20 ms·
What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017)
- ionwake 6y agoI’ve always had a bad vibe about duckduckgo
- numlock86 6y agoAnd how is this related to the linked article?
- ionwake 6y agoThe article is about DuckDuckGo
- drukenemo 6y agoLess than ideal case-scenario, users are spreading their data between Google and Duck Duck, Bing etc. Not empowering a single agent. In the worst case Duck sell our data to Google. I find that unlikely.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- keiferski 6y agoFAQ on their own site: https://help.duckduckgo.com/company/advertising-and-affiliates/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/company/advertising-and-affiliat...
- markosaric 6y agoSpreadPrivacy is an official DuckDuckGo blog too.
- vs2 6y agoI am going to build my own search engine but with a monthly subscription fee. No ads, no tracking and I don't keep logs of your activity. So across between a VPN and a Search engine!
- hnarn 6y agoI admire the initiative but there is no way people will pay for a search engine.
- thatoneuser 6y agoNot that I'm going to be the average user here, but I'm desperate to pay for a search engine that works like I want. I've lost so many hours on google that the cost would make itself up. Just yesterday stuck in another gRut, looking for "what is X" to receive nothing but "how to implement X!". Valuable hours lost every week. I'd happily pay for a search engine that just got it right.
- chris_f 6y agoI've lost so many hours on google that the cost would make itself up. Just yesterday stuck in another gRut, looking for "what is X" to receive nothing but "how to implement X!". See bullet #2. https://www.runnaroo.com/blog/the-search-engine-hacker-news-has-been-asking-for https://www.runnaroo.com/blog/the-search-engine-hacker-news-...
- _puk 6y agoQuite the generalisation.. To provide a counter generalisation, I am sure a certain percentage would pay for a niche search engine if it provided specific value. I mean, LexisNexis news search exists, and is far from free.
- nojito 6y agoBecause Lexis has a massive database of news stories and the rights to share it.
- janwillemb 6y agoTldr: DuckDuckGo is profitable - mostly by keyword-based search ads - also by affiliate links to Amazon e.a.
- zerr 6y agoWhile we are at it - what is the business model for freeware web browsers such as Vivaldi, Firefox, etc... I know they have some deals with MS, Google and friends but how such deals are done? Is it from some personal contacts or do you have to apply officially? What are the particular numbers - is it something you have to negotiate? What is the range in this case? etc...
- MattGaiser 6y agoMozilla makes a referral fee from search engine searches made with the browser. Their revenue is in the hundreds of millions. https://www.cnet.com/news/google-firefox-search-deal-gives-mozilla-more-money-to-push-privacy/ https://www.cnet.com/news/google-firefox-search-deal-gives-m...
- politelemon 6y agoWhile I am supportive of their business model, and search functionality, I find it off-putting the way they speak of privacy but then use maps provided by a GAFAM which are ultimately profit oriented and can _not_ be trusted to safeguard privacy regardless of their marketing. OSM would be a great choice here. I'll even dare to speculate that they were financially incentivized to make their choice in the face of a superior and actually privacy-oriented choice.
- naibafo 6y agoYou can use different Map backends for the map functionality, OSM amongst them
- newsch 6y agoIs there a way to do this for the maps search? I only see an option to change the directions provider.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- theferalrobot 6y ago> I find it off-putting the way they speak of privacy but then use maps provided by a GAFAM which are ultimately profit oriented and can _not_ be trusted DuckDuckGo itself is profit oriented, as is ProtonMail and a ton of other privacy first companies. Those aren’t mutually exclusive and I don’t think most people operate with that level of distrust. I think the problem people have with Google is that their business model itself (targeted advertising) isn’t currently compatible with privacy.
- bluedino 6y agoI've been seeing DDG billboards all over, which seems weird.
- cl0wnshoes 6y agoI just saw my first one yesterday and made me instantly question how they paid for that and what their business model was.
- joe_fishfish 6y agoI like DuckDuckGo, but it's much worse than Google at localisation. It's annoying to have to search, then repeat the search with "UK" on the end to make it realise I'm not interested in buying e.g. building supplies or coffee or beer from US-based businesses. I get that it has no concept of who I am when I search, but some kind of localisation based on IP address could maybe help? Also, it feels a little disingenuous to say Google is not a search company, it's an advertising company. DDG's revenue is also built on ads. Is it fair to say they are also not an advertising company, not a search company?
- vanderZwan 6y agoYou can change the settings to default to region-specific search, perhaps that would solve your first issue? https://duckduckgo.com/settings https://duckduckgo.com/settings
- mikorym 6y agoThere is a slider that allows you to put it on or off. If your IP is in the UK, the slider will say "United Kingdom on/off" or something like that.
- magicalhippo 6y agoRight, but it's kinda annoying having to turn it on and off, as it remembers and I keep forgetting what I used last. If I'm searching for programming stuff or similar, I want it off. If I'm searching for shops that sells bricks for my new wall, I want local results. I've also noticed that even with it on, the "local" indexing is distinctly significantly worse than Google. That is, Google is much, much better at finding relevant pages which may contain variations on my search term when using my native language. I guess that's just a question of resources, which is fair enough.
- worble 6y ago> If I'm searching for programming stuff or similar, I want it off. If I'm searching for shops that sells bricks for my new wall, I want local results. In all fairness, how exactly do you expect DDG to know what you want from this, without doing some sketchy privacy invasive scanning of your search? If you really want a company to scan your every search and then tailor the results specifically, then by all means use Google, that's what they're good at!
- wegs 6y agoDuckDuckGo 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 the same domain. You spend a lot to go from 90% to 99% or 99% to 99.9%. c) Unsurprisingly, I find DDG's search results good enough. I rarely go to Google, and only when DDG fails me. d) If DDG can't target advertising as well as Google, they'll still have enough revenue to survive at their current level of quality. Their CPM is likely lower than Google's with less data and optimization, but I'd guess at worst 2x lower, not 1000x lower. I'm glad they're doing well. On paper, it seems like a sound business model, and it's a heck of a lot more customer-friendly. Curiously, I'd say 90% of the time I use Google is for math. If I'm typing a complex math expression (especially with units), Google tends to do much better than DDG.
- IB885588 6y agoNot 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.
- ashtonkem 6y agoGoogle 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.
- elliekelly 6y agoI live near DDG HQ, it’s not even a whole building. It can’t be more than a handful of offices. DDG’s real estate expenses are essentially $0 compared to whatever Google is spending.
- temptemptemp111 6y agoTheir business model is "controlled opposition."
- bambax 6y agoI dislike Google as a company but their search results are orders of magnitude better than the competition. DDG or Bing are, to me, very bad (aren't they almost the same anyway?) It's unclear why that is, and why search is so hard, but obviously it is.
- itsspring 6y agoWell, it's kind of obvious Google tracks you, and your previous searches, and uses that data to personify your next result. DDG doesn't track you. https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/04/google-incognito-search-results-still-vary-from-person-to-person-ddg-study-finds/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/04/google-incognito-search-re...
- worble 6y agoThe offshoot from this as well is: go to someone elses PC and do a query in google. You might find the results are just nowhere near what you want or expect. Or tell someone to google something while on a call and click the 1st or 2nd link. You might be lucky and they're the same as yours, but more than likely than not they won't be. DDG on the other hand, so long as I make the same query within a given timeframe, I'm relatively certain to get the same results back, regardless of which browser profile or PC I'm on. That reliability is (at least to me) a feature, and a damned useful one at that.
- reaperducer 6y agoOr have a guest use your wifi, and see Google ads tied to their searches for six months after they leave.
- naibafo 6y agoDo you have an example or generally what kind of searches you are referring to? My experience with ddg has been "good enough" at least. The few times I don't find anything usable on ddg I ususally end up not finding anything on Google either
- mikorym 6y agoI think it would be cool if one started an online advertising company in 2020 that employs about 50% graphic designers and 50% other and that specialises on providing online JPEG or similar images for websites, and where each add is completely human generated / human curated. Also, the sizes should be completely fixed like you can choose between predetermined pixel ratios. Like maybe 162x100 or 1600x30 or whatever. With people angsty with social media, I think it could be quite refreshing to have a trip back in time.
- ryuukk_ 6y agoit's operated by CIA of course they don't need as much as google, even if they serve the same purpose
- x32n23nr 6y ago> 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.
- sct202 6y agoI'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.
- x32n23nr 6y agoI'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.
- bulldog13 6y agoDuckDuckGo is finally good enough to use as a daily driver. About 2 years ago I tried it and I constantly found myself using !g to get decent results. Now I only need to use !g some of the time for programming or technical searches. It works great for everything else. I just wanted to add this because I was anti-DuckDuckGo for awhile until I recently retried it.
- speg 6y agoYep. I switched to DDG last year and haven’t looked back. Between Safari/Firefox, DDG, Fastmail, and Apple Photos I think I’ve moved myself almost entirely off of Google. Recently set up a Pi-hole to shield me from the rest. What else am I missing? Oh, YouTube! Drat. I’m a sucker for hobby videos on there. I’ve seen a couple of alternative front ends but nothing that has really stuck so far.
- theferalrobot 6y agoHow are you liking Apple photos, considering the switch myself
- speg 6y agoI'm happy with it. I'm not sure why I resisted turning on iCloud Photos. It makes cross device management a non-issue. Now I just need to find the time to cull my 20k something photos... The major sticking point remaining is a shared library. I have my photos. My wife has hers. How do we manage photos of our children without duplicating?
- mauvehaus 6y agoI've been using it pretty much exclusively for a lot longer than 2 years. I think part of the trick to switching is that google has got us trained as to how to search for stuff in a way that gets the results we're looking for. It took maybe a month to feel like I was searching effectively after switching, but I never found ddg's results to be appreciably less relevant at that point. On the upside, since ddg is less popular than google, people have put less effort into getting crap pages higher in the search results, though I'll concede it's gotten worse over the last couple of years. For me, the bangs are the killer app, combined with searching from the browser bar: I don't have to wait for e.g. google maps to load to do a maps search if I search !m pizza in Poughkeepsie.
- neebz 6y agoIt's a bit strange but for me Google's biggest pull is live scores. I follow cricket, tennis and football. And all the dedicated websites are heavy and slow (cricinfo, espn etc). Google scores are quick to load and update even before the rest.
- darkerside 6y agoPosted the same elsewhere. I've been able to change my own behavior to look for sports reporting elsewhere. Agreed Google has done an excellent job of it.
- truebosko 6y agoHah, was thinking the same. There really is an opportunity to build a site out of this need. Not revolutionary, but a niche one can own
- eloc49 6y agoI think Google only keeps DuckDuckGo around so they can claim they have “competition.”
- zozbot234 6y agoIt's not always a bad thing. The duck.com domain used to redirect to Google for a long time (they got it in a random acquisition) but now it's been changed to DDG instead. I'm pretty sure that this kind of analysis played a role there. (A more diversified ecosystem in search also helps with fighting SEO spam, which is by far the biggest actual threat to Google Search volume.)
- gyulai 6y agoWhy would it be up to Google to decide whether or not DuckDuckGo gets to "be around"?
- maze-le 6y agoI 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.
- gyulai 6y agoAgreed. And there are laws against this sort of thing, and the regulators are slowly but surely catching up to the fact that they will have to start actually enforcing them.
- jaybeeayyy 6y agoI saw a DDG billboard in my city the other day. I was really surprised they did any type of advertising like that!
- DarkWiiPlayer 6y agoI find it very interesting that this article isn't just all "We're more holier [SIC] than google", but instead also argues that google could just as well adopt this busyness model. It doesn't defend google, but it doesn't paint it as this intrinsically evil IT-Monster that must be defeated, as many privacy advocates tend to do.
- bernardlunn 6y agoI use DDG and hardly ever use Google. Apart from privacy, I like one feature which is searching news by date. Anybody had experience with their API?
- virvar 6y agoThis is anecdotal, but I had a positive experience with the lack of privacy recently. I bought a baby stroller, after doing the typical research and finding a used model, I ended up buying a new one from some babyshop. All the pictures had shown the thing with the stroller “hat/head/sunscreen thing” (sorry I don’t know the English word for kalche), anyway, it wasn’t included and that was why the brand new stroller had been priced the same as the used ones. But it’s bought and it’s nice, so whatever I hit the manufacturer website and find the correct product and google it, and get a flash sale from one of our most prominent baby stores. It was 350 Danish kr including delivery. Without closing the tap I check a few baby shops and a price checker website and see it’s actually 600-700 Danish krs everywhere, including on from the company the flash sale on google is form. So I buy it. Apparently I hit the right combination of search history, and store advertising/inventory at exactly the right time. Being curious I called my local baby store to ask why they could flash sale me at half price, and after a bit back and forth they apparently do this thing where they’ll catch you early with a cheap item and then when you come back they to buy it the next day it’ll be priced higher, except by then you’ve made up your mind to buy it and will pay the extra and I was just lucky having already made up my mind when I got it because the other store has been cheeky. Not really related to DDG, but it’s the first time selling my privacy has paid off.
- yaktubi 6y agoI feel like the Airline industry does this when they say, “only 4 more tickets left!” Or “2 tickets recently purchased!” There’s probably some terminology for this in game theory (well, general salesmanship too)
- Neff 6y agoIn the UX world they are usually called urgency or scarcity triggers [1][2]. They also play in to the social default bias [3] people tend to have, where when alone you tend to do things that you know others have done. 1: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259906084_Scarcity_messages_A_consumer_competition_perspective https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259906084_Scarcity_... 2 (PDF): https://www.uvic.ca/socialsciences/economics/assets/docs/seminars/Online%20Scarcity%20Informational%20Value1015.pdf https://www.uvic.ca/socialsciences/economics/assets/docs/sem... 3: https://www.coglode.com/gem/social-default-bias https://www.coglode.com/gem/social-default-bias
- cercatrova 6y agoSome commentors are saying Google is worse. As someone who uses Google, what's been worse about it? With regards to ads, I don't see them as I use uBlock Origin on desktop and mobile (as well as other ad blockers and no-script extensions).
- mav3rick 6y agoWhat's worse is that these people hate Google. Many do because they failed the interviews there and openly state this as the reason for their criticism.
- Grimm1 6y agoSo first off personal bias, whize.co is the search engine I and my co-founder have been working on, it was nice to see basically our intended business model entirely validated by this article. Aside from the work we've done to validate it of course. We entirely agree with their stated aims here but believe we can produce more quality search results than many current engines, hopefully it works out.
- mdaniel 6y ago> This alpha is limited to GitHub results. ok, so: https://alpha.whize.co/search?q=KubeConfigLoader&page=1&n=10 https://alpha.whize.co/search?q=KubeConfigLoader&page=1&n=10 cheerfully says: "Showing 0 - 0 out of 0 for: KubeConfigLoader" although in your defense, it was blazingly fast to return that result. The shape of your XHR response seems to indicate you have an ES instance with only one shard, so maybe the site is still running in demo mode or something? contrast that with: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Agithub.com+KubeConfigLoader https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Agithub.com+KubeConfigLoader As a meta observation, in the bottom corner of every DDG result that I've ever received is a "Send Feedback" button, allowing me to advise them of bad search results in a very low friction way, but I had to come here to report my experience with your site
- Grimm1 6y agoYup still Demo mode the index is more than a few months old at this point. We're close to launching a beta with a much larger unrestricted index and a re-crawl strategy that keeps things fresh. We've also changed our ranking methodology. The alpha / demo there was focused on novelty so if you search say "machine learning" you'd get repos that were recently active, starred and (hopefully) relevant to the topic, worth noting we also hard down-ranked repos that had been around for a while to let the smaller ones show through. Through user conversation we moved away from focusing on novelty and moved onto "information staleness" the idea that elements in search results do not decay in relevance as quickly as they should based on real world events that happen around them. Happy to talk more about it if you want.
- rkangel 6y agoDDG is surprisingly good, but still not good enough. I have my desktop browser using it, but still haven't on mobile. When searching for technical queries Google tends to give much more useful answers - useful is the key word here. To give an example from yesterday, the query 'elixir zlib'. In DDG I get links to C files in Linux kernels on a server called elixir. I get a useful answer 5 results down (which is fine, it's there). In Google, the first result I get is the erlang zlib documentation (which is what you actually use in elixir). Things like error messages, queries involving the name of a programming language etc. are often just not as good in DDG.
- bogwog 6y ago> Things like error messages, queries involving the name of a programming language etc. are often just not as good in DDG. I don't have any problem with those types of searches on DDG. Even obscure error messages turn up most of the time, and when they don't turn up in DDG they don't turn up in Google either. Even when I do searches for a relatively less popular language like Haxe, I don't have trouble finding what I'm looking for. I only remember a handful of times over the 3+ years I've been using DDG that Google returned an ancient IRC log referencing my issue while DDG didn't return anything, but just the same I've had Google return irrelevant results while DDG gave me exactly what I was looking for. Since my anecdotes offsets your anecdotes, the only conclusion is that anecdotes are useless to compare these things :)
- surround 6y agoInterestingly, DuckDuckGo allows you to turn off advertisements in their settings. https://duckduckgo.com/settings#general https://duckduckgo.com/settings#general
- archived22 6y agoThis is some good news. I was worried that they are not making enough money and might shutdown. I will continue using it.
- treebornfrog 6y agoFrom the article: "Alarmingly, Google now deploys hidden trackers on 76% of websites across the web to monitor your behavior" Its not Google that deploys these, it's webmasters who want free Google analytics. Big difference.
- zanmat0 6y agoOne huge thing stopping me switching over is not being able to see Google reviews for restaraunts, doctors, etc. Yelp is, in my opinion, much less trustworthy and it would be nice to be able to toggle this the same way Google maps can be a preference.
- princevegeta89 6y agoIf anything, I feel DDG should get a more serious name, and one that doesn't sound funny. Seriously, whenever I hear DuckDuckGo, I feel it sounds like some blog or some meme sharing site. This only hurts its brand value and make it seem trivial.
- Vecr 6y agoIt would be nice if DuckDuckGo supported IPv6, it does not appear to use an AAAA record in DNS.