Google competitor DuckDuckGo says it's getting shut out • Hacker News Board

Re: Google competitor DuckDuckGo says it's getting shut out

#121

Post by othermaciej » Thu, Nov 22, 2012, 9:15 AM UTC

neya wrote: post #106

davemel37 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think their name is one of the strongest things going for them...and Google being more than a search engine to be the very reason Bing is gaining market share and brands like DDG actually have a shot at competing. Regarding the name...it is unique and very MEMORABLE (repetition is one of the four mental glues.) It has just as few syllables as Microsoft, and is super easy to pronounce... From a branding per…

I just visited duckduckgo.com again (though full of hesitation) and as a designer I can tell you: 1) Their design is very complex and un-appealing with no simplicity that a SE should posses (For Eg. Google, Bing have a very simple design). They don't design Search engines to be simple because they like it that way, because they have invested a huge amount of money in researching about which colors and patterns work b…

What's complex about the design? The main page seems brutally simple compared to Google or Bing. And the search results pages do not seem to have more interactable elements than Google/Bing. What is your metric of simplicity here?

Your one example is use of the color red, which may be an issue of taste or branding but not really simplicity. (And there are reasonably popular sites with very prominent red elements, like cnn.com)

Re: Google competitor DuckDuckGo says it's getting shut out

#122

Post by bifrost » Thu, Nov 22, 2012, 9:16 AM UTC

DDG is my default search engine, I use it every day. It is vastly superior to using Google, and they don't track my searches, I don't really need any better reasons to use it. It is really annoying that I can't easily switch my default search engine in my phone, especially because typing things into the text entry bars basically feeds them straight into Google, which basically publicizes all I do on my phone. I can't stand Chrome as a browser on my laptops, so I don't use it, but if I did I probably would want to be able to switch my search engine as easily as you can in FF. I expect to see antitrust movement soon.

Re: Google competitor DuckDuckGo says it's getting shut out

#123

Post by icelancer » Thu, Nov 22, 2012, 9:19 AM UTC

shawn-butler wrote: post #114

icelancer wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MS spent gazillions of dollars trying to do it with Bing and isn't close yet. Google is simply the best service out there by a very wide margin. When people close the gap, there will be a viable alternative. There's no cosmic law that says there needs to be an alternative to product X.

I have no access to the internal budgets of Microsoft so I can't really comment intelligently. I am a cross-platform smartphone developer so I use wp7, wp8 as well as Google APIs daily in order to do my work and bing doesn't seem so bad for consumer oriented searches. YMMV. For the queries I execute, I agree their results are subpar. But I feel compelled to respond. If there is no alternative to Google for something…

"Need" implies that it requires state intervention on Google's products/services; that somehow Google's position as the market leader in... whatever it is exactly we care about (search, I guess) is a very bad thing.

Except that market forces are what they are, and there is no compelling reason to compare Google who has tons of backups and with many competing services (though most are bad) to the Library of Alexandria which had a very concrete single point of failure - which is the entire problem the Internet was developed to solve.

Google having competitors is good for all of us. But it doesn't "need" one, as if we must forcibly install a competitor in... well, whatever area you think they "need" a competitor in (Google services quite a wide range of areas).

>Their business model is approaching that of a virus infecting a host. They enter an external market and utilize their near monopoly in web search/advertising to drive the value proposition for competitors to near-zero. And that gives me pause. It is like Starbucks opening in every local branch of your public library.

Google horizontally integrates by buying companies and reforming them into their own services.

And Starbucks' share price has been significantly reduced from its high earlier this year. (And recovered after losing 50% of its market share by closing a lot of its unprofitable branches some years ago.)

It's a self-correcting problem.

Re: Google competitor DuckDuckGo says it's getting shut out

#124

Post by zem » Thu, Nov 22, 2012, 9:24 AM UTC

elssar wrote: post #66

Just for kicks I searched for 'search engine' on Google - once on Chrome(logged into my Google account), and once on Firefox(not logged in). Didn't get Google on the first page on either searche, did get google custom search engine though(which is a completely different thing). Duck Duck Go was in the first page both the times, as were Bing, Yahoo, some engine called Dogpile(never heard of 'em but it was #2 on Chrome…

dogpile was pretty big back in the day. they were the first popular "meta search engine", aggregating results from several other search engines.

Re: Google competitor DuckDuckGo says it's getting shut out

#125

Post by cookiecaper » Thu, Nov 22, 2012, 9:26 AM UTC

davemel37 wrote: post #111

Surio wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree with everything you say, except ". By complaining about Google, they appear to be in the game of competing as an equal search engine," The nature of his exact complaint is that Google is capitalising on people's confusion with the name "Duck something", and then proceeding to capitalise on this confusion (in a somewhat sneaky way) by redirecting "potential DDG users" back to their own page. >> they need to poun…

Whether Google did this or not is hardly the point. The point is that DDG can never win if they lump themselves into the same category as Google. The confusion they complain about, and monopoly is DDG claiming we are the same as Google. This is the not the play that will win them the west.

I totally disagree that DDG has to replicate the Google service stack to become successful. I am actually more inclined to use an alternate engine for my searches considering how much info Google already has on me, and how difficult it would be to distance myself from that profile if the time arised. I have already disabled Web History and Search History, but I feel more comfortable using a totally separate service.

I still use Google as primary despite multiple attempts to switch to DDG over the last 3 years. While I have found DDG superior for generic informational queries, it has been, in my experience, much worse for finding source documents of quotes I remember loosely or searching for error messages, so I always find myself headed back to Google. Would love to switch to a search-dedicated search engine.

Re: Google competitor DuckDuckGo says it's getting shut out

#126

Post by lazyjones » Thu, Nov 22, 2012, 9:33 AM UTC

Current Firefox Nightly uses Google for search when something is typed in the location bar even when a) DuckDuckGo is the default search engine, b) Google is removed from the search engines list completely.

Go figure... I've lost all respect for both Mozilla and Google recently.

Re: Google competitor DuckDuckGo says it's getting shut out

#127

Post by cadab » Thu, Nov 22, 2012, 9:40 AM UTC

neya wrote: post #106

davemel37 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think their name is one of the strongest things going for them...and Google being more than a search engine to be the very reason Bing is gaining market share and brands like DDG actually have a shot at competing. Regarding the name...it is unique and very MEMORABLE (repetition is one of the four mental glues.) It has just as few syllables as Microsoft, and is super easy to pronounce... From a branding per…

I just visited duckduckgo.com again (though full of hesitation) and as a designer I can tell you: 1) Their design is very complex and un-appealing with no simplicity that a SE should posses (For Eg. Google, Bing have a very simple design). They don't design Search engines to be simple because they like it that way, because they have invested a huge amount of money in researching about which colors and patterns work b…

I dont see your first point. The home page is as simple as the rest, just a logo and search box. http://cl.ly/image/2E1A3Z2i0h1e

Re: Google competitor DuckDuckGo says it's getting shut out

#128

Post by saumil07 » Thu, Nov 22, 2012, 9:42 AM UTC

I worked in Search and on Search-related problems for nearly 4 years so here's my 2c.

For most users Google is "muscle memory". It is quite good for most Search needs. The angles of attack that tech-savvy folks think are amazing (category filters, privacy, fancy CoverFlow UX, bigger index - all real differentiators tried by real companies) - most normals don't give a rat's ass about.

IMO the only real ways to compete are as follows:

a) build something specialized that is several-x better in the specialty (Kayak) b) build something on top of data that Google doesn't have (Facebook Search, whenever it stops sucking) c) go head-to-head with nearly equivalent quality and buy your way in on the CapEx and the Ad/Mktg dollars required to change muscle memory (Bing)

Beyond that, most companies have had trouble w/ direct search because Google + Wikipedia gets the job done, by and large. SearchMe? Dead. Kosmix Search? Pivoted successfully before acquisition. Cuil? Dead. Mahalo Search? Pivoted several times away from Search. Qwiki? Pivoted successfully.

The sad thing is that Search is such a fun and challenging space with so much work to be done; I want the space to be more competitive but most consumers like the status quo just fine.

Lastly - a salute to @yegg for taking this one on. He's a far braver than I, and most others on this thread critiquing his work.

Re: Google competitor DuckDuckGo says it's getting shut out

#129

Post by lazyjones » Thu, Nov 22, 2012, 9:45 AM UTC

neya wrote: post #73

First of all, in my opinion, executing a frighteningly ambitious idea[1] is like performing inception. You need the simplest version of the idea for it to be "planted" in the user's mind. People aren't using DDG much not because of any difficulties in the browser, because they don't want to. This is a very lame excuse. Google never won its users because they were able to convince users to set their Search Engine as d…

> People aren't using DDG much not because of any difficulties in the browser, because they don't want to.

You are wrong and you know it. Most people use whatever is the preset default search engine in their browser and that is why Google pays a lot of money to Mozilla.

Re: Google competitor DuckDuckGo says it's getting shut out

#130

Post by capo » Thu, Nov 22, 2012, 9:58 AM UTC

It's very disappointing that DDG is resorting to the same whinny PR tactics as the less than savory competitors.

It's fairly easy and straight forward to add DDG to Chrome or Android, much easier than other platforms in fact, you’re not being “shut out” because you're not the default engine.