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Comment by gempir | Hacker News Reader

I personally hope DDG is going to namechange soon. I don't hate their name, but if you present the user with a choice of

- Google

- DuckDuckGo

- Yandex

Why would he click the "silly" option besides humor. It's a bad brand name IMO

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A few years ago (well probably over 20 by now) an older family member asked for my email address since I was going travelling and they wanted to keep in touch with this new-fangled technology they were about to "sign a contract" for. So I told them - over the landline phone - that it was {my name}@hotmail.com.

I never heard a thing from them for the entire time I was away.

So when I finally got back I paid a visit to show them photographs from my trip (I had a 1.3MB digital camera about the size of a small chicken back then). ANd I noticed a piece of paper stuck to the fridge and on it was written {my name}@hotmale.com

I can only imagine what sort of replies poor old Aunt Shirley received and wonder if she ever carried on any of the conversations!

As a very happy DDG user for many years now, I agree. I'm embarrassed to search things when anyone can see my screen, because I usually get weird comments about it.

I disagree, I think it needs a memorable, friendly-sounding name. I’ve had more luck selling it to people precisely because of the name. People like ducks in bow ties. Heck I like ducks in bow ties.

Two search engines from the EU we’re mentioned upthread. I have already forgotten their names — that’s a problem DDG doesn’t have. Remembering it’s about ducks is easily good enough to find it.

Google is a fairly silly name for a search engine as well but they seem to be doing ok for themselves

And Yahoo! was for quite a while the king of the internet.

It's also not very well targeted at global reach. I mean, I assume it's a reference to something in some language / locale? Or, is the humor just super absurdist, i.e. they might've called it ShoeShoeEat and it would've been equally "humorous"?

Assuming the first, it simply means they never imagined being used by people other than (I guess) Americans. Which is unfortunate, but forgiveable.

It's also a terrible finger twister on the keyboard. I wish they swapped duck.co and duckduckgo.com so I could search on duck.co and find dev info on the fingertwister.

You can use duck.com

Or, for true professionals, https://ddg.gg/.

That's almost the most "grey suit" URL possible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck,_duck,_goose

(I assume, anyway.) I happen to remember it from a drama lesson at school in the UK, but I'm pretty sure it's predominantly American, yes.

> (I assume, anyway.)

You assume correctly. The Wikipedia page for DuckDuckGo mentions it at the top, with two references.

I think the bigger issue is the use in common language as a verb. People say "Why don't you just google it?" and you go to Google to do so.

I sometimes say "You should duckduck the info" (or use a single duck) if I have time to explain what I mean.

Though, writing this, I guess people will become familiar with that term too if DDG gains enough traction.

it would be good to move away from using the search provider name as the verb and just use something more generic like "search it" or "look it up". there are so many acceptable search engines around these days anyway and it the most popular is going to change every decade it will be just annoying to have to learn a different verb each time

It's also duck.com :)

Woah I didn't know they got that back from Google! Google was the owner of duck.com for years

Yes, whenever I bring it up to friends the response is ridicule.

I never meet anyone who cared about the name, either they want to know how the results compare to Google, or that they love the little duck in the logo. It's not even technical people who ask about the quality of results.

The name simply never comes up as an issue.

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