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What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)

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Re: What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)

#21

Post by hnarn »

Nextgrid wrote: post #18
hnarn wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, the "only" thing you need to do is

1) Build a better/equal search engine to that of Google

2) Convince people it's better enough that it's worth paying for, or that their privacy matters enough that they should pay to not use Google.

3) Maintain your costs of operation and make a profit

There is no way I would invest in a company that attempted this, but as I said, I admire someone that would try.

Re: What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)

#22

Post by rahulroy »

explange wrote: post #12
hnarn wrote: post #5

Earlier 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.

> 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.

May I know the niche that you are referring to? Also, how do other search engines like DuckDuckGo performs against Google?

Re: What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)

#23

Post by garmaine »

nojito wrote: post #15
_puk wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would wager that Google's database of new stories is bigger. LexisNexis survives partly through institutional inertia, but also I expect because they've tailored their search product to their specific niche in a way that is much more useful than Google's general-purpose algorithms.

Re: What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)

#24

Post by joe_fishfish »

I like DuckDuckGo, but it's much worse than Google at localisation. It's annoying to have to search, then repeat the search with "UK" on the end to make it realise I'm not interested in buying e.g. building supplies or coffee or beer from US-based businesses.

I get that it has no concept of who I am when I search, but some kind of localisation based on IP address could maybe help?

Also, it feels a little disingenuous to say Google is not a search company, it's an advertising company. DDG's revenue is also built on ads. Is it fair to say they are also not an advertising company, not a search company?

Re: What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)

#25

Post by drukenemo »

ionwake wrote: post #2

I’ve always had a bad vibe about duckduckgo

Less than ideal case-scenario, users are spreading their data between Google and Duck Duck, Bing etc. Not empowering a single agent. In the worst case Duck sell our data to Google. I find that unlikely.

Re: What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)

#26

Post by vanderZwan »

joe_fishfish wrote: post #24

I like DuckDuckGo, but it's much worse than Google at localisation. It's annoying to have to search, then repeat the search with "UK" on the end to make it realise I'm not interested in buying e.g. building supplies or coffee or beer from US-based businesses. I get that it has no concept of who I am when I search, but some kind of localisation based on IP address could maybe help? Also, it feels a little disingenuous…

You can change the settings to default to region-specific search, perhaps that would solve your first issue?

https://duckduckgo.com/settings

Re: What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)

#27

Post by wegs »

DuckDuckGo has 50-100 employees, according to CrunchBase, while Google has over 100,000 employees. The exact numbers are irrelevant, but Google has around three orders of magnitude more employees than DDG.

a) DDG needs about 1/1000th the revenue of Google to survive at its current scale.

b) Software quality does not scale linearly with manpower. A 50-100 person team can do /almost/ as well as a 10,000 person team in the same domain. You spend a lot to go from 90% to 99% or 99% to 99.9%.

c) Unsurprisingly, I find DDG's search results good enough. I rarely go to Google, and only when DDG fails me.

d) If DDG can't target advertising as well as Google, they'll still have enough revenue to survive at their current level of quality. Their CPM is likely lower than Google's with less data and optimization, but I'd guess at worst 2x lower, not 1000x lower.

I'm glad they're doing well. On paper, it seems like a sound business model, and it's a heck of a lot more customer-friendly.

Curiously, I'd say 90% of the time I use Google is for math. If I'm typing a complex math expression (especially with units), Google tends to do much better than DDG.

Re: What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)

#29

Post by mikorym »

joe_fishfish wrote: post #24

I like DuckDuckGo, but it's much worse than Google at localisation. It's annoying to have to search, then repeat the search with "UK" on the end to make it realise I'm not interested in buying e.g. building supplies or coffee or beer from US-based businesses. I get that it has no concept of who I am when I search, but some kind of localisation based on IP address could maybe help? Also, it feels a little disingenuous…

There is a slider that allows you to put it on or off.

If your IP is in the UK, the slider will say "United Kingdom on/off" or something like that.

Re: What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)

#30

Post by IB885588 »

wegs wrote: post #27

DuckDuckGo has 50-100 employees, according to CrunchBase, while Google has over 100,000 employees. The exact numbers are irrelevant, but Google has around three orders of magnitude more employees than DDG. a) DDG needs about 1/1000th the revenue of Google to survive at its current scale. b) Software quality does not scale linearly with manpower. A 50-100 person team can do /almost/ as well as a 10,000 person team in…

Not to splice hair, but Google isn't just "surviving", so the amount needed for DDG to survive is probably even smaller than that. They don't need to be as profitable as Google Search (which is much more profitable than the company as a whole) to do well.
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