Here is the DNS information:
https://whois.icann.org/en/lookup?name=duck.com
How can this be legal, since clearly the name is similar to a rival search engine?
Google owned duck.com redirects to Google.com. How is this legal?
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Re: Google owned duck.com redirects to Google.com. How is this legal?
#2Re: Google owned duck.com redirects to Google.com. How is this legal?
#3"duck" also is a common english word, and quite far from any of the trademarks or domains owned by DDG. They don't display content that could confuse a user. If this were illegal, a single trademark would block way to many different words.
It's not particularly nice of Google (e.g. they could sell the domain or just leave it pointing to nothing if they don't have fittingly named product/project right now), but it shouldn't be illegal.
Re: Google owned duck.com redirects to Google.com. How is this legal?
#4Preface: I have only little knowledge aboud DNS records. Feel free to correct or add any information.
Here is what 10 minutes on the internet got me:
- According to Wikipedia [0] DDG started 2008
- The whois record shows 1995 as creation date (I assume this is the first time someone registered it back then?)
- According to [1] the Domain changed owners 3 times (since 2002); These records indicate Google bought the domain latest in 2010
- According to [2] DuckDuckGo Traffic 2010 was between 40k-80k quries per day (~0.5 - 1 QPS)
Unfortunately, this doesn't allow (me) to draw a clear conclusion. (If duck.go were bought in 2005 or 2015, it would have been more clear...)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo
Re: Google owned duck.com redirects to Google.com. How is this legal?
#5Google is being evil here.
Re: Google owned duck.com redirects to Google.com. How is this legal?
#6Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3524164
Re: Google owned duck.com redirects to Google.com. How is this legal?
#7The question is not legal its about ethical. Why Google Why ?
Re: Google owned duck.com redirects to Google.com. How is this legal?
#8This has bad-faith written all over it.
I think a court would agree.
Re: Google owned duck.com redirects to Google.com. How is this legal?
#9How is it illegal?
Re: Google owned duck.com redirects to Google.com. How is this legal?
#10This is really unfortunate, it makes duck.co to loose visitors to google.