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According to the internet archive, it started redirecting between November 2 and December 3 of 2010. After mining a bit of HN history, DDG was already up and r

According to the internet archive, it started redirecting between November 2 and December 3 of 2010. After mining a bit of HN history, DDG was already up and running and seeing some use by then (ex. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1334720 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1334720). The issue of the duck.com domain came up back in 2012: > He also said his company had tried to buy the duck.com domain from its previous owner, On2 Technologies, but was rejected. Google eventually acquired the domain when it bought the entire company, and redirects duck.com traffic to Google.com. > "It only started redirecting after we inquired about (buying the domain name)," said Weinberg. "It causes confusion." http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-11-21/business/sns-rt-us-google-duckduckgobre8al00i-20121121_1_instant-search-feature-google-s-chrome-search-engine http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-11-21/business/sns-r... (with some wonderfully vitriolic best-of-HN comments at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4817466 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4817466 -- including a reply from ~yegg explaining his position about this.) edit: Neat, I was able to find DDG's debut on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=315142 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=315142 That was on September 25, 2008. Google's offer to On2 was in August of 2009 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On2_Technologies#Acquisition_by_Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On2_Technologies#Acquisition_b...) (the actual acquisition came later, after Google increased its offer). To be clear, I'm not convinced Google bought On2 just to screw with DDG. But the timeline is not as cut-and-dried as some people are making it out to be.

mankash666 8y ago
Come on!! Google didn't lawyer up and force a 3-word, confusing brand down Weinberg's throat. If you want to compete with a market leader, whose domain is 2.5 syllables long, and you pick a confusing, 3 word megadomain for a brand, you don't get to cry foul over Duck.com !
- thaumaturgy 8y ago
  The name is probably the most boring criticism of DDG that anybody can come up with. And anyway, it's also irrelevant here. The question was over whether Google is using their position to deliberately redirect users to their own search engine. I don't know if they are or not, I was just correcting the timeline that some people were getting wrong and adding background info.
- bassman9000 8y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4817812 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4817812 The main issue I have is with duck.com. A lot of people remember that we are a search engine "duck something" and so naturally try duck.com. As a result, there is a lot of confusion, e.g.: "I was telling someone about DuckDuckGo and they thought it was Duck.com and they went to Google. Is Google using this to find people who make the mistake to Duck.com instead of DuckDuckGo?" "Can't you do something about this? I keep going to Duck.com when meaning to visit DuckDuckGo.com They are using the DuckDuckGo name to get people to search Google." FTFC
DannyBee 8y ago
"> "It only started redirecting after we inquired about (buying the domain name)," said Weinberg. "It causes confusion."" The sequence of events literally described here is: 1. DDG inquires to On2 about buying duck.com (Google was almost certainly in talks about the acquisition at this point, FWIW) 2. Google acquires On2 Then he says Google redirected it after "only after" they tried to buy it. Yes, they did, because you tried to buy it before google acquired the company. However he deliberately tries to imply it's somehow related, without any data.

mankash666 8y ago

Come on!! Google didn't lawyer up and force a 3-word, confusing brand down Weinberg's throat. If you want to compete with a market leader, whose domain is 2.5 syllables long, and you pick a confusing, 3 word megadomain for a brand, you don't get to cry foul over Duck.com !

thaumaturgy 8y ago
The name is probably the most boring criticism of DDG that anybody can come up with. And anyway, it's also irrelevant here. The question was over whether Google is using their position to deliberately redirect users to their own search engine. I don't know if they are or not, I was just correcting the timeline that some people were getting wrong and adding background info.
bassman9000 8y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4817812 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4817812 The main issue I have is with duck.com. A lot of people remember that we are a search engine "duck something" and so naturally try duck.com. As a result, there is a lot of confusion, e.g.: "I was telling someone about DuckDuckGo and they thought it was Duck.com and they went to Google. Is Google using this to find people who make the mistake to Duck.com instead of DuckDuckGo?" "Can't you do something about this? I keep going to Duck.com when meaning to visit DuckDuckGo.com They are using the DuckDuckGo name to get people to search Google." FTFC

DannyBee 8y ago

"> "It only started redirecting after we inquired about (buying the domain name)," said Weinberg. "It causes confusion."" The sequence of events literally described here is: 1. DDG inquires to On2 about buying duck.com (Google was almost certainly in talks about the acquisition at this point, FWIW) 2. Google acquires On2 Then he says Google redirected it after "only after" they tried to buy it. Yes, they did, because you tried to buy it before google acquired the company. However he deliberately tries to imply it's somehow related, without any data.