

DuckDuckGo Cooks Google's Goose - bastardsage
http://www.thestreet.com/story/11550975/1/the-digital-skeptic-duckduckgo-cooks-googles-goose.html

======
tferris
What I like about DDG:

\- Somebody is trying to improve the search engine space which is too long
dominated by just one party (which admittedly makes a damn good job)

What I don't like:

\- I don't see any improvements

\- Don't like their name

\- Crappy logo

\- Too long domain name (with some skills and little money, a great 4-letter
dot com is a no brainer)

\- The product is awkward to use: the entire UI is the #1 reason to leave and
aesthetically not pleasing, too many colors (red, blue, green), no CI,
favicons are distracting, screen real estate isn't used effectively, mouse
over effects are distracting and feel like clumsy Web 2.0 sites in 2005 =>
even Bing's new interface is very much nicer

\- Search results got better but seem to lack any relevance algorithm such as
Google's Pagerank

\- Shortcuts are nice but more some kind of an gimmick than real revolution
and they are not helpful at all because people who do not use DDG regularly
forget them: either they have to be displayed all the time somewhere next to
the results or directly on the landing page or they have to be consistent and
expressive as Google's syntax which is "site:<site_to_be_searched> query"—if
this shortcuts are one of DDG's main features then they have to tell it.

\- No autocomplete, no instant search

I think DDG's and the team main problem is a heavy lack of product vision—they
just think search is a great business model (yes it is) and they want to do
something to just be better than the market leader. And this 'something' is
their biggest weakness, they just don't know what to improve, on what to
focus. Google's search is so good, that it's gonna hard to improve but still
there are some fields where Google can be beaten (anonymous search, irrelevant
results for longer queries because of SEO gaming/blackhat). Instead they just
brought up a really ugly design and the user wonders all the 15 seconds he's
exploring DDG why he should use DDG.

DDG has to pick one of Google's weaknesses and focus just on this and they
have also to position DDG accordingly and communicate this focus/USP heavily.
Otherwise DDG is like G+ to FB, just a bad copy.

I can image how hard it must be to build a search engine from scratch, there's
just too much tech involved and crawling all the web could take months even if
you have hundreds of servers (imagine: Google crawls even smaller sites with
more than 20,000 pages per day (!), how does anyone want to build such
crawling power with little VC money and some hype posts from Fred Wilson??).
But maybe that's the chance: a new player has to focus on something _small_ —a
feature, a content niche, whatever, just a MVP that is in its core much, much
better than Google. Building and promising the entire Google search experience
will lead to fail.

~~~
jaems33
Google has four colours in their name.

The length of the url isn't that big of a deal to me. I just type 'du' and the
first url autosuggested is duckduckgo.

~~~
tferris
> Google has four colours in their name.

Yes, but just in their logo, that's ok because the rest of Google stands
behind the expressive logo, is clear, has lots of white space, decent colors
etc.

Now go to DDG: read header, blue search button on result page and green search
button on landing, what the heck?? Strange colors in the text results and this
ugly duck, sorry but getting a really nice duck on freelancer.com or 99design
from a talented artist is a job of 500 USD.

> The length of the url isn't that big of a deal to me. I just type 'du' and
> the first url autosuggested is duckduckgo.

No, it's a big deal even if your browser provides autocomplete, The domain is
everything: their brand, their name and will used anywhere and all the time.
Just saying "check duckduckgo for searching this and that" or "i duckduckgoed
my name" to your friend or colleague is too much communication overhead, too
many syllables for something which is too important in our lifes nowadays.

And those both points bug me, because if they haven't done their basic
homework on the frontend side who tells me that they done them on the backend
side where it is more important (relevance algorithm)—why should I trust DDG's
search results if they are not able to setup a proper brand communcation and
interface?

~~~
glesica
Google's search button is grey on the landing page and blue on the results
page. Does anyone actually click the search button? Heck, does anyone actually
even go to the landing page? I don't think I've ever actually used DDG's
landing page, I just use the Chrome address bar...

------
Cyranix
I'm quite surprised at the amount of vitriol for DDG in the comments here. I
switched many months ago -- probably nearing a year now -- and haven't looked
back.

I definitely appreciate the effort that has been put into privacy and
simplicity. The zero-click box has come in handy at times (though I often find
myself clicking through the box anyway, in which case it's a glorified top
result, and that's okay with me). My most used feature by far, though, has
been the bang syntax, to reference the Java API or search HN or check Stack
Overflow or pull up a Google map or explore Wikipedia. I think the bang syntax
experience might be frustrating for people who navigate to DDG and _then_ type
in a bang query... but if you've got DDG set as your browser's default search,
the bang syntax is a nice timesaver: open a new tab (autofocus into the URL
bar), type in your site-targeted query, hit Enter, done. I save one page load
every time I do a site-specific search, compared to what my experience would
be on any other search engine, and considering the proportion of my browser
time spent in searches, I think that's a decent amount of time saved. [I mean,
there are people on HN who quibble over how many keystrokes they can save in
their terminal aliases, after all!]

That doesn't mean I think DDG is perfect; my major annoyance is results from
content farms (same as any major search engine), but I'm hard pressed to find
a search engine that weeds out content farms without sacrificing the features
I like from DDG. The name doesn't roll as trippingly off the tongue as some
other sites, but is it really that much worse than any of the other search
engines (or names of YC companies, for that matter) and does the name affect
my ability to use the site?

As you hyperbolically express your disgust towards DDG, please remember that
you don't get any points in life for hating a product that you aren't forced
to use and that other people find helpful.

------
nostromo
The comments on HN in the past few weeks have been so mean spirited. What
happened? I chalked Facebook up to schadenfreude -- but DDG?

~~~
huhtenberg
Just look at the contents of the front page. It's no longer Hacker News, it's
mainstream Tech News with a bit of nerdy sprinkle. The older audience is
heavily diluted with those who push pseudo-tech cruft (like a woman suing a
VC) to the front page, the same people who also comment more and don't really
get the spirit of the board. HN _is_ at its tipping point. I am eagerly
waiting for HN2... that's assuming one hasn't been started already and kept
private.

~~~
pg
<http://news.ycombinator.com/classic> shows what the frontpage would look like
if we only counted the votes of people who joined HN in the first year. It
looks pretty much the same.

The comments are declining though, I admit that.

~~~
staunch
I'd guess it needs to show only stuff that was _submitted_ by those people to
be really useful.

------
andywhite37
Am I the only one that struggles with the name "DuckDuckGo?" The
unprofessional name makes it really hard for me to want to use the service,
even if it has nice targeted results that may be more relevant or higher
quality than Google's. Maybe "unprofessional" is not the right adjective, but
I can't find the right one. I have the same problem with "Bing" - the logo is
just such an eyesore, and the marketing is so obnoxious ("Decision Engine?").

~~~
EternalFury
Relevant search results is all I care about when I use a search engine. (Oh,
and I don't see how "Google" sounds professional.)

~~~
andywhite37
I agree that the content is what matters, but I just feel like it's a crying
shame that a service like DuckDuckGo will never be taken seriously because of
its name.

~~~
adventureful
Same problem Mamma.com and Dogpile have (not comparing search quality).

------
lambda
I tried setting my main search engine to DuckDuckGo once.

I switched back to Google after trying to search for maps and local results.
One of the really important features that Google offers me is Google Maps. Not
having that kills DuckDuckGo for me, even if their normal search results were
to work just as well.

~~~
zck
In DuckDuckGo, searching for _map! place I'm going to_ redirects you to google
maps with the same query.

~~~
lambda
Yes, but with Google, I don't have to think about that; I just type "place I'm
going" (which is frequently copied & pasted, so I'm not even typing, and
adding "map! " would be a separate step), and I'm done. And it's not just for
maps; it's also local results, like when you search for "japanese food some
place" and get a list of several places with a map and aggregated ratings. For
instance, when I do "japanese food place I live" on Google, I get a bunch of
relevant results with star ratings, and the best one is on top. When I do the
same on DDG, I get links to several other restaurant aggregator sites like
GrubHub, Yelp, Urbanspoon, and so on, plus one link to a restaurant that only
lasted a few months before closing.

If I'm going to do "map! place name" in order to get map results, I might as
well just use Google; DDG isn't adding anything. Google is a place where I can
type "thing I'm looking for", and get, most of the time, the answer I'm
looking for, while with DDG that's just not true.

------
rsingel
Actually today DDG was totally useful. I was trying to find a result for
"Marketly LLC DMCA" trying to run down the top company filing DMCA reports
with Google. Google was useless. DDG got me to a Chilling Effects page. Lots
of time when I use !G but today, DDG saved the day.

------
calinet6
This would be wonderfully true if only their search results were anywhere near
as good.

------
barik
I've become a loyal fan of DuckDuckGo. In November of 2011, just for the heck
of it, I decided to e-mail support@duckduckgo.com about an issue (the
difficulty of performing academic searches). I was extremely impressed when I
received a response from Gabriel Weinberg himself. I have been using
DuckDuckGo exclusively ever since.

At first, I had a lot of reservations about switching and found myself using
g! quite often. Then I realized that I wasn't necessary more impressed with
Google results, I was just __used__ to it. For instance, I hated DDG's zero-
click info sources, because I would mentally ignore it. It seemed like a waste
of space. Now it's the first thing I look at when the search results show up
-- and it's generally what I want.

------
einhverfr
The question I have is as to their business model.

There's a saying--- if you aren't buying a product, you are the product. So
they have one paid link per page. Is that enough to make them profitable
eventually?

~~~
thematt
I don't see why not. Their costs are probably minimal (some servers +
salaries). Beyond that they're just leveraging all the work of Bing and
others. Also, they've taken barely any VC money, so it's not like there's a
huge return expected in the first place.

------
blantonl
Ok, so how does DuckDuckGo generate revenue?

~~~
jrockway
By selling ad space.

------
fchollet
DuckDuckGo has a tasteless name, tasteless logo, and awful webdesign. That
alone is enough for me not to switch.

I believe the idea of integrating and presenting results from various
specialized sources has a bright future in search, but DDG doesn't handle it
very well right now. It might be in the future Google will leverage the same
logic to improve its search experience. Google's "Knowledge graph" seems to me
to be a step in that direction.

And when Google does it, chances are that it will outperform years of DDG's
effort in mere weeks.

------
damian2000
I just tried it - it rocks ... and the people saying their logo or website
design sucks are kidding themselves.

------
jebblue
It looks like a cheap knock-off of Google and doesn't give me the hit count
for "Ubuntu" (or I missed it). Google gives me over 200 million, Bing over 44
million.

~~~
thematt
How is that in any way a useful statistic? Who cares about 200+ million
results vs. 44 million? Most people don't look at the fifth result, let alone
the 200 millionth one. What matters is the first page and whether those top
results are the best and most relevant for a given query.

~~~
jebblue
It's useful to me, I've looked at it for over a decade, I want to get a good
feeling that my search engine is doing everything it can to scour the Internet
and is not filtering my search results out, they prioritize and that's cool.

------
sevenstar
Go DDG!

------
adgar
I've never seen someone describe a middleman so enthusiastically.

Not that there isn't enormous added value in presentation or that duckduckgo
has a poor offering at all - but your search result quality will always be
limited to that of your partner-competitors' (Bing index in this case). And
the more you succeed, the more expensive your partnership grows: see Netflix.

Wait a minute. I just remembered the other added value: privacy. Now that I
think about it, I know a few middlemen/middlewomen that I'd describe
enthusiastically myself!

~~~
duckduckgouser
I think middleman is a bit harsh. DuckDuckGo is providing a service. It isn't
something that someone else can easily do themselves.

~~~
tferris
Which service?

Taking the Bing API, building a frontend, a parser for few shortcuts and get
some VCs to blog about me?

Sounds like a project from a 48h hackathon.

~~~
boyter
It does, but Gabriel (the guy behind it) described the issue with that
approach quite well here, [http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/11/code-
icebergs.ht...](http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/11/code-
icebergs.html)

Keep in mind quite a few people have done this before, bitcircle, 4hoursearch
etc... spring to mind but DDG has actually done some innovations in the space
and is still around. The fact that people know it will still be around next
year encourages you to at least play with it.

------
suking
I'm so sick of these DDG stories. The truth is no one uses them, 99.9999% of
people outside SV have never heard of them and currently there is no reason to
switch to them.

~~~
codeka
The thing I don't understand is, for all that DDG does, there's really nothing
that Google and/or Bing couldn't just copy wholesale if it were really that
great.

The ONLY thing DuckDuckGo can do that Google won't is "privacy" (maybe "less
ads" is another thing). While that might be reason enough for some people to
switch, it's barely going to make a dent in Google's dominance.

~~~
lubujackson
Reading all these comments made me wonder... If DDG uses the Bing API and is
passing the search term to whatever search-related text ads they show, that's
a pretty big blind spot for the privacy advocates. Because Bing still gets
your search term and so does the ad network. What they don't get is your IP
address, but as the AOL search dump proved, sometimes search terms alone are
enough to identify someone. It's still a nice feature, but I wouldn't consider
it a solved issue.

~~~
elehack
Bing gets everyone's search terms merged together, with no way to distinguish
individual users. To Bing, it looks like one user doing a bajillion searches
on all manner of topics.

In the AOL case, while IP addresses were stripped, users were identified with
unique keys so you could see individual users' search sequences. That is not
the case here.

------
adventureful
Nice to see DuckDuckGo get more media exposure, however that article was
disappointingly short and lite. Seemed to cut off abruptly.

