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DuckDuckGo Billboards

duckduckgo.com

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Re: DuckDuckGo Billboards

#11

Post by ericwood »

There's one by us and my wife and I were talking about it the other day while stopped at a light...I'm not sure who the target audience for the billboard is, honestly. There's no mention of what DuckDuckGo is. In tech circles it's definitely more of a household name, but to the wider public I wouldn't expect anyone to have heard of it. The call to action is also a bit vague, and doesn't really do much for a layperson who doesn't understand the extent of the tracking, who is doing it, why it's harmful, etc.

Their original billboards from years ago apparently said "Google tracks you. We don't," which is a much clearer and at the very least positions themselves as a privacy-focused Google alternative.

(this is the billboard, for reference: https://twitter.com/DuckDuckGo/status/1266003050151411713/ph...)

Re: DuckDuckGo Billboards

#13

Post by kirubakaran »

DDG's interview problem: Write a program to find the shortest path between the DDG billboards in a continent such that you make the path spell out DUCK.

I'd rebel by using the backtracking algorithm ;)

Re: DuckDuckGo Billboards

#14

Post by beznet »

I was royally confused because I thought 'billboards' was some alt tech jargon I wasn't familiar with in relation to geography. But no, literally billboards, go figure. I haven't seen one yet but thats pretty cool

Re: DuckDuckGo Billboards

#15

Post by llarsson »

I've seen these in Sweden. I think they are bad, because they say nothing about what the service does. They are all very vague and require you to know what the heck they are talking about like "Tired of being tracked online? We can help."

How am I going to go from just that message to knowing that it's about a web search engine that does not track me?

"Search the web without being tracked". "Privacy-first search engine". Say something like that instead, maybe?

Re: DuckDuckGo Billboards

#18

Post by [deleted] »

ericwood wrote: post #11

There's one by us and my wife and I were talking about it the other day while stopped at a light...I'm not sure who the target audience for the billboard is, honestly. There's no mention of what DuckDuckGo is. In tech circles it's definitely more of a household name, but to the wider public I wouldn't expect anyone to have heard of it. The call to action is also a bit vague, and doesn't really do much for a layperson…

[deleted]

Re: DuckDuckGo Billboards

#19

Post by burkaman »

llarsson wrote: post #15

I've seen these in Sweden. I think they are bad, because they say nothing about what the service does. They are all very vague and require you to know what the heck they are talking about like "Tired of being tracked online? We can help." How am I going to go from just that message to knowing that it's about a web search engine that does not track me? "Search the web without being tracked". "Privacy-first search engi…

I think that's probably intentional. They also have browser extensions, a mobile browser app, and presumably want people to see them as more than just a search engine.
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