Google competitor DuckDuckGo says it's getting shut out
chicagotribune.com
chicagotribune.com
Why is this article even on HN?
Regardless of whether their claims are true or not, that is.
>Why is this article even on HN?
I think its relevant because PG wrote an article about "frighteningly ambitious ideas" and DuckDuckGo seems to be inspired from it.
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 the latter, there is nothing wrong with attempting to disrupt a monopoly.
3. A search engine costs billions of dollars. Actually, no. There is no rule of computer science that says that. If someone discovers a new, cheaper way to do search then cool!
In answer to your final question, perhaps the reason this article is on HN is to inspire comments like yours, which are wrong, and then comments like mine, which correct comments like yours.
I have worked on search (see my background), and doing search well is massively difficult. The problem has deep necessary complexity, and Google has invested thousands of PhD years against that already. If Google were incompetent, maybe I could see it. But they're damned smart and their product is extremely good.
Data is also a problem - Microsoft has been collecting all your google searches since IE8, and can probably just clone Google's search results for the top few million queries. But even given that, Bing is a massive undertaking.
Since nobody uses DDG, Google can't be expected to make them a default search choice in Chrome. Accusing Google of some malfeasance is just childish and silly.
Finally, the name DDG is atrocious. Really bad in more ways than I have time to list.
I think you're thinking of PCIPA (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protecting_Children_from_Intern... ), which would do that, but is still a long way from becoming law. I am fairly sure that the USA PATRIOT Act does not contain any such provision.
"At the very least, this change means that the government can use a pen-trap to see the email addresses of people youre sending email to and the addresses of people who send email to you, along with the timestamp and size in bytes of each email. The FBI can monitor the IP addresses of all the computers you interact with over the Internet, or capture the IP addresses of every person visiting a particular website. Under the vaguely written statute, it may even be able to capture the URL of every web page that you read, although the FBI refuses to confirm or deny whether it has done so."
Sure, I should have inserted the word [can], but it hardly changes the point. Given the direction laws have taken since 9/11, you would be foolish to rely on your search activity remaining anonymous.
In an interview on Wednesday, Weinberg said it is difficult to make his
DuckDuckGo the default search site in Google's Chrome web browser.
Let's not kid ourselves, Google is a good company but they have to defend their position. Not just DuckDuckGo, but even your supposed billion dollar search engine will face same issues mentioned in the article. So this is not about the DuckDuckGo as a company but about monopolistic practices. Let's talk about that.
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 instead of DuckDuckGo?"
"Can't you do something about this? I keep going to Duck.com when meaning to visit DuckDuckGo.com They are using the DuckDuckGo name to get people to search Google."
This only started happening after I asked about the domain name. It used to point to a history page about Duck Corporation (previous name of On2 -- http://web.archive.org/web/20100802014055/http://duck.com/), similar to http://www.on2.com/, which was acquired by Google in the same acquisition.
Google should legitimately not sell it to me, though it would have been of course nice to do so when I first asked in 2010. I think an appropriate remedy would be to either point it nowhere, point it to the original page it had been pointed to for many years, or point it to the acquisition page (as http://on2.com still does) -- all things they do in other cases if you look at past acquisitions.
Just to be clear, it is only anti-competitive because it causes confusion, and relates to their core search product. The facts of the situation (that it switched shortly after I asked, and only seemingly that one domain) make it appear to be deliberate. And if it were not deliberate, I've brought this up many times and there has been ample time (including now!) to correct the situation.
With regards to being easy to add search engines to Chrome, see http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2011/02/usability-issues.... I've written up the differences extensively, with screenshots and explanatory notes.
So if Google changes it they admit that they may have harmed you and you get a legal remedy. If Google doesn't change it you claim there's no reason not to and you get a moral argument.
Sounds like you're trying to construct a situation where you win and Google loses no matter what. How about just deal with the fact that it's not your domain? I quite like camping.com, doesn't mean I have the right to it.
In any case, there would still be no useful legal remedy available to us. We don't make much money, so what would the damages be?
The last thing a startup wants to do is take a big company to court. You're just asking to be bled dry.
This only started happening after I asked about the domain name. It used to point to a history page about Duck Corporation (previous name of On2 -- http://web.archive.org/web/20100802014055/http://duck.com/), similar to http://www.on2.com/, which was acquired by Google in the same acquisition.
Google should legitimately not sell it to me, though it would have been of course nice to do so when I first asked in 2010. I think an appropriate remedy would be to either point it nowhere, point it to the original page it had been pointed to for many years, or point it to the acquisition page (as http://on2.com still does) -- all things they do in other cases if you look at past acquisitions.
Effectively it is Google's fault because they are doing it now specifically in his case and not for others (as he mentions clearly)
Secondly, while it would be nice to pre-empt all angles and all possibilities etc., etc., but I don't think any of us can foresee every possible way something will come back to bite your backside in the future. So, no, I don't think that it is somehow DDG's fault that they did not foresee this and preempt it.
P.S: FWIW, google renamed themselves from googol to google because the VC mispelled their name on the cheque. Just goes to show that such things are a fact of life. People have every right to vaguely try to look up "Duck something" search engine. However, Google is definitely in the wrong for sneakily redirecting users back to their own engine in this case by misusing this vagueness.
Tell them that you called your search engine Duck Duck Go, registered DuckDuckGo.com, and for them to visit DuckDuckGo.com. It's not as though you were ever called Duck.com instead. This just sounds like a petty whinge otherwise. Sorry!
Doesn't sound like a petty whinge according to me though at least if you follow his full explanation of Google actually capitalising on this confusion and redirecting users to their own engine.
I have been watching your work for quite a while, and from what I have been able to grasp, currently, your main advantage is the privacy.
Now I wonder if you ever considered instead of developing a new search platform, developing a user friendly privacy proxy platform and let Google and other search engines (including bing which your results relies heavily on it) do their job, while you keep your customer's privacy in the middle.
Have you?
The number of votes and comments tell me people on this forum do care. Personally, I care because DDG is doing something ambitious and competition is good(it helps keep people in line). Also, even if I didn't care, I don't see a reason why I should shit on someone's hard work.
> They're trying to solve a completely imaginary problem,
Privacy isn't an imaginary problem.
> and they haven't got a hope in hell of creating a viable search engine as that costs billions of dollars.
Creating one from scratch will take time and money, and no, as blekko folks pointed out, it didn't take them billions. But DDG uses bing apis augmented with custom index.
"In an interview on Wednesday, [Gabriel] Weinberg said it is difficult to make his DuckDuckGo the default search site in Google's Chrome web browser, and that Google disadvantages his company in the Android mobile operating system as well. ....
"It's one-click to get onto Firefox and it's five steps on Chrome and people generally fail," he said.
The Google spokeswoman said popular search alternatives were offered on its Chrome browser in a dropdown menu, such as Yahoo and Microsoft's Bing, but any search engine could be easily added."
In Firefox if I click the dropdown on the search field, then click 'Manage Search Engines' I get a dialog in which can be found a link to 'Get more search engines...'.
Clicking that opens an add-ons store tab with the 'Search Tools' filter applied, none of whose above-the-fold suggestions has anything to do with DDG. That's not one-click, it's a runaround.
In contrast, Chrome automatically adds search engines as you browse the web and lets you set any one of them as the default. It also has clearly labelled fields to let you create your own by copying the format of the ones listed. Getting to there takes 3 clicks and a scroll.
Two reasonable gripes: the existence of the free-edit fields is not immediately obvious upon clicking 'Manage search engines...' and neither is the fact that the domain name in the second column is an editable keyword.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/duckduckgo-fo...
I don't know why no such addon exists for Chrome?
EDIT: Ugh I am woefully wrong, the Chrome extension only shows up when you visit the site from Chrome. Perhaps they mean choosing a default search engine in Chrome is not as straightforward as Firefox. You will have to open preferences -> Search -> Manage Search engines and then change the default engine.
Because someone has to be arsed to write it?
I suspect that part of it is a confluence of events: it's not exactly easy to change the search to DDG, most Chrome users don't bother to change it, and no one who is capable really wants to write an extension for Chrome to make it easier.
Which is, to my mind, a far simpler explanation than a conspiracy against DDG (in that one area).
http://www.verticalset.com/search
On Firefox, by clicking "Add to Browser" and checking "Start using Right Away", you can make it default.
On Chrome, if you click on same button there is no way to make it default. You have to find the list of search engines in settings and click "Make Default".
On IE, process is similar to Firefox.
It wouldn't be hard to make this similar to Firefox on Chrome, just add "Make it Default" check-box when adding new search engine, but that won't happen anytime soon.
If you really want to tell people how to add your site as their default, then detect Chrome users and tell them how to do it in Chrome. There is no need to blame Google for this - they aren't treating you differently than anyone else, aside from Bing and Yahoo (who are added to the default list).
While I appreciate that other sites are doing this by default without user interaction, this is just ripe for a phishing attack. So, I would assume this will go away soon.
Isn't it impossible for DDG to become the default in Safari?
Not saying they're wrong to point it out, but rather that they should be consistent in pointing fingers if they do.
One click on the search icon in the address bar and Bing and Ask.com (really?) are listed as two default search providers.
There is an Add button which takes me to an Internet Explorer Add-On page. DDG and Google are highlighted as popular options. Click on the "tile" and another click to install.
So 4 clicks for IE9.
It's 4 clicks in Chrome (Menu - Settings - Settings - Manage Search Providers, to get to the "Manage Search Engines" screen but DDG is nowhere to be found. YOu have to manually add it and it isn't very clear how to do it because the textbox is truncated for the actual url.
Unless you visit duckduckgo.com once, at which point it's added to the list of "other search engines" on that page. Which seems like a totally reasonable way to manage that list, since otherwise Google is responsible for pre-populating and maintaining a comprehensive list of all other search engines out there.
(This behavior was tested on Chrome 24, and I verified it by deleting the record for DuckDuckGo from my "other search engine" list, then visiting duckduckgo.com and reloading the list.)
https://extensions.apple.com/#search-extensions (it takes just one click to install and activate)
I'm using SafariKeywordSearch http://safarikeywordsearch.aurlien.net which means when I type "d ip address" it uses duckduckgo instead of Google.
1. Right-click on search bar when on duckduckgo.com 2. Click edit search engines 3. Next to DuckDuckGo (it's autodetected the first time you visit the site), click 'make default'.
It's more clicks than firefox if you do it via the extension, but google's stance on blocking third-party extensions by default makes sense when you consider the threat of malicious extensions, and how most people don't read the permissions prompt.
Also, these three steps are not intuitive i.e. you can't ask user to click a button on your website to initiate the change. While on Firefox, clicking on a button, a prompt gets shown to make your search engine default one. Even in case of Firefox, user has to explicitly click on check-box to make your search engine default.
Try here http://www.verticalset.com/
I like the idea and philosophy behind Duck Duck Go, but maybe improving the search results, which are no where near as good as Google's results, would help bring more traffic than whining about non-issues.
But not entirely sure that the arguments presented in this article are valid and would sway a technical crowd.
Given how trivial it was just now for me to switch to DDG in Chrome, I don't see how that's anti-competitive.
It sounds like a bunch of lame whining to me. I didn't use DDG before, but I at least respected their work. This is just weak. Google has done great things for the tech world by building chrome and android and releasing them as free and open source, to attempt to bring them down because you think it takes too many clicks to change the default search engine is shameful. Yegg, if you don't like it build your own browser and mobile operating system.
It's excellent PR because it creates a coherent David Vs Goliath narrative that journos will buy and so will the bulk of the non-technical populace. A few more variations of this in different publications, and you'll see that it might seep into the public consciousness.
Could this be where they're trying to move towards a more mainstream market?
They did take VC funding, and they may need to show growth in the mainstream market to their investors.
It does not do any of it's own indexing.
It's just a frontend to other very very expensive backends that have millions of dollars behind them.
The entire company can be shut down overnight if it's data feeds are cut.
The DuckDuckBot crawls and indexes the web. http://duckduckgo.com/duckduckbot.html
Every test search I've ever done on DDG shows near identical results to Bing.
I'd like to see a search that uses it's own data, examples?
Gigablast was the last serious third-party backend that had a chance for independent data. It's like old-school Google.
Gabriel should try to buy Gigablast and merge it with DDG so he has his own independent dataset.
Checking to see if it's hit any of our sites.
3k pages, not bad. Data is kinda stale though.
Interestingly, the fetches do not have a user-agent that identifies itself as the DDG crawler:
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)
I'm assuming this is the crawler because it does not fetch anything besides text/html.
Gabriel, does DuckDuckGo's crawler have a distinct user agent? Can you talk more about how DuckDuckGo observes/respects robots.txt?
http://techzinglive.com/page/1028/179-tz-interview-gabriel-w...
around the 70 minute mark Gabriel mentions that DuckDuckBot is mostly about determining if pages are spam.
But that is a non-issue as far as I'm concerned. As long as the results are relevant and they got them legally, then who cares where or how they came from?
Same argument can be made about Google, they do not produce their own data just copy webpages from content providers. If content providers decide to block them from indexing their websites, Google would be irrelevant.
Let me know if you find a search result that is different.
How often do you do single word searches in the realworld?
As for "followed by bing results", there is a single one that is equal to bing. The results that follow are also far from similar (this is exacerbated by Bing insisting on giving me local results regardless of relevance, which DDG purposedly avoids).
And yes, I do single word searches very often, but if you're so inclined, here are results for a longer search: http://cl.ly/image/0m1E3I3J0M1U (DDG shows Hulu, tv.com, CTV, amazon, and doesn't repeat the Wikipedia entry)
If you adjust the term to "hacker movie", you get more similar results between DDG and Bing. But, overall, it does seem like DDG is returning more differing results now than in the past.
http://duckduckgo.com/?q=duck+duck+go+says+it%27s+getting+sh...
https://www.google.com/#q=duck+duck+go+says+its+getting+shut...
Until DDG bothers to step into the real search arena and compete, they get no interest from me.
Duck Duck Go has a TM application filed on April 2, 2008. Google acquired duck.com's owner in 2010.
There is a very reasonable case for a WIPO domain dispute, which isn't particularly costly (granted if Google lost, and then sued you it would be expensive.) Very good way to generate a lot of press coverage.
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).
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 McNealy whining like a baby to the trust busters, while his own company was melting down.
Weinberg = McNealy
The web community (that is, all of us) really, really needs an alternative to Google. I don't care whether you love or hate them. We desperately need an alternative.
But I feel compelled to respond. If there is no alternative to Google for something as important as indexing the output of human knowledge production... we are in serious trouble. The library of Alexandria burned and we still have no idea why [0].
Google is interested in one thing, getting you to look at ads. In their defense, well-targeted ads (++efficiency!). However when given the opportunity they have exploited their leadership position for every commercial advantage and recently to the detriment of search (e.g., I do not care to see what a bunch of "thought leaders" in google+ have to say on the topic I'm searching for). Their support for "Do Not Track" is grudging at best. [1]
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.
So, I support DDG and I give them feedback on my own time in the hopes they aren't also inherently out to screw me in the end. Also because I do believe (and this is an assumption on my part) that a "cosmic" -- well that may be an overreach -- law is involved. Search is not a natural monopoly [2].
[0] http://www.economicshelp.org/dictionary/n/natural-monopoly.h... [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Google#Do_Not_Trac... [2] http://www.economicshelp.org/dictionary/n/natural-monopoly.h...
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.
The Internet was not designed to provide highly-available redundant backups of data. It was designed to route packets across disparate peer networks in a manner to minimize congestion. Is there an ietf rfc you have in mind that illustrates your assertion? [0]
I do not follow; what does fluctuations in Starbuck's stock price have to do with the discussion? It was used as an example of a brand latching on to a public resource, libraries, in the hopes of becoming indistinguishable from the activity, namely reading.
I agree that having strong competition to Google is necessary. But I found DDG painful to the point of becoming a little bitter.
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 default in their browsers.
As for DDG, the problem starts their name - "DuckDuckGo". You don't need to be an analyst with years of experience to say that this won't work because even their name is not something that is a)Catchy b)Easily rememberable c)Simple. Contrast this with Google. That's just one quick, easy to remember word. Now compare, Duck+Duck+Go. That's three words and it seems long. It looks like they didn't put much thought into this. This is not to say that DDG didn't do their homework properly, but just that it seems a little immature, given their name and their strategy. It looks more like they just read PG's essay[1] and started something out of the quick inspiration.
To kill a huge competitor like Google, you need to provide more value. Google is very hard to kill right now because, 1)Their search is vastly superior 2)a lot of people are locked into their ecosystem 3)They have created a valuable brand. No, by locked, I don't mean it's a bad thing. For example, I use Gmail, Google Contacts, Calendar, Blogger, Google Apps for my domains and a lot of other stuff because I want to. A single sign-in into their Eco-system lets me use all these services. And now, the best part is there's Android which seems to integrate all these things so easily like a snap that makes my life just a breeze.
So, first you need to understand that Google is now more than a search engine. Because if it was, Bing would have overtook it long back. You need to analyze the reasons why people still use Google. It's not just a search engine that they're using it for. Google has taken years and years to build the trust factor into their users. It has taken them years to make all these users "fit" into their eco-system and create a tremendously valuable brand . It's not like that they did it in just one day. So, just starting a new search-engine and expecting people to join on board is not going to happen. Despite so many "Ad" controversies, Google is still the king here because of the trust factor that no one else in the industry is able to provide. The trust factor that they will remain here, unlike the rest is the most important value that they provide to their users.
If you want to kill Google at this instant, you are going to do a lot more hardwork than you thought you should do, you need a brand of similar magnitude and the important essence here is the time and trust factor which everyone seems to ignore.
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.'
Firefox managed to severely dent IE in a similar default situation, despite needing to be downloaded and installed, which is a huge effort wall compared to using a search engine. Ditto for Chrome.
If you build a superior engine I have no doubt users will type the address in manually or bookmark it or even go through the couple clicks it takes to switch defaults.
This is important because I almost never search by going to google.com and typing a search term. The location bar does this automatically using google.
I specifically go to google.com to search, ditto on my phone. Nothing in their ecosystem prods me to do so, and nothing in their ecosystem prevents me from using a competitor.
I use Google because it's vastly superior to any other search offering. Period.
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 perspective they are taking a very strong positioning play of being the Search Engine that respects privacy. Smart strategy if you ask me... to position themselves opposite the dominant brand with a hot button differentiation.
Regarding the trust factor, and the being locked in to google, those are actually both weaknesses of Google. The locked in issue is part and parcel with the privacy issue, which is the market DDG is trying to penetrate. Regarding Trust, I don't see why I need to trust a search engine to use it. In fact, the privacy thing again is the very reason I DON'T Trust Google...
People Use Google because Google focused on Search when all other search engines tried to be so much more. Once Google won the category (where people say, "Just Google It." They assumed they owned the market and started betting on the future convergence of search and social, etc... I actually think in 5 years from now, Google won't be the dominant player in search, although I do think Android will become a bigger money maker for them...
DuckDuckGo is doing a fine job with their name and brand strategy...up until this article and complaint which undermines their focused strategy. By complaining about Google, they appear to be in the game of competing as an equal search engine, not a DIFFERENT search experience, which is the play they need to make to win. It's the reason Burger King can't take over McDonalds...because they just claim to be better, not different. Pepsi on the other hand claims to be for the New Generation, Different than Coke which is classic, and the real thing. Just like Listerine has the brand of being more powerful than scope because they used the slogan,"The Taste You Hate Twice a Day." They said we are different, not better.
Human perception is near impossible to change... Complaining about monopolies is like saying, "we are better but they wont let us play."
If DDG wants to win, they need to pound hard about how they are different, and if they insist on complaining about Google, it should be consistent with their brand strategy and focus on how Google is more than search, and DDG is for when you just want to find what you are looking for with true privacy.
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 pound hard about how they are different
And this point is very difficult to achieve if the "market leader" is (sort of) preventing people from accessing you in the first place.
First, I agree that they should not lump themselves in the same category. Second, I am not sure there is any point in crying yourself hoarse about how "different" you are when the general public who are looking for you using natural language constructs are not being allowed to access you in the first place by the "market leader". Going forward this that line of thought, I am reproducing my reply from below to your point, as it seems relevant here as well. (Apologies for the multiple posting).
If you read @yegge's original response from below (I reproduced it here)
This only started happening after I asked about the domain name. It used to point to a history page about Duck Corporation (previous name of On2 -- http://web.archive.org/web/20100802014055/http://duck.com/), similar to http://www.on2.com/, which was acquired by Google in the same acquisition.
Google should legitimately not sell it to me, though it would have been of course nice to do so when I first asked in 2010. I think an appropriate remedy would be to either point it nowhere, point it to the original page it had been pointed to for many years, or point it to the acquisition page (as http://on2.com still does) -- all things they do in other cases if you look at past acquisitions.
Effectively it is Google's fault because they are doing it now specifically in his case and not for others (as he mentions clearly) (because from their own tracking of searches, they probably found out that DDG is gaining significant traction -- this is my own opinion)
Secondly, while it would be nice to pre-empt all angles and all possibilities etc., etc., but I don't think any of us can foresee every possible way something will come back to bite your backside in the future. So, no, I don't think that it is somehow DDG's fault that they did not foresee this and preempt it.
P.S: FWIW, google renamed themselves from googol to google because the VC mispelled their name on the cheque. Just goes to show that such things are a fact of life. People have every right to vaguely try to look up "Duck something" search engine. However, Google is definitely in the wrong for sneakily redirecting users back to their own engine in this case by misusing this vagueness.
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.
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 best. For example, DDG uses a red menu-bar on the top which tells me they haven't done as much research. I keep repeating this, but hopefully enough people will realize this:
DO NOT over-use red. Red is used to denote only important elements on a website (like a sign-up button), a call-to-action element (For example, compose button on Gmail). Look at DDG, they have a whole top-bar in full red.
2) As a general user, there is no difference between DDG and Google in my eyes because both have a sponsored link at the top. Both try to benefit from my searches, so I see no perceivable difference between Google and DDG. Now, I already know Google has a superior Search algorithm, period (from what I perceive). So, there is not a single reason for me as an end-user to use DDG over Google.
And one more - Look at the irony, even you reference them by DDG and not DuckDuckGo, whereas you reference Google by just Google and not by any other short form. This is exactly what I meant. Brand Naming is something that we don't even pay attention to, but plays a much much important role.
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)
Enough people have already said it. I feel like a broken record but what's very complex about a text box and a logo?
> because they have invested a huge amount of money in researching about which colors and patterns work best.
Interesting. Do you have any citations to back it up? I haven't heard of Google researching what colors work best for a search interface. Or bing for that matter.
> DO NOT over-use red.
The thing about design advice is everyone fancies himself Steve Jobs. Even if I started listening, I would never have a definitive, agreed-on opinion.
> Red is used to denote only important elements on a website (like a sign-up button), a call-to-action element (For example, compose button on Gmail)
Where is this definitive design rule book of yours? As long as you have sufficient contrast, that is enough to attract attention to important elements. Are you saying if I have a red background and a white compose button with black text, user will somehow see the background as call-to-action and not the button? Now don't go on how red background will not look very good. That's not the point. The point is color alone doesn't decide which section of the page is important.
> Look at DDG, they have a whole top-bar in full red.
Since they merge in serach box with the bar, that section is important.
> Now, I already know Google has a superior Search algorithm, period (from what I perceive).
This has been done n times. There is no clear pattern when it comes to choosing google vs bing results in a blind search result. As far as the end user is concerned, it's not possible to tell which one is algorithmically superior.
> Look at the irony, even you reference them by DDG and not DuckDuckGo,
What's the irony here?
> whereas you reference Google by just Google and not by any other short form. This is exactly what I meant. Brand Naming is something that we don't even pay attention to, but plays a much much important role.
Oh my. How much it has hurt Microsoft. They should have just called themselves MS and be done with it. I can't fathom how much of a hit y-combinator and hacker news are taking because their names can be abbreviated.
/s
Y-Combinator/HackerNews is even less a consumer brand. Of course, that's only a problem if you are trying to appeal to the mass market, YC/HackerNews isn't, but DuckDuckGo is.
You don't hear much about International Business Machines, but you do hear a bit about IBM, because IBM built it's brand around the abbreviated form which is easier to remember. Likewise, HP is now the word du jour to refer to Hewlett-Packard.
Abbreviated forms are fine, and have actually been used to bolster (or change) a company's image. Outside of tech circles if I say MS I'll most likely get awkward glances, but the moment I switch to saying Microsoft I'll get immediate brand name recognition. Likewise, you don't hear many people talking about P or C&C, but drop the name Pepsi or Coca-Cola and you'll also get instant brand name recognition.
So the question becomes is DuckDuckGo really an easily recognizable, easy to memorize, that generates imagery associated with the given product/service? Is it really that appealing?
Surely, it's memorable due to it being so weird, but is it memorable in a way that I'll link up with search? I dunno, but there's some validity to what's been said so far about the name being a bit too long or awkward for the company's sake.
1. http://isbm.smeal.psu.edu/library/working-paper-articles/199... p.11 "Accordingly, the criteria rated most important were relevance to product category (5.99), connotations and images generated (5 X3), and overall appeal (5.79). They did not lose sight of the fact that names should be memorable. Ease of recognition (5.77) and ease of recall (5.42) also were rated highly."
People preferred pepsi to thumsup in blind tests. Thumsup sweetened its drink and faced a major backlash. Thumsup drinkers associated themselves with Thumsup brand and took pride in "not sweet as pepsi".
I do understand that brand plays a major part for the consumer.
What I was questioning was the ridiculous assumption that somehow calling DuckDuckGo as DDG is diluting its brand, and always calling Google as Google is indicative of its strong brand.
And I do not think it's ridiculous to assume that repetition builds brand awareness. The study I linked to said as much, indicating that repetition was one of the best ways to establish brand identity in the minds of consumers. That's why as a company you're best served by aligning your brand name with whatever moniker people are more likely to use and hence why a short, memorable brand name is more powerful than a unique but long-winded archaic name (at least in this day and age).
What appears to be just a text box and a logo has a lot of details. I presume you are not a designer, nor do you have a knack for details (Yet, you run a web-development company...cool story bro!) but for the sake of others, I've compiled a list of comparisons:
1) DDG uses a lot of Gradients, which is what I referred to as complex. Gradients in general are used to add complexity. However, not in every case - For example, Apple's website uses a lot of Gradients too, but it is one of the most clearest and simplest sites you will ever find. Google also uses gradients, but it is very subtle and you don't even notice it most of the times.
DDG also uses a lot of prominent borders on the gradients, Google and Apple uses them to, but it's very very subtle. This is another factor that makes their design look 'complex'.
2) Padding is another element - DDG uses too much padding for most of its elements, whereas Bing/Google uses a lot less padding.
3) If you notice, Google uses red only for certain important elements like the Plus one button, Compose button in Gmail and so on. DDG uses a whole menu-bar as a red block. This is a general rule of thumb that I didn't come up with certainly, but is what most top-notch companies follow. It make sense because the signal lights are in Red for the same reason, because they denote something important. Contrast this with the entire signal metal frame painted in red, that would be a bad idea. Not that you can't live with it, just that it's a bad UX.
>I haven't heard of Google researching what colors work best for a search interface
You haven't heard of a lot of things, that doesn't mean those things aren't valid.
> As long as you have sufficient contrast, that is enough to attract attention to important elements.
I for one aren't listening to your advice on design after you described DDG's design as just a text-box and a logo.
>As far as the end user is concerned, it's not possible to tell which one is algorithmically superior.
Did you read the entire entire comment? I've noticed your previous comments as well, you just like to half-ass read stuff and jump in straight away. Read what's written in the braces, I clearly say that's how I perceive about the algorithm as an end-user.
>The thing about design advice is everyone fancies himself Steve Jobs
Like you half-ass read the other things, you half-ass know about me too. Please read my other comments, I am not a follower nor a fan of Steve Jobs. Nor am I trying to be like him. I'm just a designer with experience and I'm critiquing a design that has a certain level of flaws. You are free to critique my criticism, provided:
1) You have enough knowledge about the subject - (N/A) 2) You don't attack on me personally - (Which you do)
You know what's so ironic here? I am not the one with an 'i' in front of my name. Now..please don't ask me what's ironic here again...
>What's the irony here?
You're proving it time and again. Please don't comment next time without reading what the other person has said fully.
References: http://www.google.com/forms/user_faq.html
And since it appears as a text box and a logo, doesn't it make the point about having a lot of details moot? It's slightly different than google or bing, but vastly similar. Let's not make shit up here.
> (Yet, you run a web-development company...cool story bro!)
Take a breath. Web development isn't the same as web design. It's kinda sad that I have to point it out.
> 1) DDG uses a lot of Gradients, which is what I referred to as complex
Instead of making shit up, you could have just said it's using a lot more gradients.
> This is another factor that makes their design look 'complex'.
To you. I missed the meeting where you were appointed the authority on design. Since you are all pumped up about how you get design, I will be interested to know what have you built.
> It make sense because the signal lights are in Red for the same reason, because they denote something important.
For the nth time, stop making shit up. Red is used because it scatters less(higher wavelength) and can be seen more clearly from a distance.
> You haven't heard of a lot of things, that doesn't mean those things aren't valid.
I checked that before commenting. Your user survey about usability doesn't say google researches whether padding is beneficial for search.
> I for one aren't listening to your advice on design after you described DDG's design as just a text-box and a logo.
So what exactly are you not listening to? That contrast attracts attraction? Wow.
> Did you read the entire entire comment? Read what's written in the braces, I clearly say that's how I perceive about the algorithm as an end-user.
May be I should have been clear. I am saying your perceptions are made-up.
> I've noticed your previous comments as well, you just like to half-ass read stuff and jump in straight away.
What comments would that be? I can't say the same about reading yours. The cover is enough to drive me away from the book.
> Like you half-ass read the other things, you half-ass know about me too.
I don't know about you and I am not commenting about you. I am commenting about the behavior where everyone fancies himself Steve Jobs. That's what you are demonstrating by assuming you know everything about design and other people don't. Since you are so cocksure, I am asking again. Have you ever built something, or do you just comment on internet forums?
> You know what's so ironic here? I am not the one with an 'i' in front of my name.
Please tell me this is a fucking joke. Do I have to discuss my handle now?
> Now..please don't ask me what's ironic here again..
I won't. You clearly don't understand what irony means. BTW, is it too much to ask to actually know what irony means before throwing it around every other sentence?
> References: http://www.google.com/forms/user_faq.html
Google is doing usability study is not the same as google has researched what padding to use.
The one you claim to do on your homepage talks about involving design, which is why I referenced it. And which you absolutely have no idea about.
>Instead of making shit up, you could have just said it's using a lot more gradients.
It's more than just using just gradients (which is just one thing), which was my point. See, you're just proving it time and again.
>I will be interested to know what have you built.
I am not obliged to let you know that. But surely it isn't as shitty as this:
http://i46.tinypic.com/21vfc.jpg
For the rest of the world to see, that's what iRahul has built so far and he's here to critique a designer. And now you know why the search boxes appear the same to him, and probably everything else will, too.
>May be I should have been clear.
Yep, you never are. You like to make vague statements to attract controversy.
>Since you are so cocksure
Please keep your profanity to yourself. You just proved you are worth no one's time. Bye.
My homepage talks about design doesn't mean I have to design.
> I am not obliged to let you know that. But surely it isn't as shitty as this:
http://i46.tinypic.com/21vfc.jpg
That thing is called a prototype. And you are not obliged to tell what you have built, but when you are throwing shit all around, at least have some credentials. Either don't be an asshole, or at least be correct. When it comes to opinions(and not absolute facts), who has it is an important factor in evaluating it.
> For the rest of the world to see, that's what iRahul has built so far and he's here to critique a designer. And now you know why the search boxes appear the same to him, and probably everything else will, too.
In case it didn't occur to you, rest of the world doesn't give a shit about a petty internet argument. When I did the prototype, it was open for everyone to see. I don't see the point in your declaration about the whole world seeing what I built. Different strokes for different people. Some people build things and move on if it doesn't work; some people post comments on news forums with nothing to back them up and then go digging something to feed their vanity. Vain people are a big pain in the ass, not because they are vain(that too) but because they sustain themselves on putting others down, rather than getting themselves ahead.
> Please keep your profanity to yourself. You just proved you are worth no one's time. Bye.
It isn't like I am being benefited from getting in argument with some random designer on some internet forum. And do you always lobby others to cry for you?(rest of the world to see, "no one's time" rather than "my time")
In fact I prefer it to Bing's look in particular. Less clutter.
Thanks.
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.
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.
Don't see much discrimination there. Especially when they don't even list their search engine on the first page
Chrome search screenie - http://goo.gl/HffYt Firefox search screenie - http://goo.gl/nUe7t
Go figure... I've lost all respect for both Mozilla and Google recently.
I know it's slightly off topic, but this would certainly encourage me to use this - and I have a community around me that tends to adopt what I do.
If I need to search for news, images, etc then it's back to Google. For me it's akin to using the command line for most tasks, but every so often opening up a cluttered but easier to use GUI.
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.