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DuckDuckGo Raises $10M

news.crunchbase.com

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Re: DuckDuckGo Raises $10M

#2

Post by nine_k »

The article says that DDG was profitable since 2014.

I wonder just how profitable it is, and how soon would it be able to return the investments. A high investment load means that a company strives for an exit. I won't like DDG to be bought by whatever party.

Re: DuckDuckGo Raises $10M

#3

Post by bobpappas »

nine_k wrote: post #2

The article says that DDG was profitable since 2014. I wonder just how profitable it is, and how soon would it be able to return the investments. A high investment load means that a company strives for an exit. I won't like DDG to be bought by whatever party.

I interviewed with DuckDuckGo a few months ago and their founders, investors, and board are not looking for the quick payout. They are more intent at a self sustaining alternative to Google.

Re: DuckDuckGo Raises $10M

#4

Post by newfocogi »

I have been using DDG for about a year now, although I had tried using it years ago. It works fine for simple queries( e.g. search name of company rather than typing out url). But I basically have !g programmed into my fingers for everything more complicated. Many times when I don't find the results I am looking for, I subconsciously assume that google would be able to find them. This is in comparison to when I cannot find something on google, I assume the website owner either sucks at SEO or it doesn't exist. I am rooting for DDG, but it is going to be really hard for them to make up the literal cognitive difference in my mindset.

Side note, if they get bought out by a big player, I will feel like my use of them for the last year has been for naught.

Re: DuckDuckGo Raises $10M

#5

Post by confounded »

nine_k wrote: post #2

The article says that DDG was profitable since 2014. I wonder just how profitable it is, and how soon would it be able to return the investments. A high investment load means that a company strives for an exit. I won't like DDG to be bought by whatever party.

A Canadian pension fund may be a bit less aggressive for an exit than traditional SV VC firm. I'm not too worried so far.

Re: DuckDuckGo Raises $10M

#6

Post by cabaalis »

> DuckDuckGo appears healthy and quite content with making money off of keyword-based ads alone.

This makes perfect sense. Show an ad related to what a person is interested in and looking at. When I did adsense stuff a long, long time ago, I seem to remember that Google would request a copy of the page, and then tailor the ads to the content of the page. There was absolutely no interest at all in "Who" was looking at the page. It seems to me there is still a tremendous amount of money that could be made with only that use case.

Re: DuckDuckGo Raises $10M

#7

Post by mLuby »

newfocogi wrote: post #4

I have been using DDG for about a year now, although I had tried using it years ago. It works fine for simple queries( e.g. search name of company rather than typing out url). But I basically have !g programmed into my fingers for everything more complicated. Many times when I don't find the results I am looking for, I subconsciously assume that google would be able to find them. This is in comparison to when I canno…

I have the same muscle memory, but I don't think it's a bad thing. Basically I only use !g when normal DDG doesn't give me what I'm looking for, and half the time !g doesn't have it either. The only thing I can't abandon is !gmaps.

And I'm just discovering a bunch of other ! commands that make DDG significantly more useful that Google (eg !esen).

Re: DuckDuckGo Raises $10M

#8

Post by stockkid »

newfocogi wrote: post #4

I have been using DDG for about a year now, although I had tried using it years ago. It works fine for simple queries( e.g. search name of company rather than typing out url). But I basically have !g programmed into my fingers for everything more complicated. Many times when I don't find the results I am looking for, I subconsciously assume that google would be able to find them. This is in comparison to when I canno…

> Many times when I don't find the results I am looking for, I subconsciously assume that google would be able to find them.

I've also been using DDG as a main search engine for a while and feel the similarly. Even more, for some queries I subconsciously assume that DDG won't find the result I want and resort to Google before I even search. Examples of such queries are complex programming questions etc.

Re: DuckDuckGo Raises $10M

#9

Post by Splines »

mLuby wrote: post #7
newfocogi wrote: post #4

I have been using DDG for about a year now, although I had tried using it years ago. It works fine for simple queries( e.g. search name of company rather than typing out url). But I basically have !g programmed into my fingers for everything more complicated. Many times when I don't find the results I am looking for, I subconsciously assume that google would be able to find them. This is in comparison to when I canno…

I have the same muscle memory, but I don't think it's a bad thing. Basically I only use !g when normal DDG doesn't give me what I'm looking for, and half the time !g doesn't have it either. The only thing I can't abandon is !gmaps. And I'm just discovering a bunch of other ! commands that make DDG significantly more useful that Google (eg !esen).

I don't think it's a bad thing either. It gives DDG a very clear signal so that they can improve: "you are not giving me the results I want for these queries". For most other search engines people just switch.

Re: DuckDuckGo Raises $10M

#10

Post by news_to_me »

mLuby wrote: post #7
newfocogi wrote: post #4

I have been using DDG for about a year now, although I had tried using it years ago. It works fine for simple queries( e.g. search name of company rather than typing out url). But I basically have !g programmed into my fingers for everything more complicated. Many times when I don't find the results I am looking for, I subconsciously assume that google would be able to find them. This is in comparison to when I canno…

I have the same muscle memory, but I don't think it's a bad thing. Basically I only use !g when normal DDG doesn't give me what I'm looking for, and half the time !g doesn't have it either. The only thing I can't abandon is !gmaps. And I'm just discovering a bunch of other ! commands that make DDG significantly more useful that Google (eg !esen).

I've found that "!w", which searches Wikipedia, is extremely useful.
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