
USV invests in Duck Duck Go - twidlit
http://www.usv.com/2011/10/duck-duck-go.php
======
Matt_Cutts
Congrats on the funding, and looking forward to see which directions you take
Duck Duck Go next! I think DDG is a great example that there's still lots of
room for different approaches and philosophies in the search space.

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Hisoka
Did Google pay you to say this?

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Matt_Cutts
Nope.

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pork
And that's why we love you, Matt. (seriously)

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portman
For me, the killer Google lockin is autocomplete-with-suggest in Chrome.

I've come to completely rely on Google suggest as I type search queries into
my Chrome address bar.

I find that particularly when looking up API calls, I don't even need to
execute a search, I just need to rely on the wisdom of what everyone else on
the Internet is searching for.

Also, if just looking for the domain name for a company, you don't have to
execute a search, just start typing the company name. That skips the whole
results page, saving precious seconds hundreds of times per day.

I just tried switching to DDG and lasted all of 5 minutes because the lack of
autocomplete.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Thx! We're working on auto-complete, but you can get Google autocomplete w/
DuckDuckGo here: <http://ddgg.nfriedly.com/>

~~~
fred_nada
I doubt auto-complete should be your #1 focus...

There is a huge opportunity now more than ever to take over search.

The real goal of a search engine is to provide relevant results. Google has
100% lost site of this and this is where you and the rest of the players have
an opportunity.

Make your results 100% unbiased. Google's results are littered with their own
biased content coming from Places, Youtube, Google Books, etc.

No one wants to see that. Google has lost site of the user experience as they
need to grow revenues. It will ultimately come as a cost to them.

~~~
bh42222
You seem to be getting down-voted. Maybe it's the harsh tone on what they
should not focus on. But I agree with your second point. I've noticed a
decline in Google's search result quality. I suppose a large part of that is
SEO. Perhaps DDG can find better ways to counteract it.

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e1ven
I'm just trying to understand this move.. DDG has been running with ~1 dev for
3 years.. I know that they were adding a second dev, but why raise capital? I
don't see what this gets them, over continuing as a lifestyle bus.

~~~
hardtke
Using Yahoo BOSS or the Microsoft search feed, anyone can build a fully
functional, highly relevant "search engine" in a couple of weeks. "Search
engine" is really a metasearch engine. Given enough traffic, you can syndicate
a sponsored link feed and generate 3-4 cents per search. In principle, it is a
great business. The place where all have failed is in the non-coerced
acquisition of users -- everybody has to pay for users somehow, and by the
time you've bought a one-time user you are forced to give them a terrible
product (all ads, no quality).

What Gabriel has figured out and no one else has is how to build a search
brand that people trust and are willing utilize. He seems to have a loyal core
of users that come to his site without him paying on a per-search basis.
Search quality, as perceived by the user, in as much about brand trust as it
is about algorithmic quality. Too many companies focus on tech first and hope
that the brand trust will come later (SearchMe, Blekko). Gabriel has actually
invented a viable search business model. That's much more novel than his
technology.

The interesting question is whether DuckDuckGo's organic user acquisition
model can scale with additional resources. They put up one billboard in San
Francisco and got a huge ROI -- will that work elsewhere?

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rkudeshi
Love what Gabriel's doing with DDG.

Assuming Apple maintains its policy of only allowing the Big 3 (Google, Bing,
Yahoo) as default search engines in iOS, anyone know a way to manually add
custom search engines?

I know DDG has an app, but it's not an ideal solution for everyday use.

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slowpoke
>Assuming Apple maintains its policy of only allowing the Big 3 (Google, Bing,
Yahoo) as default search engines in iOS

I know I will probably get downvoted for this, but here you have another
glaring example why closed and locked systems are retarded and should be
frowned upon by each and every sane man.

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untog
Each and every sane man? I don't think so. The number of people that _want_ to
use DDG is still tiny, for now. So for a great many people, the tradeoff for
something that "just works" (and my iPhone "worked" better than my current
Android phone) is worth it.

~~~
slowpoke
The fact that you are willing to trade away freedom for meaningless and short-
term convenience does not necessarily qualify you as a sane man.

Also, "blocks basic functionality for absolutely no reason whatsoever" is not
- or rather, should not - be in any definition of "just works".

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untog
Good grief.

"trade away freedom for meaningless and short-term convenience"

Is such a loaded sentence I don't even know where I am supposed to start.
What, exactly, is the definition of "meaningless" here?

Customising your search engine beyond a choice of search providers that >95%
of users use is _not_ basic functionality. Not by any definition. Apple have
demonstrated time and time again that they DO cater for the majority (whether
the majority know what they want at the time or not).

Yes, Apple locks stuff down. If you don't like it, don't buy an Apple product.
This is not a complex issue. If someone considers it a more valuable use of
their time to have a device that works better but with fewer options, that is
their choice. They are not insane.

~~~
slowpoke
> What, exactly, is the definition of "meaningless" here?

Convenience means nothing without freedom.

> Customising your search engine beyond a choice of search providers that >95%
> of users use is not basic functionality.

Oh yes it is. Every sort of customization and configuration is basic
functionality, and there is absolutely zero reason to deny it to the user.
Worse, you (and many others) excuse this stupidity with some bullshit
marketing mumbo jumbo that probably not even SJ himself believed, and I'm
honestly sad to see how well it seems to have worked.

>If you don't like it, don't buy an Apple product.

This isn't about buying or not buying an Apple product. This isn't even about
Apple specifically. This is about the atrocity that are closed systems, and
the need for them to vanish into history and never come up again.

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DanBC
I'm very pleased for Duck Duck Go. Lots of things about Google are
frustrating, and it's great to have an alternative.

They're not quite there, but I hope they manage it soon.

~~~
eric-hu
Out of curiosity, what are your frustrations?

I have used DDG and found it to be amazing for some searches early on. I felt
the same about Wolfram Alpha. Both still seem awesome in their own way, but I
haven't been frustrated enough to switch from Google as my default search.

I will say that as I've done more development, I've added more of my own
direct site searches to Firefox as keywords for sites like StackOverflow,
Wikipedia, Youtube and the Rails API. Searching said sites becomes "ctrl-L,
so/wp/yt/railsapi <search term>". If I ever see myself having to dev on
separate machines, I'd learn the DDG keywords for API searches.

~~~
DanBC
You used to be able to group search terms using () on Google. It appears that
you can't do that any longer.

Google will sometimes substitute words for you, and say "did you mean X?".
That's gently frustrating; I'm sure it's great for most people but not for me.

Worse, sometimes google will sub words and say "Search for X instead of Y".

Sometimes, and this is what really bugs me, is you'll include three or four
words in the search term, and Google will silently drop one. I only find out
when I open the URL, and having wasted a few minutes noodling around the
document, I try to find my word using a ctrl F and I discover it's not there.

Here's an example (that appears to work now): (I'm fully aware that maybe I'm
doing it wrong, and I welcome advice about best current practice for Google
searching. (For example, did Google ever group words in brackets? When did
they stop doing that?))

    
    
        +("os x" OR "osx") +temperature +(console OR "command line")
    
    

I expected this to return URLs that: 1) MUST CONTAIN either "os x" or "osx"
and 2) MUST CONTAIN either "console" or "command line" and 3) MUST CONTAIN the
word "temperature".

When I was trying it the first page of results did not contain the word
temperature - obviously very annoying.

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eric-hu
I know what you mean about dropping words. If Google did group by brackets, it
was a feature I never learned (though I haven't browsed the guide too often).
That search style reminds me of Craigslist.

What's interesting is that I pasted in your query and the first page had all
but 2 results with temperature in it. Strange.

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jakarta
I tried Duck Duck Go a bit today, switching it as my default search engine for
chrome. I liked the search results, they definitely seemed better -- but the
major feature it lacked was being able to get instant results right in the
search bar.

I do a lot of on the fly math in the search bar because of my job and Duck
Duck Go just totally disrupts my work flow for that, so I ended up switching
back to Google after the day was over.

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somecola
Just offering a show of support for this Philadelphia startup. Congrats to
Gabe and team.

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dr_
I'd like to see more search engines come into the picture, but from using
this, I'm not sure I understand how the results are more relevant than what
Google provides. If you type in the name of someone well known, you get a box
with some info about them - mostly from wikipedia,but couple of other sources.
If you are relatively unknown, the results are the typical linkedin,
spoke.com, myliving, etc. etc.

For someone to really switch over from Google, the results cannot be as good
as. Bing was as good as, and it hasn't really worked out so well for them.
With as good as - there's no compelling reason to switch. It has to be
substantially better, and I don't see it but I could be completely wrong. I'd
be happy for someone to reply to this with example search terms where the
results from DDG are far better than what Google provides.

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bluethunder
Just had my very own aha! moment while searching for my name with DDG.
Excellent investment.

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Corrado
This is great news! I have tried to wean myself from the Google teat several
times over the past couple of years without success. DDG has been the one that
has gotten me closest and with the latest Google focus stealing madness I'm
giving it another go.

I just performed a search on DDG and I can use my keyboard arrow keys in a
sane manor again. So far, so good!

~~~
eru
You can even go back to Google with "!g search term" (without quotes). Useful
also for Google images with !gi and similar things.

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pathik
Congrats, Gabriel.

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raivo
If you switch to DDG but still wonder what G might have shown as a result,
here's a little extension for Chrome that will show G's results (disclaimer:
I'm the author). <http://raivoratsep.com/177/duckduckgo-transition-assistant/>

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sandieman
Excellent investment. Love ddg

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mrschwabe
Gabriel is perhaps the most principled, friendly, fast thinking entrepreneur
in tech today. Awesome to see this investment and, as a DDG user, excited to
see how the team will take it to the next level.

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ericdykstra
Congratulations! And welcome to you and DDG to the USV family.

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starnix17
Is DDG still just one person? I assume he'll be building a bigger team then
right?

Very cool that this is the Philly area, hopefully he doesn't move elsewhere.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
We are a few people now, though officially just two employees:
<http://ye.gg/inbound>

No plans to move. In fact, we're renting our first office in Paoli, PA (right
off SEPTA/Amtrak) starting in Dec.

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revorad
Congrats Gabriel! You're a real inspiration.

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iamelgringo
Gabe, we're all really proud of you, and happy for this next great step.
Congrats.

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joshu
Hooray!

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startupcto
I know there's a lot involved with changing but I recommend not necessarily a
change of the brand DuckDuckGo but the domain name. It really ... seriously
and I am not exaggerating, it's DuckDuckGo.com is unbearably uncomfortable to
type. Now that you have funding, considering getting DDG.com or duckgg.com or
something.. just not the full name.

FYI. Google.com is really easy to type.

Update: Thanks for pointing out ddg.gg

~~~
Herald_MJ
<http://ddg.gg>

~~~
brador
I'd say that's even worse. Look, if the tech is good enough it should survive
a total rebrand. That's what they need right now. Without it, if they're too
arrogant/stuckup/cocky/egotistical to make the change they're f'd anyway.

It's no longer a polite suggestion, it's a necessity. If they want to take the
next step, they will need to rebrand and now is the perfect time to do it.

~~~
eru
Why do they need a rebrand?

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sscheper
The funny thing is that DuckDuckGo will at some point have to ditch their
"Carbon Ads" in favor of Google's Paid Ad Feed. Basically, DDG will become a
super affiliate of Google.

