9 ms·
This 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 Goog
by sjroot 8y ago
This 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
- faiz7412 8y ago"Are you good at ducking mate? Let's party!"
- ljf 8y agoAlso is in the UK - esp 'Duck Out' - to step out of a meeting or situation.
- rhplus 8y ago"duck" is also used often in the context of not giving an answer (e.g. "duck the issue"), which is an unfortunate connotation for a search engine.
- verelo 8y agoFinally auto correct of "ducking" from the ruder alternative will make sense. "I spent the day ducking around on the internet"
- mindgam3 8y agoThis is the best ducking thread on the internet today. Well done all.
- Vektorweg 8y agoIf you use !bangs, its a duck hunt.
- mrtnmcc 8y agoD and F are are a little too close for comfort on the 'ol qwerty.
- androidgirl 8y agoThat's absolutely hilarious and I love it. In casual conversation, "DeeDeeGee it" is so much more clunky.
- dctoedt 8y agoIn U.S. Navy and NATO jargon, "DDG" is the designator for guided-missile destroyers (warships) [0]. So you could say "destroy it" .... [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guided_missile_destroyer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guided_missile_destroyer
- androidgirl 8y agoInteresting! I had no idea.
- genericone 8y agoSome might be partial to "I'd Duck that"
- sorenjan 8y agoThe best Ducking search engine available.
- kethinov 8y agoI just say "web search it." Same syllables as Google. Devoid of any brand preference.
- ummonk 8y agoSame syllables sure but there has to be a hard stop between the two syllables since b and s can’t be strung together.
- balnaphone 8y agoThe two words can be strung together just fine in English. Think of the word "rub", then "rubs", then "rubs search", then "rubsearch". The final 'b' in "web" is indeed pronounced differently when linked to the word "search". For more discussion see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assimilation_(phonology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assimilation_(phonology) Page 10 of http://www.ling.hawaii.edu/faculty/donegan/Papers/201Xhistphon.pdf http://www.ling.hawaii.edu/faculty/donegan/Papers/201Xhistph...
- tspike 8y agoThey can but it's more difficult on a muscle level. You have to change the position of your tongue quite a bit to alter the airflow transitioning from the bilabial plosive to the sibilant, versus "Google" where you can almost say the G-L transition without moving your mouth; just a very slight adjustment of your uvula and tongue can produce an understandable sound. Try saying "web search" without moving your mouth. Now try saying "google" without moving your mouth.
- ummonk 8y agoIt is not normal English for a "b" at the end of a word to get assimilated into the "s" at the start of the word. (Note also that when you say "rubs", the "b" is not getting assimilated - it's the "s" that is getting assimilated into a voiced "z")
- duckit 8y ago
- nickjj 8y agoI can't wait to start saying "Go Duck yourself", and have it meant to be a request / complement to search your own name.
- vanadium 8y ago"Let me duck that for you" might get a few doubletakes.
- singularity2001 8y agoLet's start saying "duck off" to the ill-informed duck.com will surely inspire the sick dolan[0] crowd [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed3-vC2z7hI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed3-vC2z7hI
- zem 8y ago"ducking the issues" would finally be a good thing
- beeskneecaps 8y agoI’m feeling ducky
- zellyn 8y agoI came here for this. Not disappointed.
- BerislavLopac 8y agoMy phone's autocorrect would love this. :D
- dylan604 8y agoI’ll Duck Hunt it
- austincheney 8y agoI can how that would be abused, as in: go duck yourself Edit: somebody beat me to it.
- auiya 8y agoThe obvious auto-correct problems on iOS devices will be amazing for marketshare expansion.
- burkaman 8y agoIt's not the number of syllables, it's the particular flow of those syllables and the number of full stops. I'm sure there's a linguistic term for what I mean. Consider "I'll just Googlify it" or "I'll just Dodogo it", which both sound better than "I'll just DuckDuckGo it".
- pingiun 8y agoYou could also say, "I'll just duckduck it"
- timerol 8y agoThe linguistic term is actually just a "stop", though you can use occlusive or plosive to sound fancy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_consonant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_consonant
- pilsetnieks 8y agoPerhaps also a case of the Bouba/kiki effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect) - people assuming the nature of words because of how they sound.
- jerf 8y agoEuphony: http://literary-devices.com/content/euphony http://literary-devices.com/content/euphony
- nailer 8y agoJust duck it.
- thieving_magpie 8y agoIn terms of names it's the GoDaddy of search engines.
- bborud 8y agoI didn't understand that.
- goldfeld 8y agoGoDaddy manages to seem even more of a cheesy web 1.0 company than they are because of the name. It's like a TV ad company for the whole family, not something a programmer would find pleasing to behold.
- nailer 8y ago> It's like a TV ad company for the whole family I thought it was more of a sleaze connotation than a family one.
- thieving_magpie 8y agoThere's just something about "Daddy" in a company name I can't get over.
- mr_toad 8y agoTo me GoDaddy always sounded like the moniker a pimp would use.
- saagarjha 8y agoExcept GoDaddy actively tries to maintain that perception, while I don’t see DuckDuckGo doing the same.
- codyb 8y agoI just say "I'm going to search for x" now and avoid the company name entirely. Although as noted by a person responding here "I'll duck it" wouldn't be bad.
- richthegeek 8y agoI'm not sure how regional this is, but at least around the North of England that'd be interpreted as someone saying they were trying to avoid something.
- marcosdumay 8y agoEnglish is not my native language, but I think this is universal. I also think that's why the GP likes the phrase.
- forgot-my-pw 8y ago"Google it" kinda came out organically. But it was very cringy when Microsoft forced to popularize the term "Bing it" and did product placements in TV shows and movies. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfHuZ5qrYX4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfHuZ5qrYX4
- reshie 8y agoi allways thought of it as a play on duck duck goose(which has some interesting connotations and in this context). it is good they got duck.com and makes sense in recognition and a simple and easy name is good to if thats there intent.
- gsich 8y ago"watscheln" in german, "waddle" in english.
- e17a 8y agoDDG will never reach some groups without a rebrand. I once installed Firefox on my folks's PC and changed the browser to DDG. My mum opened it instead of Chrome by mistake and said something like > WTF is this duck thing? Where's Google? I think that wouldn't have happened if it had a more serious name.
- justinmchase 8y agoWhats hard about saying "Its a search engine like google, only it doesn't track you. Try it."?
- Doctor_Fegg 8y agoThat said, my two-year old loves the yellow Cyberduck icon on my desktop Mac, and asks me to make it bounce (i.e. launch it from the Dock) whenever he sees it...
- _jal 8y agoEh. People mocked Google's name when they were gaining dominance. "Sounds like baby noise, not a serious company" seemed to be the dominant take of those with that view at the time. I think there's something to three-word names being less memorable than shorter ones, especially when there isn't a clearer hint to function built in.
- Pete_D 8y agoJudging from the Wii and the iPad, people will get used to any brand name, no matter how ridiculous it sounds initially.