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What is the revenue generation model for DuckDuckGo?

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61–70 of 163 posts

Re: What is the revenue generation model for DuckDuckGo?

#61
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rant seems extremely strong - how about we go with well thought through set of opinions that the CEO of Duck Duck Go is rigorously applying to his product. I personally found his argument so persuasive I intend to set everything to DuckDuckGo again now.

I can’t get over ther branding. I know this is a terrible reason for not switching but I can’t stand their name or logo. If they were named something more modern and less annoying I’d consider. Call me shallow but branding is important if I’m going to use it every day.

Branding is easily the hardest part of a new project. Code is easy. Names are hard!

Re: What is the revenue generation model for DuckDuckGo?

#62

Oh look another anonymous question on Quora about a company, answered by the CEO of said company. And it is answered in such a direct way without any marketing for his service at all. \s These Q&A things on Quora are getting ridiculous. Without all the fluff that thing would condense to one sentence: We make money by context search ads and affiliate commission on !bang searches. The thing that I thought made Google e…

Lest we not forget that DDG plainly refuses any external auditors to verify their claims of user privacy, despite having received a large investment recently and employing about 50 people (or more now) in full time. In this case, DDG asks users to have "faith" that their privacy is indeed being respected.

Not defending DDG but it is ridiculuos to ask for a company for auditing to probe their claims. There is no legal enforcement for that. If DDG lies and they are discovered they will loose their user base. It is enough with that.

Re: What is the revenue generation model for DuckDuckGo?

#63
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how this model works. There are three general models of online advertising: - CPM: you pay per impression (ie how often the ad is seen) - CPC: cost per click. You only pay when the user clicks. - CPA: you only pay when the user clicks and does something (eg buys something) Display advertising (putting ads on third-party websites eg AdSense) is primarily CPM. Search advertising is primarily CPC (or at least…

CPM should be updated to CPK. The M in CPM is the Roman numeral for 1000. It's an archaic term, and should be replaced with the SI unit for 1000. Though coining the phrase "kilo-impression" would be a stretch.

I read it as "cost per Mpression".

Re: What is the revenue generation model for DuckDuckGo?

#64

> Though first, if you’re not familiar with DuckDuckGo, we are an Internet privacy company that empowers you to seamlessly take control of your personal information online, without any tradeoffs. For the record: by policy, or by design?

By accident: Bing (their main backend) would obviously not leak personal information to a third party site such as DDG.

Re: What is the revenue generation model for DuckDuckGo?

#65

> In fact, search advertisers buy search ads by bidding on keywords, not people. It makes intuitive sense, too. If you search for ‘car’, you are more likely to respond to a car ad than something you searched for last week. This keyword-based advertising is our primary business model. The rest of the post is a rant about user tracking.

Has he never heard of retargeting? That model is essentially bidding on people. And I wouldnt be surprised if retargeting will become the most popular form or advertising targeting.

He makes the distinction later on in the article. "Google is not a search company, they're an advertising company." Google has their display network all across the internet, DDG does not.

Retargeting is a popular model for advertising companies, where the retargeting follows you around the internet. Retargeting is much less valuable if you are just a search company.

Re: What is the revenue generation model for DuckDuckGo?

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quora is garbage. It's full of self-proclaimed experts, who give the impression that their answers are more valuable than those found on other questions/answering sites.

It used to be really useful, in the beginning, when people actually contributed to the platform for the sake of curating knowledge. Now it feels like an advertising platform. Either for companies or "influencer". Posts get artificially prolonged, people add stock images to make people click on the posts.

It’s been a while since I’ve ran across a quora post that wasn’t some form of advertising or follower building. I mostly do “search + Reddit” these days unless I know the topic wont be well covered there if it’s technical in nature. For things like product reviews Reddit has been ok, but not without manipulation by companies too. I guess at the end of the day you always have to read between the lines.

Re: What is the revenue generation model for DuckDuckGo?

#67

I know that I am going to be downvoted and this comment is going to be deleted within minutes by DDG online army, but I've really had enough with all DDG shilling in online tech-based communities like HN, reddit and 4chan. Call me paranoid but I almost 100% sure that all these shill threads everyday are not a coincidence. The amazing thing is DDG itself is a mediocre search engine so I don't really understand what al…

I don't want to call you paranoid... but the guidelines ask you to please not post like this and email us instead.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: What is the revenue generation model for DuckDuckGo?

#68
I like DDG, but claiming that their ads are based only on keywords is just not true. They are at least also based on location. I just tried "dishwasher" and it brings up ads in French from local stores. But this is natural, because without the location most ads would probably be meaningless.

The question is then, how far can you go by using the information available only in the user's HTTP request? Can you use the user's OS and device information? Where is the line exactly that DDG doesn't want to cross?

Edit: I just realized that the answer is probably: yes DDG can use all available information to improve targeting, but it won't store it.

Re: What is the revenue generation model for DuckDuckGo?

#69
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rant seems extremely strong - how about we go with well thought through set of opinions that the CEO of Duck Duck Go is rigorously applying to his product. I personally found his argument so persuasive I intend to set everything to DuckDuckGo again now.

I can’t get over ther branding. I know this is a terrible reason for not switching but I can’t stand their name or logo. If they were named something more modern and less annoying I’d consider. Call me shallow but branding is important if I’m going to use it every day.

it isn't the reason I don't DDG (or is it?) ..but I had a similar reaction to the branding.

Re: What is the revenue generation model for DuckDuckGo?

#70
I'll probably be downvoted to hell, but I have to say this. I'm Ukrainian, so I have bias against anything related to Russian government, especially services pretending to be improving my privacy. So, my question is, what is DuckDuckGo's relationship to Yandex, a company fully controlled by Russian government and having track record sharing personal information with Russian security services?
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