[adjkant]

So I'm sure this is cool to programmers, but this feels like if DDG wants to go towards popular use it should be going in the opposite direction, yeah? I guess this probably wasn't much work (maybe even an internal hackathon project) but still feels like DDG isn't really headings towards popular adoption and I'm curious what their internal focus is.

[PostOnce]

It's one of the most popular sites on the internet already.

https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/duckduckgo.com

It's also built into browsers. So, whatever they're doing, it's working.

[adjkant]

Come on, we all know that doesn't mean it's getting as wide use as a search engine as Google let's say. And popularity doesn't mean that it's not leaving things on the table. I'm just trying to give feedback as a potential user from a non-technical perspective, which I think most developers overlook.

[PostOnce]

You can't beat Google by trying to be Google without having Google level money, and even then, you still probably can't, Microsoft and Yahoo tried.

So, do something different. It's possible to grow by endearing yourself to geeks first. How'd Firefox catch on to begin with? Geeks, then they recommend to family and friends etc.

Hell, even if geeks were their only users, it'd likely be viable. There are a lot of us.

[godelski]

> Geeks, then they recommend to family and friends etc.

Or, in my case, parents ask their kids to set up their computers and they install firefox and add things like adblockers.

[1nd160]

Except for searching, right? I mean what is the average number of links which DDG returns you for your ordinary search query? Is it even close to Google's results? And what about it's relevance?

[PostOnce]

The results are largely the same, in my test searches, all the tops results on ddg match the top results on google.

[armSixtyFour]

Maybe, but it's working great already for everyday use. Besides, Google does nerdy stuff like this all the time and people love them for it.

I've been using it full time for a bit longer than two years. In the beginning I think I had to use "g!" to search on google maybe 1 / 5 times, now I really only search on google maybe once a month and when I do I often don't find any better results. It's really come a long way from the first time I tried using it 5 or 6 years ago.

At this point it's good enough that I think I could recommend someone else switch to it without needing to change their search habits.

[U8dcN7vx]

They already have a "cool" (browser) interface, and other plain ones. Adjust your nerd filter, they're just having some fun.

[tsumnia]

I'd disagree for a wildly "out there" reason. We've been conditioned to assume search should be like Google and so any attempt made by someone else gets compared against Google... but that's a losing battle from the start. As the "out there" reason - I enjoy professional wrestling and recently AEW has appeared (literally weeks ago). One of the immediate criticisms was that they were not like WWE's production, but among the fanbase, they were fine with it and made arguments that WWE's version of how a pro wrestling show should be is exactly what pushed fans away from the product. Some of their allure is being more gritty and "real", but their presentation is clearly different from the main product and its getting complimented for that currently.

As to DDG vs. Search, maybe this is a bit programmer leaning; however, I'd say that was some of the draw that got Firefox and Chrome to own the web browser market. They presented products that developers and techies enjoyed using and always kept them (initially) in their vision. I recall telling my parents they needed to switch from IE to Chrome because "it was just better" a decade ago. So, while this brutalistic terminal version of DDG only caters to a niche market, it's the same niche market that ends up spreading why it's the "better" product.

[throwaway_234]

I agree 100% ... i use DDG everyday yet Im just using Bing and the reality is Bing is no Google. Google's results are hands down the best on the web and thats without being signed into Google.

DDG has so much momentum behind it now I dont understand why they dont do all they can to create a search engine all their own(bulk up search engineers.. bulk up on venture funding...make acquisition that improve its search, etc). One that is as good or better then Google. I so want to be able to keep recommending it yet not have to hear friends/family say its not as good as Google.