5 ms·

Why? The title does not claim to be related to the search, does it?

by rhim 4y ago

yegg 4y ago
People know us primarily for search and our relationship with Microsoft is about search, so it will be assumed by most people this is about search (when it is not, it's about browsers). Additionally the way it is phrased implies Microsoft trackers get a free pass, when they are in fact heavily restricted, e.g., blocking 3rd party cookies, fingerprint protection, etc. And the current title can further easily be misinterpreted to be about more than Microsoft scripts on 3rd party sites (e.g., other companies, which it is not).
- r3trohack3r 4y ago
  FWIW this is exactly what happened to me and I support the title change. As a long time DDG user, my stomach turned when I saw this. Following the link to Twitter, it required a lot of digging to find what was really happening. For those of us using DDG search - this is a big nothing burger. For folks using DDG browser, this is misleading at best. The difference between the title and reality, from my understanding, isn’t nuance. My reading of this title (and Twitter) made me believe DDG was sharing user data with MSFT across all of their properties (including search) by serving users MSFT trackers with DDGs content.
  - chrisweekly 4y ago
    Same. 100% agreed w/ proposed title change.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > know us primarily for search and our relationship with Microsoft is about search This looks like a textbook brand extension [1] issue. Your brand is privacy. You built it on your search product. You're compromising those principles, perhaps reasonably so, in extending the search product's brand to a browser. This is coming back to bite the brand, search and all. (Per the Wikipedia article, it's highly recoverable.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand_extension https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand_extension
  - yegg 4y ago
    My goal is to get meaningful privacy protection in the hands of as many people as possible. We learned from extensive research that mainstream people do not want to install multiple things, and yet multiple types of protection are required to get meaningful privacy protection. So we are building them into one package, and are diligently working to make these protections as good as they can be.
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > learned from extensive research that mainstream people do not want to install multiple things, and yet multiple types of protection are required to get meaningful privacy protection This is a reasonable position. The shift in positioning that's driving the confusion is real, though. DDG (search) has an almost absolutist stance on privacy. That was differentiated. The nuanced tradeoff you describe, between privacy and convenience, which I agree boosts the actual outcomes, is something else. It's more similar to Apple's philosophy. Which is fine. I use their products as well as yours. But it's different in a fundamental, and to many a meaningful, way. That's going to be difficult to brush away without making it look like there's something to hide. (None of this could be said to have been predictable ex ante.)
    - clairity 4y ago
      let's be clear, your goal is to make money via a privacy brand positioning. that's fine, but it's not the same as simply "to get meaningful privacy protection in the hands of as many people as possible". this change in emphasis has been palpable in the 4 Ps (marketing strategy) of duckduckgo over the past few years.
    - Terretta 4y ago
      Or you could partner with a trusted brand like 1Blocker who is not forced to relax protections against MSFT. You could give the user one easy experience. But you won’t, because you are explicitly not working to make these protections “as good as they can be”. You are working to capture the user’s entire session and monetize owning that. (I’d like to know the eventual purpose of owning that, and personally I’d like to see subscription somewhere, because any other monetization is likely to be user-hostile.) FWIW, I’m super annoyed with you. I’ve gotten countless normals — and certain enterprises with 10k to 100k users — to switch defaults to you, and they now trust you (thanks to trusting me) on privacy in a simple binary way. Which you’re proving wrong. Now I have to do diligence before recommending your brand, and that’s shitty.

Why? The title does not claim to be related to the search, does it?

by rhim 4y ago

Why? The title does not claim to be related to the search, does it?

yegg 4y ago

People know us primarily for search and our relationship with Microsoft is about search, so it will be assumed by most people this is about search (when it is not, it's about browsers). Additionally the way it is phrased implies Microsoft trackers get a free pass, when they are in fact heavily restricted, e.g., blocking 3rd party cookies, fingerprint protection, etc. And the current title can further easily be misinterpreted to be about more than Microsoft scripts on 3rd party sites (e.g., other companies, which it is not).

r3trohack3r 4y ago
FWIW this is exactly what happened to me and I support the title change. As a long time DDG user, my stomach turned when I saw this. Following the link to Twitter, it required a lot of digging to find what was really happening. For those of us using DDG search - this is a big nothing burger. For folks using DDG browser, this is misleading at best. The difference between the title and reality, from my understanding, isn’t nuance. My reading of this title (and Twitter) made me believe DDG was sharing user data with MSFT across all of their properties (including search) by serving users MSFT trackers with DDGs content.
- chrisweekly 4y ago
  Same. 100% agreed w/ proposed title change.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> know us primarily for search and our relationship with Microsoft is about search This looks like a textbook brand extension [1] issue. Your brand is privacy. You built it on your search product. You're compromising those principles, perhaps reasonably so, in extending the search product's brand to a browser. This is coming back to bite the brand, search and all. (Per the Wikipedia article, it's highly recoverable.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand_extension https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand_extension
- yegg 4y ago
  My goal is to get meaningful privacy protection in the hands of as many people as possible. We learned from extensive research that mainstream people do not want to install multiple things, and yet multiple types of protection are required to get meaningful privacy protection. So we are building them into one package, and are diligently working to make these protections as good as they can be.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > learned from extensive research that mainstream people do not want to install multiple things, and yet multiple types of protection are required to get meaningful privacy protection This is a reasonable position. The shift in positioning that's driving the confusion is real, though. DDG (search) has an almost absolutist stance on privacy. That was differentiated. The nuanced tradeoff you describe, between privacy and convenience, which I agree boosts the actual outcomes, is something else. It's more similar to Apple's philosophy. Which is fine. I use their products as well as yours. But it's different in a fundamental, and to many a meaningful, way. That's going to be difficult to brush away without making it look like there's something to hide. (None of this could be said to have been predictable ex ante.)
  - clairity 4y ago
    let's be clear, your goal is to make money via a privacy brand positioning. that's fine, but it's not the same as simply "to get meaningful privacy protection in the hands of as many people as possible". this change in emphasis has been palpable in the 4 Ps (marketing strategy) of duckduckgo over the past few years.
  - Terretta 4y ago
    Or you could partner with a trusted brand like 1Blocker who is not forced to relax protections against MSFT. You could give the user one easy experience. But you won’t, because you are explicitly not working to make these protections “as good as they can be”. You are working to capture the user’s entire session and monetize owning that. (I’d like to know the eventual purpose of owning that, and personally I’d like to see subscription somewhere, because any other monetization is likely to be user-hostile.) FWIW, I’m super annoyed with you. I’ve gotten countless normals — and certain enterprises with 10k to 100k users — to switch defaults to you, and they now trust you (thanks to trusting me) on privacy in a simple binary way. Which you’re proving wrong. Now I have to do diligence before recommending your brand, and that’s shitty.