While we are at it - what is the business model for freeware web browsers such as Vivaldi, Firefox, etc... I know they have some deals with MS, Google and friends but how such deals are done? Is it from some personal contacts or do you have to apply officially? What are the particular numbers - is it something you have to negotiate? What is the range in this case? etc...
What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)
11–20 of 229 posts
Re: What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)
#12I am going to build my own search engine but with a monthly subscription fee. No ads, no tracking and I don't keep logs of your activity. So across between a VPN and a Search engine!
I admire the initiative but there is no way people will pay for a search engine.
I and/or the company I work for would. Google is awful for finding the kind of high quality, niche information I need in my job. It just returns lowest common denominator rubbish.
Re: What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)
#13While I am supportive of their business model, and search functionality, I find it off-putting the way they speak of privacy but then use maps provided by a GAFAM which are ultimately profit oriented and can _not_ be trusted to safeguard privacy regardless of their marketing. OSM would be a great choice here. I'll even dare to speculate that they were financially incentivized to make their choice in the face of a superior and actually privacy-oriented choice.
Re: What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)
#14While we are at it - what is the business model for freeware web browsers such as Vivaldi, Firefox, etc... I know they have some deals with MS, Google and friends but how such deals are done? Is it from some personal contacts or do you have to apply officially? What are the particular numbers - is it something you have to negotiate? What is the range in this case? etc...
Mozilla makes a referral fee from search engine searches made with the browser. Their revenue is in the hundreds of millions.
https://www.cnet.com/news/google-firefox-search-deal-gives-m...
Re: What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
I admire the initiative but there is no way people will pay for a search engine.
Quite the generalisation.. To provide a counter generalisation, I am sure a certain percentage would pay for a niche search engine if it provided specific value. I mean, LexisNexis news search exists, and is far from free.
Because Lexis has a massive database of news stories and the rights to share it.
Re: What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)
#16I am going to build my own search engine but with a monthly subscription fee. No ads, no tracking and I don't keep logs of your activity. So across between a VPN and a Search engine!
I admire the initiative but there is no way people will pay for a search engine.
I remember years ago there was a desktop application for Windows called Copernic Agent. It was a meta search tool that combined results from multiple search engines. It had free and paid versions. It's not exactly the same as paying for a search engine, but it's close enough. It looks like it's abandoned now and the company moved on to desktop and enterprise file searching.
Also, there are people who pay for API calls to a search engine, for example Bing Search. Again, it's not the same as users paying a monthly subscription for unlimited access, but someone is paying in the end.
Re: What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
I admire the initiative but there is no way people will pay for a search engine.
Quite the generalisation.. To provide a counter generalisation, I am sure a certain percentage would pay for a niche search engine if it provided specific value. I mean, LexisNexis news search exists, and is far from free.
Sure, but the comment I replied to did not talk about a "niche" search engine. If you find a specific area of search that there is no good search engine for, or if existing products are really bad, of course you may succeed in that space, probably because you're at that point targeting the enterprise market -- but expecting normal consumers to pay for a search engine is naive at best.
Re: What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)
#18I am going to build my own search engine but with a monthly subscription fee. No ads, no tracking and I don't keep logs of your activity. So across between a VPN and a Search engine!
I admire the initiative but there is no way people will pay for a search engine.
A paid search engine could work once it proves itself. This means they need to put a significant amount of work and server resources into it first, get a critical mass of users and then they can make it paid.
Re: What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
I admire the initiative but there is no way people will pay for a search engine.
I and/or the company I work for would. Google is awful for finding the kind of high quality, niche information I need in my job. It just returns lowest common denominator rubbish.
As I wrote in my other reply, there was no mention of a "niche" search engine in the comment I replied to. Yes, there are future business opportunities and past examples of search succeeding in areas where Google is lacking: but when people think of a general "search engine" they think of a competitor to Google for regular Internet users, and there is no way that would be a viable business model.
Re: What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)
#20I've been seeing DDG billboards all over, which seems weird.