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As fun as this crazy conspiracy theory is, this is because Google acquired The Duck Corporation (which is what On2 used to be called), which owned duck.com. The

As fun as this crazy conspiracy theory is, this is because Google acquired The Duck Corporation (which is what On2 used to be called), which owned duck.com. They basically predate DDG. (they were acquired in 2009, ddg was started late 2008)

oh_sigh 8y ago
And it should be noted that the On2 acquisition happened at almost the exact time as the creation of duckduckgo, so it's unlikely DDG was even on the radar of anyone in google at that time.
ocdtrekkie 8y ago
The difference seems to be that on2.com has an appropriate landing page: https://twitter.com/Richiesque/status/1019973138417938432 https://twitter.com/Richiesque/status/1019973138417938432 Whereas duck.com, a commonly interesting domain name for their competitor (which DDG claims confuses a lot of their users), gets redirected to Google's search engine with no other note whatsoever. Shouldn't duck.com have a similar page to on2.com?
- btian 8y ago
  What about Pulse.io? It also redirects to google.com I believe most of Google's acquisitions redirect to the search engine (unless there's a more appropriate destination).
  - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
    I know meebo.com is another acquisition that leads to a landing page rather than a redirect to Google.com. My guess is who puts what on what server and whether or not it's a redirect depends heavily on who is involved in the post-acquisition work, since Google is a big company. I'm not discounting the possibility that it's innocuous, but it's strange that even among the same acquisition, one domain goes to google.com and one goes to a landing page explaining the acquisition. EDIT note: DannyBee's opinion here was posted around the same time as this comment, and suggests a specific corporate strategy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17570412 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17570412
- turc1656 8y ago
  Yes, yes it should. At least that's what I would expect if they were going for transparency. The only thing that would make sense is if On2 (previously known as Duck Corproration) was actually involved in internet search. It was not, ever. So this seems like a clear attempt to drive traffic to me. Both domains were part of the same acquisition. Why put that landing page on On2 but not Duck? The answer is obvious.
- DannyBee 8y ago
  No. Actually, for as long as i've been involved in helping M&A at Google, they have typically turned them down by keeping some regular company page working, and redirecting all the other domains to Google.com homepage. IE what they did here. There are a few cases i can think of where the domain no longer exists, it depended on a lot of things. But basically all "plans" i read was to do the above. At one point early in my google career, i believe pretty much all domains google owned but was not using redirected to google.com. I don't believe this is done any longer in general because people were using it to guess at what Google was doing :)
amanzi 8y ago
That explains why they own the domain name but doesn't explain why they are using it to redirect to their search engine instead of the on2 landing page: http://www.on2.com/ http://www.on2.com/
- rasz 8y ago
  and they kept the same "it has been acquired blabla" page for a year on duck.com https://web.archive.org/web/20101002183258/http://duck.com:80/ https://web.archive.org/web/20101002183258/http://duck.com:8...

oh_sigh 8y ago

And it should be noted that the On2 acquisition happened at almost the exact time as the creation of duckduckgo, so it's unlikely DDG was even on the radar of anyone in google at that time.

ocdtrekkie 8y ago

The difference seems to be that on2.com has an appropriate landing page: https://twitter.com/Richiesque/status/1019973138417938432 https://twitter.com/Richiesque/status/1019973138417938432 Whereas duck.com, a commonly interesting domain name for their competitor (which DDG claims confuses a lot of their users), gets redirected to Google's search engine with no other note whatsoever. Shouldn't duck.com have a similar page to on2.com?

btian 8y ago
What about Pulse.io? It also redirects to google.com I believe most of Google's acquisitions redirect to the search engine (unless there's a more appropriate destination).
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  I know meebo.com is another acquisition that leads to a landing page rather than a redirect to Google.com. My guess is who puts what on what server and whether or not it's a redirect depends heavily on who is involved in the post-acquisition work, since Google is a big company. I'm not discounting the possibility that it's innocuous, but it's strange that even among the same acquisition, one domain goes to google.com and one goes to a landing page explaining the acquisition. EDIT note: DannyBee's opinion here was posted around the same time as this comment, and suggests a specific corporate strategy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17570412 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17570412
turc1656 8y ago
Yes, yes it should. At least that's what I would expect if they were going for transparency. The only thing that would make sense is if On2 (previously known as Duck Corproration) was actually involved in internet search. It was not, ever. So this seems like a clear attempt to drive traffic to me. Both domains were part of the same acquisition. Why put that landing page on On2 but not Duck? The answer is obvious.
DannyBee 8y ago
No. Actually, for as long as i've been involved in helping M&A at Google, they have typically turned them down by keeping some regular company page working, and redirecting all the other domains to Google.com homepage. IE what they did here. There are a few cases i can think of where the domain no longer exists, it depended on a lot of things. But basically all "plans" i read was to do the above. At one point early in my google career, i believe pretty much all domains google owned but was not using redirected to google.com. I don't believe this is done any longer in general because people were using it to guess at what Google was doing :)

amanzi 8y ago

That explains why they own the domain name but doesn't explain why they are using it to redirect to their search engine instead of the on2 landing page: http://www.on2.com/ http://www.on2.com/

rasz 8y ago
and they kept the same "it has been acquired blabla" page for a year on duck.com https://web.archive.org/web/20101002183258/http://duck.com:80/ https://web.archive.org/web/20101002183258/http://duck.com:8...