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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)

#81

Post by cfors »

yters wrote: post #79
akie wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unsurprisingly, I find DDG's search results good enough. I rarely go to Google, and only when DDG fails me. It might be helpful to point out that DDG (and other 'alternative' search engines such as Ecosia) get their search results from Bing.

Why not just use Bing? Also, how is this not a problem? If DDG ever becomes popular enough to be a threat, Bing just stops providing them search results.

Because Bing does what Google does, which is uses your search history to show you targeted ads. DuckDuckGo only shows keyword based ads, which aren't as effective but do not require building a persona of personal information to target.

It's totally a problem and disingenuous of the article to talk about the "Business Model" of DDG and not mention this.

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

#82

Post by andreareina »

akie wrote: post #71
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…

> Unsurprisingly, I find DDG's search results good enough. I rarely go to Google, and only when DDG fails me. It might be helpful to point out that DDG (and other 'alternative' search engines such as Ecosia) get their search results from Bing.

DDG has its own index now, though it still augments that with other sources.

https://help.duckduckgo.com/results/sources/

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

#83

Post by riffraff »

darkerside wrote: post #59
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…

It's funny, the first time I tried to switch to DDG, I couldn't make it stick. I eventually realized it was because I was frustrated by the lack of sports reporting carousels, which is admittedly a very silly reason. I simply changed my behavior to use a sports website directly for those queries, and DDG has been totally sufficient for everything else.

it was the same for me, now I directly type !g whatever and get to them on google. It's good enough.

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

#85

Post by riffraff »

rietta wrote: post #58
pastrami_panda wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> c) Unsurprisingly, I find DDG's search results good enough. I rarely go to Google, and only when DDG fails me. Same, my problem is that whenever I search for something that isn't english DDG can't find even the most basic stuff. Aside from that the migration has been pretty painless for me though so I have my hopes up.

I find myself throwing !g when I want to find a programming specific thing. Not sure this is because Google's results for niche tech sites is better or because I am more familiar with how to craft these as Google queries having used it almost exclusively since 1998.

I would bet part of it is the personalisation of results on google's side, I experience the same.

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

#86

Post by sct202 »

x32n23nr wrote: post #50

> What Is the Business Model for DuckDuckGo? The difference between the revenue from Bing Ads they show and the money they have to pay Bing for their search API.

I'm surprised they didn't mention it at all on the page. It's definitely mentioned on other pages about how to get your ads to show up on DDG.

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

#87

Post by chris_f »

test1235 wrote: post #77
chris_f wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the poster, but here is an example. Elsewhere in this thread I posted a fact that I knew, but wanted to double check. It was about the LexisNexis news database containing 35k sources. Here are the queries for "lexis news 35000" on Google and DDG: https://www.google.com/search?q=lexis%20news%2035000 https://duckduckgo.com/?q=lexis+news+35000&ia=web The information I was looking for is in the first Google results.…

>Nexis : | LexisNexis >[Search domain www.lexisnexis.com.my/en-my/products/nexis.page] www.lexisnexis.com.my/en-my/products/nexis.page >Nexis is an online service for your strategic news and business research. Search for content from 35,000 publications. Conduct accurate searches of the 35,000 international sources in the Nexis online service. Make informed business decisions after getting the latest news and market…

this was the 8th result for me in DDG, with no filters or customisation or anything

So that link was 9th for me in DDG, but that exactly proves the point.

Google returned a relevant result in the first position. In addition, look at the result snippet from DDG:

The world is moving fast - Nexis news alerts help you keep up by delivering current news and information related to companies, trends, and events that matter to you. Set a Nexis alert related to a particular topic and get updates online or via email.

I wouldn't know that page had the information I was looking for unless I visited the page and reviewed the content. That's a lot of effort, when Google has the information in the top result and the snippet clearly indicates it is on the page.

(Edit: I also just looked at the content on that page, and it doesn't provide the information I was looking for. It provides the number of sources across all Nexis' searches. I was only looking for information on the news library.)

Also, half of the Lexis results on the DDG SERP are about Lexus the car.

Like I said, I like the mission of DDG, but in this and many other examples the organic SERP relevance is worse for multiple reasons.

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

#88

Post by x32n23nr »

sct202 wrote: post #86
x32n23nr wrote: post #50

> What Is the Business Model for DuckDuckGo? The difference between the revenue from Bing Ads they show and the money they have to pay Bing for their search API.

I'm surprised they didn't mention it at all on the page. It's definitely mentioned on other pages about how to get your ads to show up on DDG.

I'm not. Being a re-seller of search and ads is not an impressive narrative for a company that sells the illusion of a search alternative. DDG adds value in the privacy realm, and I'd rather have it exist than not, but its continued existence depends on the continued will of a search api provider to sell and in the western world there's basically only 2 in that game: Google and Bing.

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

#89

Post by maze-le »

gyulai wrote: post #80
eloc49 wrote: post #65

I think Google only keeps DuckDuckGo around so they can claim they have “competition.”

Why would it be up to Google to decide whether or not DuckDuckGo gets to "be around"?

I am also confused about this wording but I assume it refers to the duckduckgo-app on android devices. It would be blatantly anti-competitive if google would refuse the ddg app in their app store, solely because they compete with them in the search-engine market -- there are legal mechanisms against this behavior.

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

#90

Post by ashtonkem »

IB885588 wrote: post #30
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.

Google is not only massively profitable, they’re also running a ton of loss leading services designed to feed more data into the machine, like Gmail, as well as a ton of other experimental ventures that DDG isn’t doing.

Google is also headquartered in some of the most expensive real estate in America, while DDG is in Pennsylvania. I’d bet that Google is paying a lot more in land cost per employee than DDG is.

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