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"Most startups don't fail at building a product. They fail at acquiring customers ". I disagree, at least when it comes to me and duckduckgo (which Gabriel foun

by Gring 14y ago

"Most startups don't fail at building a product. They fail at acquiring customers ". I disagree, at least when it comes to me and duckduckgo (which Gabriel founded). Here's why: Three months ago, I started using ddg instead of Google. I'm quite disappointed: - search speed is slow. Instead of <1s, it's often more like 2-3 seconds. - search quality is adequate to quite bad. Example: "amazing spiderman rotten" (I was looking for the rotten tomatoes page for that movie that just came out, entered a typo) gave the right page for google, while the right page is not amongst the 20 top results in ddg. - while ddg says that they don't track me, the still insist in not using direct links in their search results, but indirect results (via duckduckgo.com/l/u?=...). Not only is this insincere, it also messes up my browser history: when I visit a page through ddg, Safari lists that strange ddg url in the browser history instead of the target page. Now, Gabriel was succesful at "aquiring" me. I tried it out. For a long time. And I'm on the verge of leaving. Why? because he failed at building a good product. But maybe that is exactly why he is failing. He is focusing very much on these other "most likely cases of failing", while ignoring the very reason he is failing in this instance. --edit: examples, conclusion.

epi0Bauqu 14y ago
We did not really acquire you (at least not yet). Traction is about acquiring real customers (who stick), and if you tried it and left or are thinking of leaving then you are not a real customer yet. I would love to keep you, however! I'm sorry to hear about your disappointment, but all those things are things we're of course actively working on. If you want to email me at yegg@duckduckgo.com I'd love to get to the bottom of them. --Speed has improved a lot in the past three months. Where are you located? I'd love to trace this down. 2-3sec is way outside the norm and our internal metrics show much, much lower. --Same with search quality. We'd love specific examples if you remember any: https://duckduckgo.com/feedback.html https://duckduckgo.com/feedback.html -- that's the best way we improve. Are you using a region setting? --We do not use indirect results by default on our main site. Check out our privacy policy, specifically the section on search leakage: https://duckduckgo.com/privacy.html https://duckduckgo.com/privacy.html. On HTML5 browsers we can do an internal postMessage to strip the referrer header in-line. However, if you open in a new tab/window, we cannot do that. Nevertheless, you can turn this behavior off on the main site in the settings (under privacy): https://duckduckgo.com/settings.html https://duckduckgo.com/settings.html. If you're using a modern Safari though, this shouldn't happen. Again, would love to figure this out.
- Gring 14y ago
  Nice to hear you answer, thanks! - I'm located in Switzerland. - Search example that failed are numerous, I added one to my original post. - while that setting did indeed do the trick, I contest your default setting. I delete my cookies quite frequently, which will kill those settings. I see that you're trying something good with that feature (preserve my query string from reaching the target site). In this case, your implementation is just not good enough. You should not mess up my browser history in any case. Can't you do this differently?
  - epi0Bauqu 14y ago
    If you don't mind, I'd love to correspond a bit more over email. I still have lots of questions and something is off with regards to this setting, speed, etc. For the record, perhaps you got the wrong idea from the post (looking at your new conclusion). At DuckDuckGo, I've tried to avoid these mistakes as best I can.
    - Gring 14y ago
      I'm not trying to make you look bad, I'm just reporting my opinion. It's great that you're answering, already a big plus in my book. Private email sent.
- stfu 14y ago
  My experience with the search quality are quite similar. While I like the idea and personally would even accept some 5 sec+ delays if the results were at least equal to Google, they are not. Even for relatively simple queries: For example if I search Journal of Brand Management the right url is not even on the whole first page, while at Google it is exactly the first result ( www.palgrave-journals.com/bm ). Maybe you could add some special "dissatisfying results" button or something like that where we just can enter the keyphrase and a short line what Google did better. Or I wouldn't even mind activating some track-me option occasionally if it would help you guys improve your results. Just let us know how we can help making DDG better.
  - 14y ago
barik 14y ago
> search quality is adequate to quite bad. Example: "amazing spiderman rotten" (I was looking for the rotten tomatoes page for that movie that just came out, entered a typo) gave the right page for google, while the right page is not amongst the 20 top results in ddg. I tried this in DDG. The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) for Rotten Tomatoes appears in the zero-click info box. I wonder if that was done in response to your comment, or if it's been like that all along. From using Google, it took me a long time to get used to the info box, as I'd somehow mentally ignore it even though it was always starting me right in the face.
- epi0Bauqu 14y ago
  It was triggering if you did movie or rotten tomatoes or a host of other things, but not rotten :). After emailing with him I changed that trigger.
  - barik 14y ago
    That's fantastic! One of the reasons I keep coming back to DDG is that you guys are so responsive to users' needs. That's what made me a loyal DDG user in the first place.
webwright 14y ago
This doesn't have much to do with his point. He makes no claim that DDG is a flawless product. And even the most flawless product on the planet tends to have (in the grand scheme of things) low conversion rates of the people they are able to bring in. From the growth graphs that Gabriel has posted, he clearly NOT failed at building a good product. Could it be better? Absolutely.

by Gring 14y ago

epi0Bauqu 14y ago

We did not really acquire you (at least not yet). Traction is about acquiring real customers (who stick), and if you tried it and left or are thinking of leaving then you are not a real customer yet. I would love to keep you, however! I'm sorry to hear about your disappointment, but all those things are things we're of course actively working on. If you want to email me at yegg@duckduckgo.com I'd love to get to the bottom of them. --Speed has improved a lot in the past three months. Where are you located? I'd love to trace this down. 2-3sec is way outside the norm and our internal metrics show much, much lower. --Same with search quality. We'd love specific examples if you remember any: https://duckduckgo.com/feedback.html https://duckduckgo.com/feedback.html -- that's the best way we improve. Are you using a region setting? --We do not use indirect results by default on our main site. Check out our privacy policy, specifically the section on search leakage: https://duckduckgo.com/privacy.html https://duckduckgo.com/privacy.html. On HTML5 browsers we can do an internal postMessage to strip the referrer header in-line. However, if you open in a new tab/window, we cannot do that. Nevertheless, you can turn this behavior off on the main site in the settings (under privacy): https://duckduckgo.com/settings.html https://duckduckgo.com/settings.html. If you're using a modern Safari though, this shouldn't happen. Again, would love to figure this out.

Gring 14y ago
Nice to hear you answer, thanks! - I'm located in Switzerland. - Search example that failed are numerous, I added one to my original post. - while that setting did indeed do the trick, I contest your default setting. I delete my cookies quite frequently, which will kill those settings. I see that you're trying something good with that feature (preserve my query string from reaching the target site). In this case, your implementation is just not good enough. You should not mess up my browser history in any case. Can't you do this differently?
- epi0Bauqu 14y ago
  If you don't mind, I'd love to correspond a bit more over email. I still have lots of questions and something is off with regards to this setting, speed, etc. For the record, perhaps you got the wrong idea from the post (looking at your new conclusion). At DuckDuckGo, I've tried to avoid these mistakes as best I can.
  - Gring 14y ago
    I'm not trying to make you look bad, I'm just reporting my opinion. It's great that you're answering, already a big plus in my book. Private email sent.
stfu 14y ago
My experience with the search quality are quite similar. While I like the idea and personally would even accept some 5 sec+ delays if the results were at least equal to Google, they are not. Even for relatively simple queries: For example if I search Journal of Brand Management the right url is not even on the whole first page, while at Google it is exactly the first result ( www.palgrave-journals.com/bm ). Maybe you could add some special "dissatisfying results" button or something like that where we just can enter the keyphrase and a short line what Google did better. Or I wouldn't even mind activating some track-me option occasionally if it would help you guys improve your results. Just let us know how we can help making DDG better.
- 14y ago

barik 14y ago

> search quality is adequate to quite bad. Example: "amazing spiderman rotten" (I was looking for the rotten tomatoes page for that movie that just came out, entered a typo) gave the right page for google, while the right page is not amongst the 20 top results in ddg. I tried this in DDG. The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) for Rotten Tomatoes appears in the zero-click info box. I wonder if that was done in response to your comment, or if it's been like that all along. From using Google, it took me a long time to get used to the info box, as I'd somehow mentally ignore it even though it was always starting me right in the face.

epi0Bauqu 14y ago
It was triggering if you did movie or rotten tomatoes or a host of other things, but not rotten :). After emailing with him I changed that trigger.
- barik 14y ago
  That's fantastic! One of the reasons I keep coming back to DDG is that you guys are so responsive to users' needs. That's what made me a loyal DDG user in the first place.

webwright 14y ago

This doesn't have much to do with his point. He makes no claim that DDG is a flawless product. And even the most flawless product on the planet tends to have (in the grand scheme of things) low conversion rates of the people they are able to bring in. From the growth graphs that Gabriel has posted, he clearly NOT failed at building a good product. Could it be better? Absolutely.