domains [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.tv https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.tv
- plopz 8y agoI just looked up .io, and Wikipedia lists it as a British territory but also says that its in dispute and the only thing actually there are military bases for the US and UK. I wonder why it got a tld?
- ealhad 8y agoOr maybe that was a joke ;)
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- CydeWeys 8y agoTwo-letter TLDs are ccTLDs, and all the existing countries already have their ccTLDs. In order for this to happen, you'd need to have a new country spring into existence that can plausibly be abbreviated to .go, and then they would have to treat it like a faux-generic (like .io) instead of imposing registration/use restrictions as some countries do for their ccTLDs.
- mwachs 8y agoTechnical question: Since DuckDuckGo uses Bing Ads, and Bing Ads have tracking that allow for remarketing, is there a point? advertise.bingads.microsoft.com/en-us/solutions/audience-targeting/universal-event-tracking
- dbrgn 8y agoAds on DDG don't use tracking / remarketing, they are only based on your search terms. See https://duck.co/help/company/advertising-and-affiliates https://duck.co/help/company/advertising-and-affiliates for details.
- iamshs 8y agoRead this too: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-23/health-data-shared-with-tech-companies/10521456 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-23/health-data-shared-wi...
- odabaxok 8y agoAlso, you can simply disable Ads in Settings. https://duckduckgo.com/settings https://duckduckgo.com/settings
- IronWolve 8y agoI use also use ddg, but maps.google is far better for maps. So I mix both, using an addon, I can right click an address and send to google maps. Its a nice compromise.
- rplnt 8y agoAnd maps is pretty terrible for using it like.. well.. maps. I haven't seen a worse rendered, anywhere, ever. It's one big grey blob of nothing. It's good for navigation, and great for the "satellite" view.
- bhandziuk 8y agomaps.google.com is good for navigation but if you want to search for things and especially if you want to search for multiple things at once, bing is far better. Here's an example: https://binged.it/2EhrUDm https://binged.it/2EhrUDm I don't think you can line up multiple searches like that on Google. It's far and away my favorite feature of Bing.
- laken 8y agoyou can also just add `!gm` to your query and it will then populate Google Maps with it :)
- FabHK 8y ago!m is enough, for another 33% saving :-)
- h1d 8y agoMaybe Apple can give serious competition to google maps hopefully soon and DDG can partner with it.
- se7entime 8y agoDuckDuckGo People, now you need to buy duck.it domain!
- dragosmocrii 8y agoSo if anyone asks you something you don't know, you just say "Let me duck that!"
- castis 8y agoIf anyone ever said that to me, I'd assume they were verbally confirming that they were trying to get out of the situation.
- izzydata 8y agoWhere does DuckDuckGo get the money to keep this service alive?
- dovvdkc 8y agoI actually click on sponsored links just to help DDG.
- TheCoreh 8y agoAds. Just not tracking-based ads, only keyword-based ads.
- izzydata 8y agoThanks, that makes sense.
- ohthehugemanate 8y agoAdvertising. They serve Bing ads based on your search terms. They don't store or share any kind of history or profile... Apparently just your search terms are enough to provide relevant ads with a solid click through rate.
- cosmojg 8y agoNamePros user, Thelma, made a good point: > The story of Microsoft floating a significant loan to Apple in order to keep Apple solvent in the late '90's is well-known. Microsoft didn't do so out of altruistic impulse; they did so to decrease the odds they'd be the target of anti-trust legislation. I'm sure the c-suite at Google is very aware of that history lesson, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a more likely anti-trust target than Google. Alphabet was a proactive effort to stay ahead of that curve. This is another. It's also why I suspect they either gifted Duckduckgo the domain, or sold it at a modest price. Even if they squeezed Duckduckgo for every penny they could and maximized the duck.com sale price, that's a penny in the couch for Google, and of insignificant benefit, compared to the license to print money that they maintain as a monolith.
- MattyRad 8y agoDamn, that makes it seem like less of an olive branch and more of a cover-your-ass move. Either way, it's still a boon to DDG! (or just D?)
- adrr 8y agoThey could have sold it for $1 with a clause stating that ddg wouldn't partake in any antitrust action brought by any foreign government for 2 years. Value to Google would be worth tens or hundreds of millions in potential fines or revenue risk.
- tomcatfish 8y agoThen DDG obviously would have just said no? I think the idea is that it was a political move meant to show a sense of goodwill between the two to the public, not to force DDG to be subservient to them in some way.
- adrr 8y agoThat's why I put two years. I don't think any company would agree to a longer term.
- mxpxrocks10 8y ago
- foxhop 8y agoI would be amused if DDG flipped the domain for cash.
- devy 8y agoAccording to wikipedia, On2 Technologies, formerly known as The Duck Corporation... So it all makes sense now and all the conspiracy theories about Google's ownership proven false. And kudos to Google for transferring a high value domain ownership out to a competitor!
- utopcell 8y agoEven before handing over the domain, Google had a landing page that was essentially saying: "If you want to visit DuckDuckGo, _click here_."
- ehsankia 8y agoI mean, this was known all along for anyone willing to take 30s to research it. Sadly, these days, people just love jumping to conclusion and assuming the worst possible explanation. Hell, even when Google goes out of their way to do the right thing, the top comment here is still conspiracy saying they did it out of greed. There's no winning here.
- rc_kas 8y agoWhat? that was weirdly nice of Google to do this. I'm very shocked at this.
- TangoTrotFox 8y agoGoogle facing anti-trust investigations is inevitable at this point. When the hearings and inquiries come, holding onto domain(s) directly connected to the trademarks of would-be competitors is going to be a liability. It might not be unlawful in any way whatsoever, but having to answer why you're holding onto these properties in a way that doesn't demonstrate a promotion of anti-competitive values is going to be, at best, challenging.
- nojvek 8y agoThat’s nice of Google to not be a duck.
- Geekette 8y agoSeems quite the timely strategic PR move from Google; this might alleviate some of the bad press it's been battling lately (public leak of DragonFly project, workers' protest and public petition against it, etc). Good for DDG, though.
- jrobn 8y agoGoogle is like a french word that rolls off the tongue. Duck is like a anglo/norse, sharp and harsh but satisfying like our other favorite 4 letter word.
- djsumdog 8y agoIt made me wonder if ente.de is in use (Ente is Duck in German). It is .. and it's full of 90s Internet.
- depressedpanda 8y ago> Last Update 21.07.2003 Not quite, but the design, layout and editing is indeed hilariously outdated.
- faiz7412 8y agoThis is cool!
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- yamann 8y agoreminder that most praise you find about DDG in popular online communities (e.g. HN, Reddit, /g/, etc...) is mostly by their own paid influencers and shills, Weinberg even bragged about it once on Quora and deleted it later. The only question that he cares about: what's his exit number?
- djsumdog 8y agoI mean .. that's really no different than anybody else's marketing tactics. You should read up on Edward Bernays; the father of manipulative advertising.
- arama471 8y agoI use and like DDG and I assure you I am in no way paid by DDG. If they bragged about it on a forum I would expect there to be an archive of it somewhere (as well as discussions about it). Googling (and ducking) yields no articles or discussions about this.
- yamann 8y agoopen a thread in 4chan's /g/ and ask them about it, many have a screenshot of his quora's post there
- arama471 8y agoMind sharing some screenshot/archive links? I have no idea how to use 4chan
- eletious 8y agoI don't think you should take anything you read on /g/ seriously, much less anything about shills. That board (like most on 4chan) is really needlessly toxic, and prolonged exposure can lead you to believe that everyone's a shill.
- sotojuan 8y agoEveryone being a shill is a meme on /g/ and in general the board doesn't like DDG that much because it's popular/cool or because of antisemetic reasons (Weinberg is a Jewish name).
- azatris 8y agoI wish everyone used DDG for the sake of privacy, but I cannot. It just doesn't give me answers that I am expecting. It reads my mind less than Google and that's a problem.
- opmac 8y agoTo offer an alternate experience, I use DDG for nearly everything and have for many months. I have very few issues with it. For the more esoteric searches, I do find Google to be slightly better, but for 99% of my everyday browsing, I have zero issues with DDG.
- stanmancan 8y agoI have recently found myself forgetting that I’m even using DDG. The odd time it doesn’t return what I’m looking for I can try !g but it’s so few and far between that I almost forget that’s an option.
- msl 8y agoI have found that DDG often gives me better answers than Google does. I attribute it to DDG not trying to read my mind, but the query string.
- nroets 8y agoI may be the only one, but I do think most companies don't use my data for evil purposes. For example, if a search engine can track me on the web, they can deduce which web page answered my query. Then they put that page near the top of the list the next time anyone runs the same query. Furthermore: if a retailer can use my location data to predict demand, they can optimize their logistics and save fuel.
- zanmat0 8y ago> if a retailer can use my location data to predict demand, they can optimize their logistics and save fuel. Do you think those cost-savings will be passed down onto you?
- zenexer 8y agoMeta: NamePros tech admin here. This hammered our servers so hard that we actually uncovered a fairly obscure bug in Nginx's FastCGI caching. It's gone unnoticed for years, including during rigorous load testing.
- hathawsh 8y agoMore details please. :-) This sounds like it deserves a full article.
- zenexer 8y agoIt probably does. It'll take me a while to dig through the source to find the cause, but preliminary evidence suggests that fastcgi_cache_key doesn't handle $cookie_* variables correctly. If the cookie doesn't exist, it seems to result in a unique key every time. (Edit: The workaround is to assign the $cookie_* variable to another variable and then use that in fastcgi_cache_key.) If anyone is curious what sort of increase in traffic you should expect from a link to your site appearing on HN, we're getting about 230 additional backend requests per second--that doesn't include anything cached by Cloudflare. You can monitor it in realtime here: https://www.nameprosstatus.com/ https://www.nameprosstatus.com/
- nimbosa 8y agonice live stats monitor, can you link a short short postmortem analysis under that, shortly? Thanks!
- zenexer 8y agoYup, it'll be on there once I finish debugging. Edit: I'm having trouble reproducing it in a controlled environment, so a proper post mortem is probably going to have to wait for another day.
- nimbosa 8y agotrue that, some corner cases only appear in the wild and very hard to reproduce as we don't really know what caused them, anyways, keep us updated.. ;)
- k__ 8y agoI use DDG most of the time. But for dev related stuff I use Google, results are simply better
- huyzz 8y agoNice collusion we have in here. Not that I trusted DDG to begin with.
- drawkbox 8y agoIf using Firefox, you can now browse the web and search it with some animals, the Fox and the Duck.
- zymhan 8y agoBut in which order do you ferry the animals across the river so as to not have the fox eat the duck?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ex_angry_guy 8y agopretty awesome. except I saw accidental penis via dick.com and my fat fingers. edit: u is right next to i guys. this is not a valueless comment. it’s a legitimate thing that will happen to someone you know.
- thanatropism 8y agoHas anyone noticed DDG results getting worse lately, btw?
- ElijahLynn 8y agoNice! Now DuckDuckGo needs to just change their name to Duck Search and it can be used as a verb. No longer will you have to say "Did you DuckDuckGo it?" and can instead say "Did you Duck it?". Even on the domain alone I will use Duck more since I won't have to type in the full DuckDuckGo.com domain. I _feel_ like this could really bring some measurable growth to Duck search. I _feel_ like I certainly will use it more and talk about it more. Time will tell.
- bellinom 8y agoMy partner and I use "let me quack that" instead of "let me Google it".
- Freak_NL 8y agoHeh. That works really well in English. (Wondered if I could use this in Dutch too, but decided against it due to the seminal connotations of ‘kwak’…)
- jaysonelliot 8y agoFinally, someone will actually mean to type "ducking," and it won't just be autocorrect.
- ahmedalsudani 8y agoI envy anybody whose autocorrect suggests swearing. For me it’s a constant battle of teaching and reteaching it the different manners of expressing passion and frustration. That’s the one thing I liked about Google’s keyboard on Android: that you could enable “sailor-mouth mode”. They called it something boring though like “Suggest profane words”.
- ElijahLynn 8y agoImagine if Google had GoogleGoogleGo as their branding from the start. Would they be where they are today?
- h1d 8y agoggg.gg?
- bch 8y agoI used to refer to the tape like this, but we can now utter “If you can’t Duck it, fuck it.” in (casual) technical conversations.
- jondubois 8y agoIt's hard to think of a worse name than 'DuckDuckGo'. It's amazing that the company managed to survive with a name like that.
- cft 8y agoThis makes me think that DDG is Google's effort to counter the anti-monopoly arguments.
- ddoolin 8y agoNow give us back the .dev TLD.
- robotrout 8y agoI fear the Goog, even when they bear gifts.
- paul7986 8y agoThat's cool and I wish DDG would offer Duck mail. I'd like to diversify my digital life and move away from Google as much as possible!
- usuallymatt 8y agoI'd suggest not mailing the same mistake again. Go elsewhere for your email. I switched my domain to a paid provider recently and really like it. As much as an @duck.com address would be cool and I'd use it as a 2nd email, I wouldn't want it as my primary.
- garysahota93 8y agoI love DuckDuckGo! Been using it for years!
- asadkn 8y agoHaving heard and tried DuckDuckGo many times over the years, the other day, I thought about giving it the nth try, to finally switch from Google. And what did I type? duckgogo.com. I'm sure there are others who find the name not so memorable. duck.com makes it simple.
- ddgsucks 8y agoYou always get some fanboy showing up and say "I have been using DDG for <X> months and I love it. Notice no difference." The biggest lie keeping them solvent - there is no way their advertisers are benefiting from advertising on their site if they can't target the right people. I'd be surprised if they didn't think they were living a lie. Google probably gave them the domain because they don't care about it and see them as a mild annoyance. DDG has had years to improve and failed.
- marmot777 8y agoNow that fits their motto of “don’t be evil.” I’m happy to read this story.
- hulahoof 8y agoI believe it's "do the right thing" now
- marmot777 8y agoThat's probably better as it's something to do, an action, the right thing, as opposed to avoiding being something. And if someone does the right thing they're not being evil. Much better motto.
- h1d 8y agoGoogle would be proud to know by just trying to dodge the impression of monopoly, they also impressed people.
- cylinder 8y agoSo will DuckDuckGo change their name to Duck? DuckDuckGo is a terrible name.
- h1d 8y agoDuck isn't much of an improvement, the word doesn't sound serious in business.
- SeanLuke 8y agoIn the 1980s an engineer named Dave Smith, who ran a very popular music synthesizer outfit called Sequential Circuits, proposed an open protocol for connecting music synthesizers. The idea was scoffed at by a number of manufacturers, but relatively soon Roland, and eventually the other major Japanese firms (Korg, Yamaha, Kawai) got on board, and that caused everyone else to join in. The standard became known as MIDI. In the late 80s, Sequential Circuits went belly up due to some bad product decisions. Yamaha bought the remnants of the company, and Smith himself went to work at Korg, where he helped develop an important line of machines (the Wavestation). In 2002 Smith decided to try again with his own company. As Yamaha owned the Sequential Circuits name, he settled on Dave Smith Instruments (or DSI). The company did quite well in its own boutique business (high-quality analog polyphonic synthesizers). In 2015, Roland's founder Ikutaro Kakehashi, who had collaborated with Smith on MIDI, went to Takuya Nakata, the President of Yamaha -- a 3.5 billion dollar revenue company mind you -- and together they decided to unilaterally give Smith the famous Sequential Circuits trademark back as a thank-you and gesture of good-will. Kakeshashi said "I feel that it’s important to get rid of unnecessary conflict among electronic musical instrument companies. That is exactly the spirit of MIDI. For this reason, I personally recommended that the President of Yamaha, Mr. Nakata, return the rights to the Sequential name to Dave Smith." DSI has since been renamed Sequential. I'm not sure Smith was even aware of their plan. Two of the most powerful people in the music instrument business just gave him his famous company name back for free. I like to think Google was doing this.
- bprasanna 8y agoA good gesture, which is not powered by AI!