Google competitor DuckDuckGo says it's getting shut out

Post by Surio » Thu, Nov 22, 2012, 7:24 AM UTC

greglindahl wrote: post #67

javajosh wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is your comment the #1 comment? I mean, I count 3, count them, 3 unsubstantiated claims: 1. Does anyone care about DDG anyway? I think it's safe to say, yes, there are some who do. I for one. 2. The problem DDG is solving is imaginary. Oh really? What precisely is that problem? Is it search itself that you're referring to, or the prospect of going up against Google? If the former, then you are delusional, and if…

Blekko has a 4 billion page crawl and index, and we've only raised $55 million so far.

Post by general_failure » Thu, Nov 22, 2012, 7:27 AM UTC

yegg wrote: post #80

paulsutter wrote: post #50

This article is pure crybaby bullshit PR about a nonexistent problem. Does anyone care about DDG anyway? They're trying to solve a completely imaginary problem, and they haven't got a hope in hell of creating a viable search engine as that costs billions of dollars. Why is this article even on HN?

Hi, this is Gabriel Weinberg, the guy mentioned in the article. The main issue I have is with duck.com. A lot of people remember that we are a search engine "duck something" and so naturally try duck.com. As a result, there is a lot of confusion, e.g.: "I was telling someone about DuckDuckGo and they thought it was Duck.com and they went to Google. Is Google using this to find people who make the mistake to Duck.com…

Post by ernesth » Thu, Nov 22, 2012, 7:32 AM UTC

adventured wrote: post #84

amitamb wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although you might be right about DuckDuckGo and similar search engines, the article is not claiming that DuckDuckGo is best search engine in the world since it is subjective. It is up to user to make that choice, and given the network effects, that won't happen unless user can easily switch to it. It is about making it even harder for a supposedly better search engine than Google to acquire users.

Did Google win because users were able to easily switch the default search engine in IE to Google? No. I remember the first times I used Google. It was like magic compared to AltaVista, Yahoo (Inktomi), etc. DDG has no edge to offer, no 'magic.'

Post by patrickaljord » Thu, Nov 22, 2012, 7:34 AM UTC

adventured wrote: post #74

aymeric wrote: post #27

I think we all see this as a marketing stunt from DuckDuckGo.

Reminds me of Scott McNealy complaining about Microsoft instead of beating them with products in the market, while his company was busy imploding and becoming irrelevant. That's DDG's future if they go the route of whining instead of competing. Linux, Google, Apple, Oracle, Intuit, (and countless open source software like Apache) et al. demonstrated time and time again that Microsoft could be trounced. Yet there was…

Post by gillianseed » Thu, Nov 22, 2012, 7:39 AM UTC

mseebach2 wrote: post #90

mbreese wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Duck Duck Go has a TM application filed on April 2, 2008. Google acquired duck.com's owner in 2010. For any sort of mark dispute, you shouldn't go by when Google acquired On2, you have to go by when On2 acquired the name. I assume this was closer to the domain creation date of 1995 (or the On2.com creation date of 1999).

Wouldn't it be a factor that On2 isn't/wasn't in the search space at all? Only after the Google acquisition did duck.com come to be associated with search, and then only by virtue of Google redirecting it to their main page.