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Some of those comments are completely fair: > Dropbox: I think competitors can duplicate Dropbox’s nice front end That’s exactly what happened. > Bitcoin: “W

by hnlmorg 8mo ago

Some of those comments are completely fair: > Dropbox: I think competitors can duplicate Dropbox’s nice front end That’s exactly what happened. > Bitcoin: “Well this is an exceptionally cute idea, but there is absolutely no way that anyone is going to have any faith in this currency.” This is still true even now > DDG: “I can’t ever see anyone saying ‘just duckduckgo it.’ The name just sounds silly. It makes me think it’s a search engine for toddlers.” And I still think the name holds them back. I say to my friends “I googled…” or “I searched…” because DDG sounds ridiculous. > DDG: “How many people would go to Google and search for ‘new search engine’? DuckDuckGo is not even in the top 10 pages.” This is completely legitimate feedback. Not a criticism. > Uber: Two months after this thread, Uber received an actual cease-and-desist from San Francisco — seemingly validating every skeptic. Travis Kalanick’s response was to ignore it and expand to five more cities. So they’ve literally said that the comments were correct here and still published it anyway. > AirBnB: “All my experiences with it as a user have been too unreliable to expect that it can scale to truly massive usability. I just don’t see it swallowing up the whole hotel industry.” Which is completely correct. > Stripe: “I really don’t get or see how Stripe is different? Why would I use it instead of PayPal, 2CheckOut, e-junkie, etc?” That’s a question, and a valid one at that. I gave up reading after that because of the obnoxious hijacking’s of the scrolling on mobile.

oscillik 8mo ago
Back before Google was huge, no-one used any of the other popular search engine names as a synonym for 'searched the world wide web'. We didn't say "I Yahoo!'d for recipes", or "I Excited the latest film releases". We can go back.
- hnlmorg 8mo ago
  The point isn’t that we can’t use generic adverbs. It’s that DDG’s name makes it unrealistic to use their brand as an adverb, which loses them more exposure.
  - x______________ 8mo ago
    So you're saying we are returning to normalcy without adding a corporate term to our every day language? "I searched the net and found..“
    - hnlmorg 8mo ago
      As I’ve said twice already now: DDG is a shitty name for those of us might want to use the company name as a verb. My comment is no more profound than that. I’m not making any comment about social norms. And nor am I saying it’s impossible to describe searching for content online without “verbing” the company name. I’m just saying DDG is hard to use as a verb. Edit: I did say “adverb” in my previous comment. Obviously I meant “verb”. My painkillers hadn’t kicked in yet so excuse the faux pas there.
      - x______________ 8mo ago
        In my experience, I've introduced DGG* to some colleagues and friends and later on, the feedback received was "I now use DGG". Not everything needs to be a jingle I suppose.. https://dgg.gg https://dgg.gg for those who prefer it better than ddg :)
        hnlmorg 8mo ago
        > In my experience, I've introduced DGG* to some colleagues and friends and later on, the feedback received was "I now use DGG" I use DDG too, but that’s not the point of the original comment. > Not everything needs to be a jingle I suppose.. While true, what’s also true is that jingles exist precisely because they are effective messaging. And DDG is missing out on that. Hence the comments about verbing.
    - Fnoord 8mo ago
      The net would lead me to ask: which net? Network? The proper term would be the world-wide web (WWW).
  - qbane 8mo ago
- ok123456 8mo ago
  They did "Ask Jeeves about" it.
  - junon 8mo ago
    Around the same time I do distinctly remember "babelfish it" for translations too.
pedrogpimenta 8mo ago
The obnoxious hijacking of the scrolling is present on desktop too. Can't read the small box because it'll scroll to the next project. Why?
hayleox 8mo ago
Yeah, I find the "we showed those idiots!" attitude kinda dumb when a lot of these concerns are completely real and valid. Like all of the comments about Tailwind are just "hey this is not a great way to do things"; it becoming popular doesn't disprove that. And for Warp, "No one should use a for-profit terminal emulator, especially one created by a VC-backed startup, full stop." -- I still agree with this! Also the claims they make about the success of some of these technologies are very dubious. TypeScript is definitely not used by 80% of JavaScript developers, not even close. I know your average WordPress or Drupal developer is not using a compiled language. Perhaps it is used by 80% of GitHub repositories, but there is a lot of code that is not posted to GitHub. And P.S. the scroll hijacking is no less annoying on desktop.
- nailer 8mo ago
  > No one should use a for-profit terminal emulator, especially one created by a VC-backed startup, full stop. I use Warp. I like it - notifications for failed processes, terminal pages so you can easily navigate between input+output pairs, and yes sometimes I'll use the AI rather than remember the syntax for every command. But just make it commercial open source, let me pay 20 bucks a year for a build. I think the company deserve to profit from their work (I'm not sure why people think that profit is bad) but I'm not going to use it as my editor.
tacitusarc 8mo ago
I would be willing to bet money they used AI to scrape and curate the comments. The justifications have that feeling of knowledge the sentiment is negative coupled with a lack of understanding about its accuracy.
thiht 8mo ago
The DuckDuckGo name and mascot are still the main reason I don't use it, they're just too dumb, in a not fun way
jaredklewis 8mo ago
So I guess the lesson is that ideas can turn into successful, profitable businesses even if there are a lot of legitimate criticisms of those ideas? Or maybe it is that HN tends to correctly point out flaws in ideas, but maybe doesn’t also point out the good points of ideas, which can give readers an incorrect impression that those projects can’t succeed? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder I suppose, but as for me, I would be very happy with myself if I had founded Dropbox, even if it isn’t a flawless business.
itemize123 8mo ago
yet those flaws didn't matter. qualitative right. quantitative wrong.

by hnlmorg 8mo ago

oscillik 8mo ago

Back before Google was huge, no-one used any of the other popular search engine names as a synonym for 'searched the world wide web'. We didn't say "I Yahoo!'d for recipes", or "I Excited the latest film releases". We can go back.

hnlmorg 8mo ago
The point isn’t that we can’t use generic adverbs. It’s that DDG’s name makes it unrealistic to use their brand as an adverb, which loses them more exposure.
- x______________ 8mo ago
  So you're saying we are returning to normalcy without adding a corporate term to our every day language? "I searched the net and found..“
  - hnlmorg 8mo ago
    As I’ve said twice already now: DDG is a shitty name for those of us might want to use the company name as a verb. My comment is no more profound than that. I’m not making any comment about social norms. And nor am I saying it’s impossible to describe searching for content online without “verbing” the company name. I’m just saying DDG is hard to use as a verb. Edit: I did say “adverb” in my previous comment. Obviously I meant “verb”. My painkillers hadn’t kicked in yet so excuse the faux pas there.
    - x______________ 8mo ago
      In my experience, I've introduced DGG* to some colleagues and friends and later on, the feedback received was "I now use DGG". Not everything needs to be a jingle I suppose.. https://dgg.gg https://dgg.gg for those who prefer it better than ddg :)
      - hnlmorg 8mo ago
        > In my experience, I've introduced DGG* to some colleagues and friends and later on, the feedback received was "I now use DGG" I use DDG too, but that’s not the point of the original comment. > Not everything needs to be a jingle I suppose.. While true, what’s also true is that jingles exist precisely because they are effective messaging. And DDG is missing out on that. Hence the comments about verbing.
  - Fnoord 8mo ago
    The net would lead me to ask: which net? Network? The proper term would be the world-wide web (WWW).
- qbane 8mo ago
ok123456 8mo ago
They did "Ask Jeeves about" it.
- junon 8mo ago
  Around the same time I do distinctly remember "babelfish it" for translations too.

pedrogpimenta 8mo ago

The obnoxious hijacking of the scrolling is present on desktop too. Can't read the small box because it'll scroll to the next project. Why?

hayleox 8mo ago

Yeah, I find the "we showed those idiots!" attitude kinda dumb when a lot of these concerns are completely real and valid. Like all of the comments about Tailwind are just "hey this is not a great way to do things"; it becoming popular doesn't disprove that. And for Warp, "No one should use a for-profit terminal emulator, especially one created by a VC-backed startup, full stop." -- I still agree with this! Also the claims they make about the success of some of these technologies are very dubious. TypeScript is definitely not used by 80% of JavaScript developers, not even close. I know your average WordPress or Drupal developer is not using a compiled language. Perhaps it is used by 80% of GitHub repositories, but there is a lot of code that is not posted to GitHub. And P.S. the scroll hijacking is no less annoying on desktop.

nailer 8mo ago
> No one should use a for-profit terminal emulator, especially one created by a VC-backed startup, full stop. I use Warp. I like it - notifications for failed processes, terminal pages so you can easily navigate between input+output pairs, and yes sometimes I'll use the AI rather than remember the syntax for every command. But just make it commercial open source, let me pay 20 bucks a year for a build. I think the company deserve to profit from their work (I'm not sure why people think that profit is bad) but I'm not going to use it as my editor.

tacitusarc 8mo ago

I would be willing to bet money they used AI to scrape and curate the comments. The justifications have that feeling of knowledge the sentiment is negative coupled with a lack of understanding about its accuracy.

thiht 8mo ago

The DuckDuckGo name and mascot are still the main reason I don't use it, they're just too dumb, in a not fun way

jaredklewis 8mo ago

So I guess the lesson is that ideas can turn into successful, profitable businesses even if there are a lot of legitimate criticisms of those ideas? Or maybe it is that HN tends to correctly point out flaws in ideas, but maybe doesn’t also point out the good points of ideas, which can give readers an incorrect impression that those projects can’t succeed? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder I suppose, but as for me, I would be very happy with myself if I had founded Dropbox, even if it isn’t a flawless business.

itemize123 8mo ago

yet those flaws didn't matter. qualitative right. quantitative wrong.