341–350 of 435 posts
Google probably gave them the domain because they don't care about it and see them as a mild annoyance. DDG has had years to improve and failed.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this not just a classic example of HN looking for the negative in every positive? Apple was on the brink of bankruptcy and MS pushed them off it. Conversely, DDG is nowhere near bankruptcy and although it may be easier to type, a shorter domain name is not going to drastically increase the competitive edge that DDG has over google. To me they seem in totally different categories.
It’s not only looking for the negative. It didn’t happen. Whatever the reason, MS only infused $150 million into Apple’s coffers. Apple turned around and used $100 million to buy PowerComputing’s Mac license. Apple also continued to lose money for 3 years. The Net $50 million didn’t “save Apple”.
Nice! Now DuckDuckGo needs to just change their name to Duck Search and it can be used as a verb. No longer will you have to say "Did you DuckDuckGo it?" and can instead say "Did you Duck it?". Even on the domain alone I will use Duck more since I won't have to type in the full DuckDuckGo.com domain. I _feel_ like this could really bring some measurable growth to Duck search. I _feel_ like I certainly will use it mor…
My iPhone is constantly autocorrecting "fucking" to "ducking" no matter how many times I write the former and never write the latter, so this could be a huge thing. Me: "Ducking Donald" Siri: "Duck Search found a McDonald's two blocks away, should I reserve you a table?"
That's cool and I wish DDG would offer Duck mail. I'd like to diversify my digital life and move away from Google as much as possible!
Nice! Now DuckDuckGo needs to just change their name to Duck Search and it can be used as a verb. No longer will you have to say "Did you DuckDuckGo it?" and can instead say "Did you Duck it?". Even on the domain alone I will use Duck more since I won't have to type in the full DuckDuckGo.com domain. I _feel_ like this could really bring some measurable growth to Duck search. I _feel_ like I certainly will use it mor…
My iPhone is constantly autocorrecting "fucking" to "ducking" no matter how many times I write the former and never write the latter, so this could be a huge thing. Me: "Ducking Donald" Siri: "Duck Search found a McDonald's two blocks away, should I reserve you a table?"
Nice! Now DuckDuckGo needs to just change their name to Duck Search and it can be used as a verb. No longer will you have to say "Did you DuckDuckGo it?" and can instead say "Did you Duck it?". Even on the domain alone I will use Duck more since I won't have to type in the full DuckDuckGo.com domain. I _feel_ like this could really bring some measurable growth to Duck search. I _feel_ like I certainly will use it mor…
DDG is great - have been using it for months and I really enjoy the results. Google searches seem to be more of an echo chamber whereas DDG results seem to be more representative across a broad spectrum of sites.
I always made sure to log out of Google to avoid this issue, however after a couple of years using the Duck the main thing I notice when I end up on Google is how cluttered the search results have become. You have a bunch of widgets everywhere trying to give you "smart" results, related searches etc... Usually when I search for something I don't care about any of that, I just want to see the organic matches, not "Peo…
No mention of a sale? That seems so strange. I cant think of any other times that a business has given charity to a direct competitor like this.
I wonder if Google wants them around so that they can point to them as a competitor when anti-trust suits come up in court.
The US would not have put a man on the moon if it wasn't for the Soviet Union trying to do the same. Not having credible competition is bad from a purely professional point of view because you need someone to spur you on.
Since about 2003-2004 search has not really been a real competition in the west. Google has had an unhealthy dominance. I have worked for three search engine companies (Fast, Yahoo and Google) and I can remember how inspiring the early days were when there was half a dozen search engines to compete against.
I particularly enjoyed trying to figure out how the competition did things. At the time you had narrow problems people worked on that perhaps only a dozen other people in the world cared deeply about. Published research hadn't always caught up with what was happening so you spent some amount of time trying to read between the lines and measure things to figure out what the competition was up to.
One of my fondest memories is a lunch I had with Jeff Dean when I slid a napkin over the table with a graph on it. He took one look at it, smiled and said "did you figure it out?". I said "no, did you?". And he said "I have no idea".
Today search just exists and I no longer give a shit about it. It doesn't strike me as fun anymore. Because there is no real competition. I'm pretty sure that at least the engineers at Google would soil themselves with joy if they got a real competitor.
NamePros user, Thelma, made a good point: > The story of Microsoft floating a significant loan to Apple in order to keep Apple solvent in the late '90's is well-known. Microsoft didn't do so out of altruistic impulse; they did so to decrease the odds they'd be the target of anti-trust legislation. I'm sure the c-suite at Google is very aware of that history lesson, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a more likely anti…
Good point. Mozilla also received (still receives?) a substantial amount of money from Google, no doubt that achieves similar goals -- prop up a competitor -- although it also helps Google make their search engine the default for Firefox users.
Mozilla brings in revenues in excess of half a billion dollars per year. The royalties alone are in excess of half a billion per year.
Note that the most recent figures we have are from 2016 when Mozilla was on the Yahoo money. The 2018 won't be available for a couple years, but it should hint towards how much the new Google contract brought in. And the intermediate one should show the blip of the Pocket acquisition along with figures sugared by the kickbacks that Mozilla originally lied about not receiving. (Spoiler alert: Mozilla themselves eventually admitted that the info was untrue with regard to not benefitting directly from the Pocket partnership. Just a proviso for anyone who wasn't following along closely and might assume that I'm making baseless conjecture. These are facts.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this not just a classic example of HN looking for the negative in every positive? Apple was on the brink of bankruptcy and MS pushed them off it. Conversely, DDG is nowhere near bankruptcy and although it may be easier to type, a shorter domain name is not going to drastically increase the competitive edge that DDG has over google. To me they seem in totally different categories.
> Is this not just a classic example of HN looking for the negative in every positive? No. Google has the monopoly on search (outside of China). Avoiding anti-trust is a huge concern of theirs. Look at MS and IE in the browser wars - they were forced by the EU to build into Windows links/ads to the other browsers - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrowserChoice.eu#/media/File:B... Whilst DDG has huge momentum by now…
No. Russia has yandex.
[1]: http://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/all/rus...