7 ms·

Agree with everything you say, except ". By complaining about Google, they appear to be in the game of competing as an equal search engine," The nature of his

by Surio 14y ago

Agree with everything you say, except ". By complaining about Google, they appear to be in the game of competing as an equal search engine," The nature of his exact complaint is that Google is capitalising on people's confusion with the name "Duck something", and then proceeding to capitalise on this confusion (in a somewhat sneaky way) by redirecting "potential DDG users" back to their own page. >> they need to pound hard about how they are different And this point is very difficult to achieve if the "market leader" is (sort of) preventing people from accessing you in the first place.

davemel37 14y ago
Whether Google did this or not is hardly the point. The point is that DDG can never win if they lump themselves into the same category as Google. The confusion they complain about, and monopoly is DDG claiming we are the same as Google. This is the not the play that will win them the west.
- Surio 14y ago
  Hi, First, I agree that they should not lump themselves in the same category. Second, I am not sure there is any point in crying yourself hoarse about how "different" you are when the general public who are looking for you using natural language constructs are not being allowed to access you in the first place by the "market leader". Going forward this that line of thought, I am reproducing my reply from below to your point, as it seems relevant here as well. (Apologies for the multiple posting). If you read @yegge's original response from below (I reproduced it here) This only started happening after I asked about the domain name. It used to point to a history page about Duck Corporation (previous name of On2 -- http://web.archive.org/web/20100802014055/http://duck.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20100802014055/http://duck.com/), similar to http://www.on2.com/ http://www.on2.com/, which was acquired by Google in the same acquisition. Google should legitimately not sell it to me, though it would have been of course nice to do so when I first asked in 2010. I think an appropriate remedy would be to either point it nowhere, point it to the original page it had been pointed to for many years, or point it to the acquisition page (as http://on2.com http://on2.com still does) -- all things they do in other cases if you look at past acquisitions. Effectively it is Google's fault because they are doing it now specifically in his case and not for others (as he mentions clearly) (because from their own tracking of searches, they probably found out that DDG is gaining significant traction -- this is my own opinion) Secondly, while it would be nice to pre-empt all angles and all possibilities etc., etc., but I don't think any of us can foresee every possible way something will come back to bite your backside in the future. So, no, I don't think that it is somehow DDG's fault that they did not foresee this and preempt it. P.S: FWIW, google renamed themselves from googol to google because the VC mispelled their name on the cheque. Just goes to show that such things are a fact of life. People have every right to vaguely try to look up "Duck something" search engine. However, Google is definitely in the wrong for sneakily redirecting users back to their own engine in this case by misusing this vagueness.
- cookiecaper 14y ago
  I totally disagree that DDG has to replicate the Google service stack to become successful. I am actually more inclined to use an alternate engine for my searches considering how much info Google already has on me, and how difficult it would be to distance myself from that profile if the time arised. I have already disabled Web History and Search History, but I feel more comfortable using a totally separate service. I still use Google as primary despite multiple attempts to switch to DDG over the last 3 years. While I have found DDG superior for generic informational queries, it has been, in my experience, much worse for finding source documents of quotes I remember loosely or searching for error messages, so I always find myself headed back to Google. Would love to switch to a search-dedicated search engine.

by Surio 14y ago

davemel37 14y ago

Whether Google did this or not is hardly the point. The point is that DDG can never win if they lump themselves into the same category as Google. The confusion they complain about, and monopoly is DDG claiming we are the same as Google. This is the not the play that will win them the west.

Surio 14y ago
Hi, First, I agree that they should not lump themselves in the same category. Second, I am not sure there is any point in crying yourself hoarse about how "different" you are when the general public who are looking for you using natural language constructs are not being allowed to access you in the first place by the "market leader". Going forward this that line of thought, I am reproducing my reply from below to your point, as it seems relevant here as well. (Apologies for the multiple posting). If you read @yegge's original response from below (I reproduced it here) This only started happening after I asked about the domain name. It used to point to a history page about Duck Corporation (previous name of On2 -- http://web.archive.org/web/20100802014055/http://duck.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20100802014055/http://duck.com/), similar to http://www.on2.com/ http://www.on2.com/, which was acquired by Google in the same acquisition. Google should legitimately not sell it to me, though it would have been of course nice to do so when I first asked in 2010. I think an appropriate remedy would be to either point it nowhere, point it to the original page it had been pointed to for many years, or point it to the acquisition page (as http://on2.com http://on2.com still does) -- all things they do in other cases if you look at past acquisitions. Effectively it is Google's fault because they are doing it now specifically in his case and not for others (as he mentions clearly) (because from their own tracking of searches, they probably found out that DDG is gaining significant traction -- this is my own opinion) Secondly, while it would be nice to pre-empt all angles and all possibilities etc., etc., but I don't think any of us can foresee every possible way something will come back to bite your backside in the future. So, no, I don't think that it is somehow DDG's fault that they did not foresee this and preempt it. P.S: FWIW, google renamed themselves from googol to google because the VC mispelled their name on the cheque. Just goes to show that such things are a fact of life. People have every right to vaguely try to look up "Duck something" search engine. However, Google is definitely in the wrong for sneakily redirecting users back to their own engine in this case by misusing this vagueness.
cookiecaper 14y ago
I totally disagree that DDG has to replicate the Google service stack to become successful. I am actually more inclined to use an alternate engine for my searches considering how much info Google already has on me, and how difficult it would be to distance myself from that profile if the time arised. I have already disabled Web History and Search History, but I feel more comfortable using a totally separate service. I still use Google as primary despite multiple attempts to switch to DDG over the last 3 years. While I have found DDG superior for generic informational queries, it has been, in my experience, much worse for finding source documents of quotes I remember loosely or searching for error messages, so I always find myself headed back to Google. Would love to switch to a search-dedicated search engine.