would you be talking about it if the name was something else? Brand is a BIG part of any new search engine, one portion of it is remembering the name -- kinda hard to forget one with the name DuckDuckGo.

Yeah what seems silly, odd & out of the ordinary often becomes successful. Gets people talking!

Look at the Snuggie craze, which keeps you warm yet looks totally ridiculous!

Very easy to forget IMHO, and hard to remember if it's duckduckgo, duckgoduck, gogoduck, duckgo, goduck, etc etc

No, it's easy to remember, if you remember the childrens' game "Duck Duck Goose." If you don't know the game, then yeah, the URL is just pretty nonsensical.

Ah. Is this an American game perhaps? Never heard of it. Thanks for explaining. May hamper global adoption :)

Yeah, it's an american thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_Duck_Goose

I think pretty much all Americans know it instantly. I'm sure some will pipe up here not knowing it now...it's their queue :)

I knew the game once being reminded of it, but I didn't immediately make the connection reading about Duck Duck Go.

I'd throw another hat in the ring of, "Yeah, a better name would help."

I would if it were on Hacker News. Other than this thread, I'll have forgotten about it by tomorrow.

It's worse in past tense: "I googled it" vs. "I duckduckgoed/duckduckwent it". Not everything has to be verbed though.

Maybe, but 15 years ago "just google it" would have sounded strange too.

There's strange and then there's overly long. Google rolls off the tongue.

Also, Google is fun, maybe even a little silly. DuckDuckGo is childish. It makes me think it's a search engine for toddlers.

I'm willing to admit I may be wrong, but I think that name will hold them back.

I also was thinking, "This should be a kids site". I like the idea of a search engine for kids. You could concentrate on indexing only "kid safe" and "kid related" content. What a perfect name for that.

As for the length of a name, and if it "verbifies" easily, these are things I agonize about a lot. Perhaps we're taking too much upon ourselves. The users will find a way to talk about it easily, if they need to talk about it at all. "America Online" -> AOL, "Treasury Inflation Protected Securities" -> TIPS, "The Federal National Mortgage Association" -> Fannie Mae, etc.

I somewhat agree with you. In the long-run in my opinion it will hinder widespread adoption because, as you said, the name just sounds silly. But right now the name probably helps them because it generates attention and is memorable. But how DuckDuckGo thinks about this when it comes to a long-term perspective I don't know.

It's harder to change names later. Google both generated attention immediately and was long-term viable.

The product will generate attention in the long run if its good.

I completely agree with you. The name isn't the best it could be if thinking ahead.

Duck it, duck yourself, go ducking - I bet something will stick.

"Just duck it." :)

duckit?