Different topic:

Why do they use www.duck.co as their development url and www.duckduckgo.com as their search engine name?

The latter is just way too long to type. Especially for casual users who has google set at their main search engine. Compare URL lengths:

duckduckgo.com 14 (10+4)

google.com 10 (6+4)

yahoo.com 9 (5+4)

yandex.ru 9 (6+3)

bing.com 8 (4+4)

baidu.cn 8 (5+3)

I really want to like duckduckgo, but the name is really not well chosen. Even google (with a relatively long name) at least have two repeating characters.

I can't remember the last time I typed in a search engine URL. I type my queries into my browser URL field and let it do the right thing. When I want Google, I use "!g query" (because DDG is my default, and that's how you tell it to redirect the query to Google).

Under what circumstances do you type in the name of your preferred search engine?

When I want to use the non-default search engine (non-default is usually ddg). When trying a search engine for the first time. When using a public computer.

Biggest problem is on mobile. On Chrome (for iPhone), I have the following options:

1. Google

2. Yahoo!

3. Bing

I don't see any way to add a search engine not on the list.

> I don't see any way to add a search engine not on the list

Then that's a problem with Chrome. Using Safari on iPhone you can set DDG as your default search engine.

This doesn't change the fact, but you really shouldn't expect anything else from a browser made by a search engine provider. They probably wouldn't even allow the other two options, if they could get away without monopolization lawsuit.

ddg.gg 6 (3+3)

https://duck.co/help/company/short-domain

Thanks, that was what I was looking for. It should be the default url.

If I had to guess, because they don't own duck.com and developers have a better grip on unusual TLDs than most users.

Addendum: Whoever owns duck.com forwards it to google.com, so duck.co would be a really bad place to be as a search engine

> Whoever owns duck.com forwards

https://whois.icann.org/en/lookup?name=duck.com

And Google owns it... how can this be legal?

There's ddg.gg, but I don't know if that's an official domain and it's not necessarily easier to remember.

DuckDuckGo is to long and ddg.gg url is kinda makes it disservice. It instantly gets labeled as "nerd-stuff" if you recommend it to some non-techy friend, you just know they never going to even try it.