DuckDuckGo Cooks Google's Goose

Well it uses Bing as it's index, so 44 million.

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.

Perhaps HN is at the tipping point that killed Digg? I hope not. Or at least that PG enforces his right to ban people over comments that can only be described as hash and not constructive.

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

> 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?