Comment by dpcan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dpcan | Hacker News Reader

Just. Change. Your. Name. Already.

Seriously. Please don't instantly down-vote. I think a serious conversation needs to be had around this topic. If you don't agree, I'd love to hear a thought-out answer as to why such a silly name is supposed to be taken seriously.

When you get outside the geek bubble, the name is SO important.

I honestly believe the name is killing DDG's ability to grow. That, and not having a private email solution. But I don't want to tell someone I'm @ duckduckgo either so...

For example, I tried to get my parents to try DuckDuckGo and they giggled, stumbled with the name, and then said they'd stick with Google.

I know people giggled at Google when it started too, but it was so easy to start letting "goooogle" roll off the tongue. PLUS it became a VERB! I do not think duckduckgo has that ability.

Unfortunately "uck" is NOT a friendly, comfortable sound. It sounds like a profanity. If feels angry or sinister.

But "oogle" is comforting, fuzzy, and fun to say.

This may sound silly, but I think it's a very real problem DDG has and they should address it so we can move from G to DDG.

I had a similar experience this weekend. My artist friends are very open to the idea of moving off of Google, because tracking doesn’t fit with their ethics. But they also want confidence up front that the alternative will work for them and is a popular, polished service.

My experience is that the name ‘DuckDuckGo’ gives a bad first impression and is holding back growth for the product. IMO the brand is in an uncanny valley where the individual words do mean something to everyday people (unlike, say, Google), and there’s a vague allusion to a children’s game, but the concepts don’t come together or inspire confidence. It’s not so much about being ‘childish’ (re: other threads on this page) as it is about being unpolished and a little nonsensical.

They would be better off with 1) a simple one-word name or 2) a more complete name with an obvious and thoughtful layer of meaning, even if more than one word.

Because Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, etc all have professional sounding names? Let me tweet about it.

I’m not sure which part of my comment you’re reacting to. I don’t think I ever claimed that they need a professional sounding name.

I was reacting to the words "unpolished", "allusion to a children's game", "inspire confidence", "nonsensical", "thoughtful layer of meaning"

My take is that you have taken a structured set of claims I wrote down, picked phrases I used in that structure, and rearranged them to say something I didn’t.

If that's the case, it wasn't intentional. My reading of your comment was that you were criticizing DuckDuckGo for not inspiring confidence. I understood the name to be at least one of the reasons.

EDIT: Actually, even now, rereading your post I feel like your accusation of me cherry-picking is not fair. Your entire message was about the name of DuckDuckGo. You said "the name [...] gives a bad first impression", "it's not about [...] as it is about being unpolished and a little nonsensical.", "They would be better off with [...] a more complete name with an obvious and thoughtful layer of meaning."

I don't understand how I could have interpreted your message incorrectly.

> They would be better off with 1) a simple one-word name

https://duck.com

Person A: "What is ...?"

Person B: "I don't know, duck it."

Person A: "What did you just say‽"

Person B: "I said Duck it, not F..."

Also, doesn't help that 'd' and 'f' are right next to each other on a qwerty keyboard.

Quack it!

That sounds just as silly as I imagine "Google it!" must have sounded to other people.

I will try telling others to "quack it" :-) Thank you!

Which would be fine if it was the service name (but it’s not).

This is unbelievably silly.

Your parents can't handle a highly-memorable name like "Duck duck go"? It sounds like the childhood game "duck duck goose".

You even admit that they couldn't handle Google at first either. You can't win with your parents.

Google only became a verb because of what it was, not because of the name.

"uck" is not unfriendly. It's a duck! Ducks are adorable. It's friendly.

Google is a misspelling of a word that most people STILL don't know to this day, despite using Google for 20 years.

If the name mattered, Yahoo should be kicking Google's ass right now. Or Bing: Short, easy, fun.

None of it matters.

I agree. Names don't really matter unless the are obviously childish and silly. I think "mebibyte" etc. have the same issue. I don't care how technically correct they might be, I sound like and idiot if I say them so I'm not going to. "Super-sonic acrobatic rocket powered battle cars" (successfully renamed) and "GIMP" (inexplicably kept) also spring to mind.

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