Hi Gabriel,

Thanks for what you've done with DDG. Privacy is a difficult sell when everyone else is offering "free" services in return for it.

Is there any chance that you could create another brand with a name that I could get non-tech people to use? It could be exactly the same everything except the name. The number of times I've convinced someone to switch until they hear the name...

People have a love/hate relationship with the name. It really resonates well with women in general and K-12. The most push-back on it being too "non-professional" comes from the UK by far.

No immediate plans to change the name or branding, but duly noted! We really do appreciate and consider all feedback.

Consider that the people who have just the "hate" relationship with the name aren't sticking around.

I want to like DDG and I've switched to it from time to time, but the thing that always gets me is that I loathe the branding. I'm really, really sorry, about that and I appreciate what you're doing with DDG, and wish the branding didn't turn me off to a peculiar degree, but Google is such an easy choice and it doesn't get on my nerves.

I know that I'm an outlier in this, but I don't think it's altogether a completely impossible or uncommon reaction to be turned off by the name.

If we had settings where you could remove the branding, would that help? Note we have some already: https://duckduckgo.com/settings/

It's not about the name as an abstract concept, or as something you have to look at on the screen. It's saying it out loud that's the problem. It's a perfectly good symbol for representing the concept, but it's not a very good word for using. It's awkward.

Thinking about it, the reason UK people don't like it might be to do with the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glottal_stop

I imagine it's easier to soften the Ks with an american accent. For an english person putting two of them in a row like that is just, shall we say, taking the piss.

Perhaps it's not specifically the glottal stop, but there is certainly some articulatory havoc going on when I try to say your search engine's name out loud. I have to bounce my tongue off the roof of my mouth twice in quick succession in a way that's never normally required and it feels quite unnatural.

(Google, on the other hand, is literally fun to say, even though it's a silly word, and hardly professional.)

I can't help associating it with the "ducks" in Old City and those obnoxious quacker things they give everyone. They used to drive me nuts when I was working by their route.

Speaking of names, when did you stop using epi0bauqu? I almost didn't recognize you :)