Thank HN: for helping me get traction with DuckDuckGo and Traction book – AMA

Post by epi0Bauqu » Wed, Oct 07, 2015, 8:03 PM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #41

epi0Bauqu wrote: post #35

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We haven't disclosed it, but advertising is the bulk. The problem with paid is three-fold. We're a for-profit company so don't want to come off as taking donations like a non-profit. Second, we don't want to collect personal information. So we could do something like bitcoin but that isn't exactly low-friction :). Third, it is promoting that it exists. We have a hard problem getting the word out about anything not on…

[deleted]

Post by malnourish » Wed, Oct 07, 2015, 8:06 PM UTC

JupiterMoon wrote: post #48

epi0Bauqu wrote: post #6

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DuckDuckGo is actually profitable! It is a myth you need to track people to make money in Web search. Most of the money is still made without tracking people by showing you ads based on your keyword, i.e. type in car and get a car ad. These ads are lucrative because people have buying intent. All that tracking is for the rest of the Internet without this search intent, and that's why you're tracked across the Interne…

I think that the fact that DDG has a no tracking policy allows users to turn their ad blocking off, this might contribute something towards profitability...

Post by TYPE_FASTER » Wed, Oct 07, 2015, 8:09 PM UTC

epi0Bauqu wrote: post #9

eevilspock wrote: post #8

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I think it's great what you're doing (DDG is my default search engine). And I'm glad you're profitable so you can stay alive. But I'd like to think that if you could find a way other than ads, you'd take it in a heartbeat, even if you made less profit, but as long as you could be self-sustaining. Is that true? I have a very strong opinion about advertising and its effects on the web. I would love to hear your feedbac…

Yup, that's very true but the numbers just don't add up well on search in terms of subscription or donation. We have tried to do much less advertising, making it up on affiliate revenue, but we can't do that much because of our privacy policy. We can only use programs that can be anonymous, which means the companies run them themselves through URL parameters, and that's really just Amazon and eBay.

Post by epi0Bauqu » Wed, Oct 07, 2015, 8:09 PM UTC

calpaterson wrote: post #54

epi0Bauqu wrote: post #52

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These interviews (I referenced above) were really the first things I did: https://www.youtube.com/user/tractionbook I blogged all of them on Hacker News (you can search the archives to see), and then started blogging ideas that would become the book and got feedback from those on my blog and on HN. This was all before really writing. Once we actually started writing we recruited "early readers" periodically to read a…

Sorry, I meant when you were working on your search engine

Post by lmedinas » Wed, Oct 07, 2015, 8:14 PM UTC

epi0Bauqu wrote: post #49

lmedinas wrote: post #45

Gabriel, thank you for DDG I have been using and promoting for years. In terms of mobile any plans for the future you can reveal? How do you feel about Siri, Google Now and Cortana is it something you think DDG can do or can be used as a backend/source ?

Thank you! We're of course very focused on making the best mobile experience we can. We think our instant answers can be a big part of that since answers are even better on mobile where space is limited and browsing sites is slower. How to exactly showcase them is a bit unclear, however. So nothing major to reveal yet, sorry :)