5 ms·

Duck Duck Go, More Like Duck Duck No

xentronium 15y ago
> The market for search is mature. Everyone has their search engine of choice. In 1997, everybody knew that search engine market was mature and centered around AltaVista.
- oscar-the-horse 15y ago
  AltaVista didn't become a verb... Duck Duck Go can compete, they just need to innovate harder in one direction to get enough space between them and google. And of course that direction needs to have a solid value proposition.
joshuacc 15y ago
But Duck Duck Go doesn’t do anything significantly different, or significantly better — as in 10x better. I disagree. Here are three things that make DDG 10x better for my use case: 1. Providing a common interface for searching API docs. For example, "!jquery live", or "!rails validate". 2. The 0-click box, which frequently gives me the answer I need without having to go any further. 3. Privileging of official sites. This is especially helpful for sites whose domain one couldn't easily guess.
- oscar-the-horse 15y ago
  1. That's an edge case for developers. Which I sometimes do at the farm. But doesn't help with average users -- unless they want their average users to be programmers. 2. Easy for Google to copy. 3.This is terrible, pushing brand helps destroy verity on the open web.
  - roflharrison 15y ago
    1. There are bang's for lots of sites, http://duckduckgo.com/bang.html http://duckduckgo.com/bang.html (e.g. !amazon bags isn't really for developers). You can now refute this with your "easy for [insert competition] to copy" argument. 2. Fine 3. I'm sure that many people find this useful, but it is very subjective. What results should be higher than an exact match to a search term?
    - oscar-the-horse 15y ago
      1. Well it is. Which is kind of the point. I like the feature as well. Beats Google's "site:" operator! 3. The exact match domain should be top in most cases. But smearing brand all over the page like horse manure stifles smaller companies.
    - bunderbunder 15y ago
      OK, so !amazon isn't strictly for developers. There probably is some appeal there for close cousins, such as sysadmins and web designers. The world at large, though, hates having to use those kinds of tricks to find what they're looking for. Doing away with the need to learn and use that kind of stuff is exactly how Google managed to torpedo all their competition without batting an eyelash in the first place.
      - oscar-the-horse 15y ago
        +1 bunderbunder
- roflharrison 15y ago
  >Duck Duck Go doesn’t do anything significantly different Further to this, Duck Duck Go is targeting people who don't want to be bubbled and tracked, which is completely different to the other search engines. Having said that, I tried Duck Duck Go for a few weeks and found it wasn't giving me the results I wanted (there's a !bang for Google but that seems a little silly).
  - oscar-the-horse 15y ago
    Blekko.com has granular and optional tracking preferences. Duck Duck Go doesn't have as much data as Google, and probably don't crawl as deeply. This is another factor that hinders their competitiveness. If they want to compete they should look to more nascent data sources; rather than going down the path of destructive competition.
- rachelbythebay 15y ago
  For me, it only needs one feature: "it isn't Google". "Bing Is Not Google" used to be a joke of mine. Now it's actually a useful trait.
skrebbel 15y ago
The author is forgetting the massive size of the search engine market. If Duck Duck Go can get even 0.5% of the market, that's millions of users. Essentially the same story as why Opera is still very much in business.
- oscar-the-horse 15y ago
  They are a viable lifestyle business. But it depends on what sort of business they want to be. They've taken VC funding which signals they're after more than sub 1% market share.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- endersshadow 15y ago
  The author is a man posing as a horse. The article is clearly not serious. The one before it was entitled "Piracy Should be Legal," in which the horse says that the internet is a copying machine because Xerox invented it. I believe it's meant to be parody. That, or there's a horse somewhere that can type rather well with hooves.
  - oscar-the-horse 15y ago
    I use natural language machine translation to convert my "nays" into English. I can't type! It's explained on the about page: http://www.horsesaysinternet.com/about-oscar/ http://www.horsesaysinternet.com/about-oscar/ Xerox had a major influence on the internet. The idea is also echoed by those such as Jaron Lanier.
greenyoda 15y ago
"But Duck Duck Go doesn’t do anything significantly different, or significantly better — as in 10x better." Their respect for my privacy is 10000000000x better than Google's.
- oscar-the-horse 15y ago
  That's speaking from the view of most of the market... For a small minority it's a really big deal; which is fair enough.

> The market for search is mature. Everyone has their search engine of choice. In 1997, everybody knew that search engine market was mature and centered around AltaVista.

oscar-the-horse 15y ago
AltaVista didn't become a verb... Duck Duck Go can compete, they just need to innovate harder in one direction to get enough space between them and google. And of course that direction needs to have a solid value proposition.

joshuacc 15y ago

But Duck Duck Go doesn’t do anything significantly different, or significantly better — as in 10x better. I disagree. Here are three things that make DDG 10x better for my use case: 1. Providing a common interface for searching API docs. For example, "!jquery live", or "!rails validate". 2. The 0-click box, which frequently gives me the answer I need without having to go any further. 3. Privileging of official sites. This is especially helpful for sites whose domain one couldn't easily guess.

oscar-the-horse 15y ago
1. That's an edge case for developers. Which I sometimes do at the farm. But doesn't help with average users -- unless they want their average users to be programmers. 2. Easy for Google to copy. 3.This is terrible, pushing brand helps destroy verity on the open web.
- roflharrison 15y ago
  1. There are bang's for lots of sites, http://duckduckgo.com/bang.html http://duckduckgo.com/bang.html (e.g. !amazon bags isn't really for developers). You can now refute this with your "easy for [insert competition] to copy" argument. 2. Fine 3. I'm sure that many people find this useful, but it is very subjective. What results should be higher than an exact match to a search term?
  - oscar-the-horse 15y ago
    1. Well it is. Which is kind of the point. I like the feature as well. Beats Google's "site:" operator! 3. The exact match domain should be top in most cases. But smearing brand all over the page like horse manure stifles smaller companies.
  - bunderbunder 15y ago
    OK, so !amazon isn't strictly for developers. There probably is some appeal there for close cousins, such as sysadmins and web designers. The world at large, though, hates having to use those kinds of tricks to find what they're looking for. Doing away with the need to learn and use that kind of stuff is exactly how Google managed to torpedo all their competition without batting an eyelash in the first place.
    - oscar-the-horse 15y ago
      +1 bunderbunder
roflharrison 15y ago
>Duck Duck Go doesn’t do anything significantly different Further to this, Duck Duck Go is targeting people who don't want to be bubbled and tracked, which is completely different to the other search engines. Having said that, I tried Duck Duck Go for a few weeks and found it wasn't giving me the results I wanted (there's a !bang for Google but that seems a little silly).
- oscar-the-horse 15y ago
  Blekko.com has granular and optional tracking preferences. Duck Duck Go doesn't have as much data as Google, and probably don't crawl as deeply. This is another factor that hinders their competitiveness. If they want to compete they should look to more nascent data sources; rather than going down the path of destructive competition.
rachelbythebay 15y ago
For me, it only needs one feature: "it isn't Google". "Bing Is Not Google" used to be a joke of mine. Now it's actually a useful trait.

skrebbel 15y ago

The author is forgetting the massive size of the search engine market. If Duck Duck Go can get even 0.5% of the market, that's millions of users. Essentially the same story as why Opera is still very much in business.

oscar-the-horse 15y ago
They are a viable lifestyle business. But it depends on what sort of business they want to be. They've taken VC funding which signals they're after more than sub 1% market share.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
endersshadow 15y ago
The author is a man posing as a horse. The article is clearly not serious. The one before it was entitled "Piracy Should be Legal," in which the horse says that the internet is a copying machine because Xerox invented it. I believe it's meant to be parody. That, or there's a horse somewhere that can type rather well with hooves.
- oscar-the-horse 15y ago
  I use natural language machine translation to convert my "nays" into English. I can't type! It's explained on the about page: http://www.horsesaysinternet.com/about-oscar/ http://www.horsesaysinternet.com/about-oscar/ Xerox had a major influence on the internet. The idea is also echoed by those such as Jaron Lanier.

greenyoda 15y ago

"But Duck Duck Go doesn’t do anything significantly different, or significantly better — as in 10x better." Their respect for my privacy is 10000000000x better than Google's.

oscar-the-horse 15y ago
That's speaking from the view of most of the market... For a small minority it's a really big deal; which is fair enough.