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Dear DuckDuckGo, Please let me pay for this service. It looks worth having and: 1) I'd like to know that it is funded by users, rather than advertisers and th
by jrexilius 4y ago
Dear DuckDuckGo,
Please let me pay for this service. It looks worth having and: 1) I'd like to know that it is funded by users, rather than advertisers and thus can resist privacy invasion presuures. 2) I'd like to have some basis for belief that it will be around longer than it takes the VC money to run out, (or the marketing budget, or whatever non-sustainable pot it comes from).
- scoot 4y ago(Low cost) paid service, no browser extension: 33mail.com. Happy customer for well over ten years.
- yegg 4y agoDuckDuckGo has been profitable since 2014 through private search ads, and our company is not controlled or beholden to venture capital (or VC or other money). Our product vision is an "easy button" for privacy, an all-in-one privacy app. Email protection is part of that, along with search, browsing, etc. Put another way, we see email protection as part of our core product, and within our app we autofill duck addresses in email forms. We will take your comment into consideration, though we prefer free services where possible so more people can get privacy protection, which is in line with our mission. This service comes with it a set of privacy guarantees here: https://duckduckgo.com/email/privacy-guarantees https://duckduckgo.com/email/privacy-guarantees and we will not be putting ads on it.
- TopGreg 4y ago
- vinaypai 4y agoDDG has regularly raised money from VCs including a Series D about a year ago. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/duck-duck-go/company_financials https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/duck-duck-go/company...
- macNchz 4y agoI can't speak for their circumstances, but I'd assume a VC-backed company describing themselves as "not beholden" to VCs means they're default alive without additional fundraising, and that they haven't given over majority control of the board to their investors.
- lolinder 4y agoThis answers the VC money fear, but not everything else OP brought up. If a product is subsidized by a company's other products, it's hard for me to believe it'll be around forever. For an email product, that's a huge problem, because I use my address in hundreds of contexts that take a long time to identify and migrate, much longer than a typical company's sunsetting notice. EDIT: The parent comment was edited to note that they perceive DDG Email as part of the core product, not a separate product. That's helpful to know, but I'm still skeptical that that's sustainable in the long term. This would not be the first time a feature was cut from a product because it was too expensive to maintain. I'll be waiting to see their unified privacy solution really take off before I place any bets on this feature.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jsnell 4y agoThe business case seems pretty obvious: They're using this as a way of getting people to install a browser extension / app, and changing their default search engine. A search user is valuable, which makes customer acquisition expensive. This also makes their extension way more sticky. Just because you're a product doesn't mean the service is not sustainable. It should be very easy for them to figure out whether the feature is profitable or not compared to other acquisition methods.
- rtpg 4y agoPerhaps for them it's a loss leader, but for someone using this to sign up to stuff.. I would like to use this for almost all services but given the business model here I would be uncomfortable using this beyond the more spammy stuff (not that that's not useful!)
- liberty-bzmh 4y agoNothing will be around forever.
- snihalani 4y agoCan you build an email hosting service on par with Gmail? I'd really like to get out of being on Google
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- crocbuzz 4y agoHave you tried FastMail? Probably the closest thing to a G Suite/Workspace alternative that doesn't have ties to "Big Tech".
- pwinnski 4y ago+1 for Fastmail.
- blisterpeanuts 4y agoHow does it compare to ProtonMail? I’m paying for the Proton VPN/mail bundle, but I haven’t really used the mail yet.
- AnonC 4y agoNot GP, but here are a couple of differences. Fastmail’s email servers are in the US and the company is in Australia. Both are in the five eyes jurisdictions, plus Australia has some draconian laws (see Assistance and Access Bill, though email itself is generally not a secure enough channel). ProtonMail is in Switzerland, which is better surveillance-wise, but it still complies (as one would expect a company to) with court orders and has disclosed the IP address of an activist due to a court order. Fastmail supports IMAP, which means you can use any email client on a desktop or phone. ProtonMail does not support IMAP directly on desktops and requires a “bridge application” for IMAP. This is provided for paying customers. ProtonMail does not have any support for IMAP on smartphones, where you’re either left to using the browser or using the ProtonMail app.
- InCityDreams 4y ago
- karlzt 4y agoHe/she probably meant: keep it free with a donate button.
- theylovezmw 4y agoI love that DuckDuckGo is based in Paoli. Grew up in the area and it's crazy to think there's an innovative tech company in a sleepy Philly suburb haha. Keep up the great work!
- nr2x 4y agoBut why prioritize this over building your own index and not relying on Microsoft?
- haswell 4y agoIn terms of value to the end user, and a mission of expanding privacy-improving practices through their services, I can see why a feature like email protection would be prioritized over a proprietary index. While one may marginally improve some aspects of the service and has strategic value, the other actually moves the needle in terms of an end-user's overall privacy.
- nr2x 4y agoWhat’s the point of email forwarding for a search engine that no longer has an index? Licensing Bing results is all of DDG business but a rounding error for Microsoft. That’s a very precarious positron to be in.
- haswell 4y agoEmail forwarding and search are orthogonal products solving different issues, so first, I’d point out that the value of the email forwarding service doesn’t change. But presumably DDG has contractual agreements with Microsoft so “no longer has an index” is a hypothetical that isn’t really grounded in reality or something that would be likely to happen without warning. And if Bing is no longer viable at some point for some reason, that would be a good reason to change the priority of building an index. But clearly DDG feels secure enough in their current agreement, and as of now, we have no reason to believe otherwise.
- _8j50 4y agoPart of privacy is reliability and certainty. Just take people's money like Proton, you can still have a free tier. You have "email protection" but do you have nice stuff like sandbox detonation and private intel partnerships with companies like Proofpoint? That as a premium might be worth charging. Heck, even public yara rule scanning and allowing inbox owners to set things like DMARC enforcement and custom rules and actions would be a nice premium.
- nroach 4y agoEven if ads do not appear on the product, it doesn’t mean that the data isn’t used to drive ads revenue. Are these addresses used for conversion measurement?
- TopGreg 4y ago
- vinaypai 4y agoThis. This is also the reason I'm not particularly excited about DDG in general. They have exactly the same business model as Google, so there is no reason for me to feel confident they won't follow the same trajectory as Google.
- ipaddr 4y agoBut they don't. Google is much bigger than search from an office competitor to a cloud provider to a phone software vendor. DDG will not become google. Something with a bigger reach like tiktok might. Being funded by search ads was never an issue with google and privacy until they switch from contextual ads and morphed into personal ads. DDG winning search on bing search isn't the same trajectory. At best lycos like would be the most likely trajectory.
- vinaypai 4y agoGoogle in 1999 was an upstart search provider promising a clean, minimal, user-focused ad-supported search experience as an alternative to entrenched search engines like Lycos, Altavista, Yahoo. DuckDuckGo in 2022 is an upstart search provider promising a clean, minimal, user-focused ad-supported search experience as an alternative to entrenched search engines like Google. I'm old enough to remember when Google was the new and exciting thing (just give it a try and ignore the stupid-sounding name!). For the longest time there wasn't even such a thing as a Google account, it just saved preferences like safe-search locally using cookies, and ads were just a small distinctly colored text bar above the organic search results, directly related to your search keywords.
- behnamoh 4y ago“ Email Protection is not available in this browser. Open this page in the DuckDuckGo app to continue.” Reminds me of Reddit shenanigans…
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- therealmarv 4y agoJust go to https://anonaddy.com https://anonaddy.com (it just cannot filter out trackers in messages)
- Alupis 4y agoDear DuckDuckGo, Please stop censoring search results, no matter how morally/politically opposed to them the organization may be. Privacy + Censorship is not a good mix. The truth needs no defense.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- yegg 4y agoWe are not (and never were) censoring results. I realize I caused the misunderstanding due to own my unfortunate phrasing in a tweet, and since then, how our news results rankings work has been highly misinterpreted. We (DuckDuckGo) subsequently made a help page to explain it in detail: https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/news-rankings/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/ne.... Tl;dr: we don’t censor, we don’t move things so far down that they are effectively censored, we don't evaluate individual stories or narratives for "truth", and we don’t rank based on any political agenda or opinions. This is just a summary though so would read the help page for details. I also put out a clarification thread about various misconceptions that included this topic amongst others (like the fact that no, we’re not owned by Google), but the help page referenced above is the best and most thorough explanation of our news rankings. https://twitter.com/yegg/status/1515635886855233537 https://twitter.com/yegg/status/1515635886855233537
- groffee 4y ago
- dang 4y agoPlease don't post like this to HN, regardless of what someone else did or you feel they did. Regardless of what you do or don't owe them, you owe this community better if you're participating in it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Alupis 4y ago
- js2 4y agoIn the meantime, you can pay either Apple or Fastmail for this feature as part of their larger product offerings. Maybe there are other paid services which offer this as a feature. These are just the ones I'm aware of.
- Vinnl 4y agoI work at Mozilla, and we've got https://relay.firefox.com/ https://relay.firefox.com/
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- archb 4y agoI have read the FAQs page but I am not seeing an answer to a question just yet: can one lock the 0.99 USD limited time discount forever?
- Vinnl 4y agoI think the honest answer there is that there is no way to promise that (who knows who's managing the project in the future). But I do know that the folks currently on the team are planning that, when we do raise the prices, we only do so for new subscribers (but again, this is not a promise, just my personal expectation).
- ThatMedicIsASpy 4y agoHow much would you pay? I've moved to posteo and I can't think of paying more than 1€/month for email. I never considered Protonmail because 4€/month is what i consider way too much for email. My root server is 6€/month (atom/4gb/1tb/100mbit).
- rnotaro 4y agoI personally pay 10$ a month for GSuite basically to handle the mail of my personal domain name. Is it worth it? I'm not sure yet but I had way to much issues with email not delivered in the past (blacklisted IP ranges, reputation, etc.) when I had my own mail server. I prefer paying 10$ a month and forget about mail server issues and wondering if my mail is going to the spam folder..
- justusthane 4y agoTo me email is one of the most worthwhile services to pay for—it is the backbone of your digital identity after all. That being said, there’s probably not much need to pay more than $5/mo. I’m very happy with Fastmail at $60/yr.
- jrexilius 4y agoFor a mail relay service, I'd probably pay $24-$36/yr. I happily pay Proton $50/yr for quality email service. $12/yr would be a no-brainer.
- snthd 4y agoFirefox relay premium will take your money (currently $1 a month). https://relay.firefox.com/premium/ https://relay.firefox.com/premium/
- aorth 4y agoI pay for this and use it regularly. It's awesome!
- ukd1 4y agoAnd this is why I switched to kagi.com. Also, helps the search results are better.
- jacooper 4y agoThere is https://simplelogin.io https://simplelogin.io and https://anonnaddy.com https://anonnaddy.com Which support custom domain and more features, and not locked to a specific browser. Both open source and self-hostable, SL is by Proton(Mail).
- C4K3 4y agohttps://sneakemail.com/ https://sneakemail.com/ is another one that's been around for a long time.
- unboxingelf 4y agoFastmail is paid and has this feature.
- EGreg 4y agoI don’t understand why people think the converse of “if you are not the customer, you’re the product” is true. Contrapositive yes, converse no. Companies could still make money from both sides of a market. Look at the lack of net neutrality. Look also at how ISPs used to be able to sell your data, despite you paying them !
- stormdennis 4y agoPlenty of stuff you pay for has ads. Newspapers, Cable tv even Netflix are talking about getting them. The corporate imperative to serve the shareholder trumps all others.
- WhyNotHugo 4y ago> Newspapers Newspapers is free or dirt cheap. You basically pay the paper and distribution costs if anything. Those that do charge to read it online don't show ads to subscribers. > Cable tv The main selling point of cable TV was no ads. Eventually they started adding ads, and that's probably the reason cable tv is fading away. > Netflix Doesn't have ads right now, and if they do in future, people will just move away.