Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google transferred ownership of Duck.com to DuckDuckGo

namepros.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 435 posts

Re: Google transferred ownership of Duck.com to DuckDuckGo

#351

Post by paul7986 »

usuallymatt wrote: post #344
paul7986 wrote: post #309

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!

I'd suggest not mailing the same mistake again. Go elsewhere for your email. I switched my domain to a paid provider recently and really like it. As much as an @duck.com address would be cool and I'd use it as a 2nd email, I wouldn't want it as my primary.

Cool for me I’m all good using one company’s svc as long as that company is ethical and stands behind their values.

Re: Google transferred ownership of Duck.com to DuckDuckGo

#352

Post by EGreg »

cachvico wrote: post #335
johnfn wrote: post #323

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…

If Facebook owns groups.com but aren’t using it, can we go to ICANN and ask them to give it to us?

Re: Google transferred ownership of Duck.com to DuckDuckGo

#353

Post by bad_user »

freeflight wrote: post #328
dirkgently wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, it seems all this long explanation is just posturing when a simple example would have proven your point.

The simple example here being how Google seems to prioritize "current news", particularly those clicked the most often, over actual search results. Which from the outside feels very similar to how YouTube tends to "harmonize" it's dynamic playlists aka "mixes" to such a point that all of them end up being the same after the first 1-2 songs because everything after that seems to be strictly based on personalization an…

Prioritizing current news might be annoying, but it can't be a filter bubble, as we aren't talking of personalisation.

Basically I would be interested in a sample where say a democrat gets different opinion pieces versus a republican, on the same search query.

I feel that such samples could exist, but I haven't witnessed such instances in my daily use.

Re: Google transferred ownership of Duck.com to DuckDuckGo

#354

Post by androidgirl »

dctoedt wrote: post #137
androidgirl wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's absolutely hilarious and I love it. In casual conversation, "DeeDeeGee it" is so much more clunky.

In U.S. Navy and NATO jargon, "DDG" is the designator for guided-missile destroyers (warships) [0]. So you could say "destroy it" .... [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guided_missile_destroyer

Interesting! I had no idea.

Re: Google transferred ownership of Duck.com to DuckDuckGo

#355

Post by bitxbitxbitcoin »

TheKarateKid wrote: post #325
johnfn wrote: post #323

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? A company single-handedly helping to save a direct competitor defies all business logic and obligations to shareholders of that company. The truth is this was a business move to benefit Microsoft, even though it had a benevolent factor to it. Thinking otherwise is overly optimistic, similar to how you believe it being a classic exa…

What you described does defy all business logic... except in the presence of regulatory externalities (anti-trust legislation) that causes the business move to be a net positive.

I don't think there's any optimism or pessimism to it, just rational actions.

Re: Google transferred ownership of Duck.com to DuckDuckGo

#356

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

Romanulus wrote: post #345
biztos wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?"

lol @ reserving tables at McDonald's.

If you search Google Images for "romantic dinner at McDonalds", you get some fun results.

Re: Google transferred ownership of Duck.com to DuckDuckGo

#357

Post by adrr »

cosmojg wrote: post #274

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…

They could have sold it for $1 with a clause stating that ddg wouldn't partake in any antitrust action brought by any foreign government for 2 years. Value to Google would be worth tens or hundreds of millions in potential fines or revenue risk.

Re: Google transferred ownership of Duck.com to DuckDuckGo

#358

Post by saagarjha »

thieving_magpie wrote: post #50
sjroot wrote: post #12

This is cool and I hope it leads to a rebranding. While I like DDG a lot, the name has always felt off-putting to me. I'd much rather say "I'll just search Google" than "I'll just search DuckDuckGo." Does an extra syllable really cause that much additional friction?

In terms of names it's the GoDaddy of search engines.

Except GoDaddy actively tries to maintain that perception, while I don’t see DuckDuckGo doing the same.

Re: Google transferred ownership of Duck.com to DuckDuckGo

#359

Post by zenexer »

nimbosa wrote: post #307
zenexer wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It probably does. It'll take me a while to dig through the source to find the cause, but preliminary evidence suggests that fastcgi_cache_key doesn't handle $cookie_* variables correctly. If the cookie doesn't exist, it seems to result in a unique key every time. (Edit: The workaround is to assign the $cookie_* variable to another variable and then use that in fastcgi_cache_key.) If anyone is curious what sort of inc…

nice live stats monitor, can you link a short short postmortem analysis under that, shortly? Thanks!

Yup, it'll be on there once I finish debugging.

Edit: I'm having trouble reproducing it in a controlled environment, so a proper post mortem is probably going to have to wait for another day.

Re: Google transferred ownership of Duck.com to DuckDuckGo

#360

Post by mikekchar »

opo wrote: post #326
cosmojg wrote: post #274

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…

>...The story of Microsoft floating a significant loan to Apple in order to keep Apple solvent in the late '90's is well-known. That might be well known, but it never happened. To resolve a patent violation and alleged stolen source code, Microsoft bought 150 million dollars of Apple stock. (There were other aspects of the agreement, but there was no loan.) Your general point was likely right - Microsoft could have d…

Disclaimer: The following is based on my memories of working at Corel at the time. My memory is crap, so it is possible I've made mistakes. Please verify the authenticity of my claims if it is important to you and don't take my word for it.

At almost the exact same time, MS bought Corel Stock that enabled Corel to stay afloat. It was non-voting stock, but it had a veto on acquisitions (to reasonably protect their investment). They assured people that their didn't intend to use the veto and even worked with Corel to help them find companies to acquire with their new capital (one of them being a certain very cool artistic paint program, whose name I forgot).

Some time late, MS sold their Corel stock to Vector (VC company partly owned by Paul Allen) at a huge loss. Vector then told the Corel board of directors that they would exercise their veto on acquisitions unless the board authorised a buyout by Vector. The penalties on the acquisition deals would have put Corel under, so they had to agree. Vector bought out Corel at an attractive price. Derek Burney (then CEO of Corel), was replaced, but actually gave up his parachute clause in order to take a role as senior program manager as Microsoft. Most of the other senior VPs also managed to land roles at Microsoft. Vector admittedly ran Corel well and made quite a large profit by having a new public offering and selling 25% of the company. They were sued by previous share holders of Corel, but I didn't hear how that lawsuit ended up (I think the previous share holders lost).

I actually talked to Derek Burney about this stuff before he was ousted and he told me that he didn't have any choice in the way it went down. He said they were basically completely out of money before MS stepped in and that without MS's help, they were months away from completely shutting down. He didn't comment about the rest of how it worked out.

My assumption at the time was that the "investment" in Apple was intended to be a similar kind of operation, but that Steve Jobs was too canny to fall for it. I'd love to see all of the conditions attached to that money to see if I'm right.

Post reply on HN