8 ms·

TL;DR: DuckDuckGo, a search-engine known for privacy, has a public XMPP service that promises the same level of privacy as their searches. They also have an XMP

• xwowsersx 13y ago
  Seriously! I love DDG, but the name has got to go!!
  • eterm 13y ago
    For some reason the name always makes me think of 'toilet duck' toiler cleaner. The name alone puts me off to a large degree, although the way it seems to go out its way to say "we're not google" puts me off too. Overall I just don't like the way they advertise, I don't feel like it should be appealing to the sort of person I am.
• yegg 13y ago
  FWIW, we've had both for a long time (years). We just started a company blog and this was an early post. Thanks for using DDG!
  • casca 13y ago
    Hi Gabriel, Thanks for what you've done with DDG. Privacy is a difficult sell when everyone else is offering "free" services in return for it. Is there any chance that you could create another brand with a name that I could get non-tech people to use? It could be exactly the same everything except the name. The number of times I've convinced someone to switch until they hear the name...
    • yegg 13y ago
      People have a love/hate relationship with the name. It really resonates well with women in general and K-12. The most push-back on it being too "non-professional" comes from the UK by far. No immediate plans to change the name or branding, but duly noted! We really do appreciate and consider all feedback.
      • thejsjunky 13y ago
        I can't help associating it with the "ducks" in Old City and those obnoxious quacker things they give everyone. They used to drive me nuts when I was working by their route.
      • koko775 13y ago
        Consider that the people who have just the "hate" relationship with the name aren't sticking around. I want to like DDG and I've switched to it from time to time, but the thing that always gets me is that I loathe the branding. I'm really, really sorry, about that and I appreciate what you're doing with DDG, and wish the branding didn't turn me off to a peculiar degree, but Google is such an easy choice and it doesn't get on my nerves. I know that I'm an outlier in this, but I don't think it's altogether a completely impossible or uncommon reaction to be turned off by the name.
        • yegg 13y ago
          If we had settings where you could remove the branding, would that help? Note we have some already: https://duckduckgo.com/settings/ https://duckduckgo.com/settings/
          • deleted 13y ago
            [deleted]
          • JonnieCache 13y ago
            It's not about the name as an abstract concept, or as something you have to look at on the screen. It's saying it out loud that's the problem. It's a perfectly good symbol for representing the concept, but it's not a very good word for using. It's awkward. Thinking about it, the reason UK people don't like it might be to do with the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glottal_stop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glottal_stop I imagine it's easier to soften the Ks with an american accent. For an english person putting two of them in a row like that is just, shall we say, taking the piss. Perhaps it's not specifically the glottal stop, but there is certainly some articulatory havoc going on when I try to say your search engine's name out loud. I have to bounce my tongue off the roof of my mouth twice in quick succession in a way that's never normally required and it feels quite unnatural. (Google, on the other hand, is literally fun to say, even though it's a silly word, and hardly professional.)
• ronaldx 13y ago
  do you think it's harder than 'Google' to recommend to non-technical people? just curious.
  • adlpz 13y ago
    Google is an abstract nonsensical word, so it fits in the whole internet thing. DuckDuckGo sounds childish and stupid, therefore mustn't be very good.
    • adam74 13y ago
      I thought "Google" sounded childish and silly the first time I heard it. It made me think of googly eyes.
      • adlpz 13y ago
        Well yes, Google does sound a bit silly, but seriously, DuckDuckGo... that's pushing it.
  • TheMaverick 13y ago
    DDG wanted to get duck.com, but Google won't let them have it after getting it through an acquisition. A rebrand to duck.com would help DDG a lot. But it just redirects to google.com now, so anyone typing duck.com by mistake are redirected to google.
• vy8vWJlco 13y ago
  I don't think the name is a negative. It's made of simple words that people can spell. It's cute/friendly (just like "google"). It has a mascot. I think the energy that would be needed to "re-brand" to overcome imagined difficulties that I would attribute to more to normal lack of familiarity would be better spent improving the product further to address search coverage and context/language intelligence. I have found it easy to recommend to non-technical people. (In the early days of Google, I had to spell it for people too... at least this is 3 common words.) I think the emphasis on converting non-technical people is also often misplaced. Non-technical people don't care about any of the issues that lead to development. The number of people using Skype shows most people don't care about privacy. That doesn't mean DDG's offering is not unique or valuable, it's just that the people to recognize that value will not be the majority by any stretch - but, it never is - and converting people who have the hardest time understanding that value should be a low priority IMHO. In promoting privacy, DDG captures the union of early adopters, technically literate, and digital evangelists - all groups that are most likely to understand as well as turn around and effectively promote it (for example, by setting the homepage and default search engine after cleaning up a system for a friend)... This is the crowd to keep happy (without raising the barrier to entry either... for example, late adopters will not use bangs or care that you search Hacker News too, but the early adopters appreciate it greatly). These were the same types of people promoting the early Internet to the masses, who barely saw the point in having a computer. In that vein, one of the best things for DDG, IMHO, would be to make setting ALL browsers as easy as possible (homepage+default search). (I know I'm not saying anything new...) There are add-ons for individual browsers, for example (which I tend not to use, because I like vanilla installations without extensions to upgrade later), and conventional methods (which I prefer, but have been de-emphasized in favor of add-ons), but further-centralizing the process of applying these customizations would be nice. For example, I'd rather download a single native app or portable script (WSH) that was capable of searching out browsers and - through check-boxes - setting their homepage and search (ideally to the SSL search), via the browser-native method (or add-on method), in one pass (usable offline, and ideally at an easy-to-type URL like "duckduckgo.com/tools"). This would help high-turn-over scenarios like tech-support shops, which has the chance to affect the most users but are also under pressure, so want to do the minimum possible (Idea: actively promote to these places). On a different note, I'm curious how the costs associated with this XMPP service are expected to grow and how it is seen from the business side. If 100000 people started to use it for messaging, would it become too burdensome and be discontinued, or is there a plan for cost-recovery (or is the ddg bot enough of a case)?
• lifeguard 13y ago
  Add jitsi for PKI and ZRTP encryption! https://jitsi.org/ https://jitsi.org/
• polymatter 13y ago
  In case nobody else has heard yet, you can use (http://ddg.gg http://ddg.gg) as a shorthand for duckduckgo.com
  • D9u 13y ago
    Terrific! Thanks for the link. I've been wanting a shorter domain name for duckducgo ever since I first began using it. I noticed this morning that http://lmddgtfy.net/ http://lmddgtfy.net/ now takes you to the developer's blog page instead of to duckduckgo. Many thanks for the share!
• pwenzel 13y ago
  > I personally am a fan of DDG and use it as my primary search engine. I do wish they'd change their name as it makes it difficult to recommend to non-technical people. They should really just rename it to Duck Duck Gray Duck.
  • protomyth 13y ago
    no sir, that would be Duck Duck Goose Non-technical people I tell the name to remember it more for the "controversy".
    • pwenzel 13y ago
      There's no controversy in Minnesota, where "Gray Duck" is universally accepted. ;-) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck,_duck,_goose http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck,_duck,_goose
      • stinkytaco 13y ago
        I went to school in Minnesota and distinctly remember playing Duck, Duck, Goose in kindergarden. This was some years ago, but I would not say there is a lack of controversy in Minnesota. But then, I always say "teach the controversy" :)
• plainOldText 13y ago
  I agree the name is not that great – I know others might disagree – But I once told a friend of mine about DDG, to which he replied: "DuckDuckGo? I would never use a search engine named like that." I know it's shallow to judge a product/service by its name, but for most people hearing the name for the first time counts as an initial encounter with the product/service, and since that can leave an impression, it matters a lot.
  • omaranto 13y ago
    What search engine did that person use? Altavista, maybe, if it still exists? all the others have silly names: Google, Bing, Dogpile, Blekko, Ask Jeeves, ...
  • marssaxman 13y ago
    DDG is my default search engine now, but I avoided it for a couple of years because of the silly name.
• Lerc 13y ago
  It really bothers me that people are so hung up on appearance. For any media coverage about Lady Gaga, you are more likely to see column inches dedicated to deriding her appearance than you are to discussing her music. When the Occupy protests were at their height, there were so many comments along the lines of "They may have a valid point, but no-one is going to listen to them if they dress like that" All too often I see comments criticizing appearance as being something that indicates their value to be less. frequently it comes in the form of "I know it has value, but you should change the appearance so others can see". I think this is counter-productive. Appearing business-like may make more people believe you are business-actual, but it also reinforces the attitude that means people judge the business-like as business-actual. It may be good for you but bad for the world. Those who wear the right suits and walk the right walk but cannot actually do the right work can deceive a lot of people. I think pushing back against this attitude is a worthy endeavour. - Neil Graham, Screaming Duck Software.
• tzury 13y ago
  I would go for both, a name and logo change. A serious product, made by serious people, focuses on serious issue (privacy) shall look like one.