I agree with OP. The name isn't bad per se, but I too believe it ultimately puts a ceiling on DDG's growth and marketability. The fact is, it is awkward to use in a sentence, and it will dampen the rate of word-of-mouth marketing for that reason.
I'm not sure how tongue in cheek your remark is, but just in general if you think that trends in language, such as using a brand name as a verb, come from the top-down rather than appearing spontaneously and organically then you're on seriously the wrong track. There's a reason that people don't say 'duck it', that has nothing to do with you encouraging them to or not. You can't influence it at all really (well for sake of argument, assume that's true at least with anything but a world-leading marketing spend) - all you can do is set the seed for the brand to get used that way organically. At the moment it's not.
The branding thus far is a sunk cost. It's never too late to turn round, walk back, and take the other fork in the road if the fork you chose isn't going anywhere.
At the end of the day we look at it from the perspective of how we've come to be the startup that does things a little differently. Our headquarters is in a town of 5000 people in PA, we refuse to track our users even if it were more profitable, and we like our long quirky name. And, when you do use DuckDuckGo in a sentence people notice and it sticks with them because it is different.
We've grown 100% year over year, but at the end of the day our main focus is building a great product people love, that truly puts privacy first. Threads like this mean we're doing it right - we just want people to love being part of the flock!
> when you do use DuckDuckGo in a sentence people notice and it sticks with them because it is different
This is a good point, but I guess if a lot fewer people use it in a sentence to begin with than otherwise might, it won't provide much of an advantage in practice.
> our main focus is building a great product people love
This entirely sums up the point - DDG does things differently and that's great - going against the established grain with your product makes it what it is. But why go against the grain with your branding too? Aren't you just adding an orthogonal concern to deal with, that has nothing to do with what makes your product great?
I'm not sure how tongue in cheek your remark is, but just in general if you think that trends in language, such as using a brand name as a verb, come from the top-down rather than appearing spontaneously and organically then you're on seriously the wrong track. There's a reason that people don't say 'duck it', that has nothing to do with you encouraging them to or not. You can't influence it at all really (well for sake of argument, assume that's true at least with anything but a world-leading marketing spend) - all you can do is set the seed for the brand to get used that way organically. At the moment it's not.
The branding thus far is a sunk cost. It's never too late to turn round, walk back, and take the other fork in the road if the fork you chose isn't going anywhere.