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Comment by h2s | Hacker News Reader

Most people don't seem to know that search engines exist. The impression I get from non-technical people that I know is that they think of search engines as being somehow "part of the browser" or "part of the Internet". They often don't even know which one they use. They'll refer to searching as "Googling", but they're using Bing because it was the default with IE or they're using SuperGreatSearch 3.0 because Norton installed it and they haven't noticed the difference.

And you're suggesting that in a market like this, a silly name is a bad thing?

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This is definitely a good point; by far most people have no clue what search is and they just type their queries in whatever is given by default. Unless Duck gets installed on computers by default, no one will use it relatively, whatever name it has. The problem is that we are not begin 2000 (or before); everyone has devices with internet and most of these people don't have any technical knowledge; not even enough to know the concept of an URL. A thing like Google, if there would be a new 'revolution' now, would not work as it did then; you need hardware companies to deliver at least the choice. And given the choice maybe 'the people' like Duckduckgo better than 'Bing' (I think they heard Google too much in the news to not pick that)?

Most people definitely use whatever is preset in the browser, at least until someone shows them something better. But regarding the name, the situation is very similar to the one with Microsoft Word: if it isn't called that ("MS Word" ... or "Google"), it isn't "the real thing" and somewhat suspicious, people will refuse to use it on that grounds, no matter how many experts will tell them the other one is better, more secure etc.

Also, I'll mention it again: if you set ddg or anything else as selected search engine in FF Nightly, typing in the location bar will still search with Google. To change that, you need to mess with about:config. Justification? Money, I suppose...

Yes, that is true. Another example. I have seen so many people who installed Firefox and never changed the 'by default Mozilla version of Google' to the real start page of Google (where they could see the different Google Doodles and have more search options to click on directly), when they open the browser.

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