It’s Elevator Pitch Friday, which means another startup has created a video that’s worth showing you. This week’s presentation comes from Duck Duck Go, a start-up that wants to make it easier for you to find what it is that you are looking for on the Internet.
Duck Duck Go combines a search engine’s algorithmic search technology with Wikipedia’s user generated content. They argue that the combination of these two technologies makes it quicker and easier for people to find what they want on the Internet.
Please at least put elevator pitches which are remotely useful.
This one is total bs. Funny they compare to a web search engine like google/yahoo.
CatCatGo.com still available. and everything would have made sense. curious cat searchers. ducks are best known for quacking. i dont see a duck as a smart animal.
AnimalLocator.com – feel the beast
Presentation = Audio + Video
So why wasting half of the screen for that purple wall? I’d like to see your hands, gestures, it helps during presentation.
Dias, you are absolutely right. In retrospect, there are a lot of things I should have done differently when making this video.
Mjau!
so…it’s a yahoo boss site with one useful feature (wikipedia snippets) and a terrible name. unfortunately, the one useful feature requires human labor, a la ask.com circa 1998.
People love or hate our name
Just to be clear, we’re not using human labor directly. Instead, we are drawing on human-edited sources in an algorithmic way.
Duckduckgo? Ummm this is a total name ripoff of my new media aggregation site, F***S***Blow
Nice try.
OK guys, how do you like AAfter Search?
Well, i think there should be a feedback option on the site so I don’t have to leave it here. Oh well.
Just to start.
Seems kinda clumpy and everything is huge. I dont like that the results are centered and that the entire listing is clickable.
The related topics are basically just jumping up to a more general search which is totally backwards in my opinion.
Theres more where that came from… but as a last note the name is just horrible. I think the web 2.0 name generator could of came up with something a lot more acceptable.
Although I would like to see a new search engine come out and actually get some market share. It would have to be “purple cow” remarkable. With a “big moo” and all that stuff.
I do like that the homepage isn’t all yahooie with crap i don’t care about all over the place. Good Job there.
For the record, our feedback page is here: http://duckduck...m/feedback.html
Lame Duck
NOT. The name may not be the wisest if it does not perform.
But I tested it and the search results sick. Meaning they were produced more accurate results for my search than any other SE I have ever tested.
I looks geeky, and I guess that is why his product appears to be that good to me. Then again I only typed in my name and my company name and got results on my name in ways I have never seen before on the web.
Pretty Creepy if you ask me. He will get funding for sure providing he keeps it up.
Great job dude. you got 3 out of 5 stars from me.
It is as simple as “not google” for the reason why people won’t buy into these search engines. Google and Yahoo don’t just offer one product, they off a whole series of products all selling the central brand. You can’t just compete with search. You need email, you need blog, you need a 100 other services if you want people to use your search.
i guess duck duck goose was taken
There is some utility here, so the technology may prove at least worth a look by the big boys. With the current name, they are obviously not interested in being a general search engine for the masses over the long term. A quick IP sale to one of the serious players is the best course of action.
Honestly… fairly impressive! Beats the pants off Cuil, for sure…
Hmmm…..best of luck to them…..unfortunately I don’t think it’s going anywhere….
I’ve been using http://keyboardr.com – slick UI and results populate per each keystroke!
Yawn… you can do the same thing with Yahoo BOSS in about 5 hrs of work.
How about something new, Dan?
Daves, actually we’ve been in development for over a year now, and about 9 months before Yahoo BOSS even came out! We have our own Web crawler, and we only use Yahoo BOSS when, in our opinion, we don’t have anything better to show (yet).
In other words, Yahoo BOSS is a fall-back. Before it came out, we obviously were showing all of own results from our own crawls. After it came out, we decided to focus on our core strengths, aggregating and parsing human edited sources. For most topics, we already display results from these sources not from Yahoo BOSS (and, again IOHO, better than).
When we do show Yahoo BOSS results, we do our best to manipulate them to make them better than the general feed as well. In short, there is *a lot* under the hood here that makes Duck Duck Go very different from a standard Yahoo BOSS feed. Over time, Duck Duck Go has and will continue to look even less like the BOSS feed. For more info, see http://duckduck....com/about.html
I did a few searches and the results are pretty decent actually though very limited… the “human” factor will kill this as it did for dmoz. Regarding the name, people thought Google was a weird name when it first came-out so who knows.
Even with the odds stacked squarely against him, it was the same for the other big guys at one time as well. Best of luck!
Jon
http://DreamClue.com …get the message!
Yeah results are decent because he is simply using API (Boss) to plug into Yahoo’s search results.
It’s a 10 minute process, nothing amazing at all.
@Jon, thanks for the kind words! I’d be interested to know what you mean by “very limited”?
With regards to the “human factor” I want to clear up that we are very distinct from DMOZ and others before us on this front. We are not managing any of these humans ourselves. Instead, we are drawing, in an algorithmic fashion, on the best parts of human edited sources (like Wikipedia) where communities already exist.
I think the name is a meme that started with ‘tap tap revenge’.
Is ‘go go google’ already registered?
And the difference between this an Mahalo is…?
Mahalo actually spend more then 10 minutes on their web site and back-end.
Here are the two main differences between us and Mahalo. First and foremost, we are a search engine, not a content site, whereas Mahalo started out as a search engine and is now more of a content site like Wikipedia. As such, we strive to be super simple with the least clutter possible.
Secondly, Mahalo is actually managing humans to make their content pages. We are simply drawing on human-edited sources in an algorithmic way.
I’m sorry but this ain’t gonna cut it.
*yawn*
Can we stop throwing around CEO title? Your not a CEO because you a have crappy domain name and throw together Boss API in 10 minutes.
Pathetic ‘pitch’ for even more pathetic ‘business’.
Anthony, I actually agree with you wrt the title
. I don’t use it on a day to day basis. I used it here bc I thought it appropriate after watching the other TC pitches and reading their About page: http://pitches....runch.com/about
Wrt to BOSS, we are significantly different than the standard BOSS feed, and are departing more and more from it every day via our own Web crawler. For most topics, our top results are not from the Yahoo BOSS feed at all. See my above comment in reply to @Daves.
You look kinda short in the video. nice touch with the cat. catcatgo…
Good luck. I like it.
Weinberg, you have pretty decent international exposure already. How did you pull that off. Btw, that is a pretty good looking growth rate on Alexa.
Hondo, our growth to date has all been organic. We do have some internationalization plans in the works though, but none of this work has been released.
I like it.
The good:
Clean frontpage
Clean interface
Nice use of extracted favicons
Fast
The bad:
Requires a click to see the full page of results (this is just annoying)
@Gabriel: I am interested in knowing how you intend to market this product; why would users want to use your service and not one of the large search engines they’re already used to?
If you use Duck Duck GO, you will find the information you are looking for faster and easier. This saves you time and energy, and it adds up.
How do we do this? We provide zero-click information in the form of synopses at the top of results pages. For many searches, this synopsis is the end point! Then we identify official sites, always put them on top, and label them as such so you don’t have to think about what is official and what is not. Another large % of searches are for official sites.
Next, we have simpler, more relevant, human powered results for most topics. These results are simpler & more relevant because they were actually picked and edited by humans. So they have titles and descriptions that actually make sense.
And that’s only the beginning. Check out our about page (http://duckduck....com/about.html) for more details & examples on how we are different. In addition, we’re thinking of new ways to expand on our core goal of making a simpler search engine. Stay tuned.
As for marketing, we’re just getting started and are not really sure. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
My first search was iPod and the 4th search results was for an article written in October 2001. very relevant results indeed!
This is merely yet another lame attempt at providing a better search engine. The lame name compliments the lame results.
Cut the guy a break. He’s put in a year of time into something he believes in. I’m sure people knocked Google when they first launched (not saying they are a potential Google mind you), but the guy’s working on some shit he believes in and is taking advantage of the platform he’s been given on this site. Stop hating and go out and create something yourself.
Tem
I like the idea of combining Google/Yahoo with Wikipedia. Personally I would prefer not to see the sidebar stuff and dislike having to click to see more results. What’s up with the two links to the relevant Wikipedia article?
I like the idea, my suggestion would be to put a line or something and not have the user click on More Links.
coudnt they have found a better domain?
the algo works well though.
I like it, actually.
Jaguar is, perhaps, the most common example in IR. If I were to write a search engine, the first thing I’d do is make sure the results for this particular term are perfect.
This search engine lists Entertainment, Science and technology, Sport, and Archaeology for “Jaguar” and fails to list what should be the first category in response to Jaguar – Animals.
Which VC funded them once again?
We have a Jaguar topic, and it should obviously be linked to first on that page. Not sure why it isn’t being linked, and I’ll get to the bottom of it. But it is the exception and not the rule, even for animal searches–try porcupine, dog, cat, mule, etc.
This is now fixed.
url too long and when I typed in fresno california florist, it gave me more refences to use, like yellow pages and dex. Why would I use a search engine to find paper search engines? SHOW ME REAL FLORISTS IN FRESNO!
The pitch is a bit underwhelming (you gotta work on that!), but the application is solid. I’ve been using it as my primary search engine for a while.
I blogged about my first impressions back in October:
http://thenoisy...6/duck-duck-go/
Duck Duck GO does what Cuil tried to do. I’m impressed.
I don’t know how successful this will be, but I like it.
I’ve been using this for when I need information on an specific topic fast and to the point. For when I need a lot of information to cast later I still use good old Google.