
DDG: Google uses bizarre tactics to dominate rivals and confuse their customers - pmoriarty
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/google-alternatives-privacy-duckduckgo-search-engine-browser-chrome-eu-fine-a8455321.html
======
repolfx
This is a pity. I actually use DuckDuckGo because I've come to distrust
Google's political neutrality, and DDG has actually got quite good over the
years. But this article is simply full of misleading nonsense. I find the DDG
brand lessened in my eyes.

Firstly it's completely false that you can't set DDG as the search engine in
Android Chrome. I just did it. Here's how:

1\. You visit DuckDuckGo in mobile Chrome.

2\. Instructions from DDG pop up on the screen telling you how to find the
default search engine picker screen (you click settings, and search engine is
the first setting on the screen, so this is not hard).

3\. DDG is now an option I can pick under the "recently visited" section,
which is clearly visible on screen.

The search engine screen has Bing, Ask Jeeves and a few others pre-bundled, so
perhaps they're salty because they aren't pre-bundled. Or perhaps the current
behaviour wasn't always true in the past. But even if that was the case, it's
fine today, so why are they complaining?

As for owning duck.com what a stupid complaint. DDG chose an awkward name for
their search engine and own the domain name for it. They are not called and do
not own the name "duck". If they want a short single word .com domain they can
always rebrand. Google owns lots of random seeming domain names, but there's
nothing wrong with that.

~~~
ballenf
> DDG chose an awkward name for their search engine

The majority of non-techie people I recommend DDG to literally LOL and give me
the stop-shitting-me look.

I can't send a link to DDG to professional colleagues.

I've helped friends get their browsers more secure, etc. and they'll leave
everything else alone but switch search because they think duckduckgo is some
kind of "virus". (I explain it at the time, but it's too much to remember
evidently.)

They really screwed up with the name, in my opinion as a regular user. It's
also not short or memorable. I just don't get it. Seems like one of those
inside jokes that only a founder finds funny and gets changed quickly before
going to market.

~~~
rlucas
Are you serious?

Your industry colleagues haven't been inoculated against name-chauvinism by
the relentless parade including "Google," "Yahoo," the innumerable "-Fish" and
"-Monkey" names, etc.?

------
toxicFork
[https://duck.co/forum/thread/1997/duck-com-redirects-to-
goog...](https://duck.co/forum/thread/1997/duck-com-redirects-to-google)

>>>

Here's the whole Duck.com story, as posted by Yegg on Reddit three months ago:

Yes, duck.com came as an asset in the unrelated On2 acquisition (On2 used to
be known as Duck Corp). But it just sat there (pointing to this Duck
Corporation history page) for a long time.

I first inquired about it on 11/4/09\. After several attempts, I got back a
response "from management" on 3/25/10 that they didn't want to sell it.
Understandable.

Now [http://www.on2.com/](http://www.on2.com/) points to a Google explanation
page about the On2 acquisition, yet [http://duck.com/](http://duck.com/)
points directly to Google search.

Google owns lots of domains that don't point anywhere, or not to their main
search page. That means there was an affirmative decision somewhere along the
line to redirect that particular domain to their search product.

<<<

(source)
[[http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/epd59/google_poi...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/epd59/google_points_duckcom_at_google_search_after_duck/c19v4cz)]

------
nightsd01
The fact that only one percent of people go on to download a competing browser
isn’t Google’s fault.

I’m sorry, but this idea that Google is some evil monopoly because it actually
bundles USEFUL software with its OS just isn’t this huge problem.

I don’t even use Android, but I think it’s absolutely ridiculous to expect
Google to either leave out critical software from its OS, or to force them to
preload competing browsers (inferior for the most part).

~~~
pmoriarty
_" it’s absolutely ridiculous to expect Google to either leave out critical
software from its OS, or to force them to preload competing browsers (inferior
for the most part)."_

If they can't distribute their browser in a way that's fair to their
competitors, they shouldn't be in the browser business.

That goes for Microsoft and Apple too.

~~~
enitihas
Apple does not even allow the competitive browsers on iOS to have the same
capabilities, being fair to competitiors is a distant dream. e.g No other
browser can JIT code on iOS but Safari.

~~~
extralego
Parent said “shouldn’t”, not “doesn’t”. I think they are making a judgement
call on what they consider moral, or just. I don’t think they are at all
confused about the current state of things.

------
ma2rten
This is old news:

[https://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/01/30/we-bet-you-dont-
kn...](https://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/01/30/we-bet-you-dont-know-who-
owns-duck-com-and-what-it-redirects-to/)

The name was actually part of an acquisition.

I understand why DuckDuckGo is not happy about this and/or trying to use this
for PR. However, I don't think a lot of people are going confuse DuckDuckGo
and Google, since DDG users are typically making a conscious choice to use it
over Big G.

~~~
ralfd
We actually discussed it 8 years ago too:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2027691](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2027691)

~~~
ma2rten
This is off topic, but there has been quite the point inflation since then.

EDIT: Too bad we can't see the comment scores... I wonder if PG is ever going
to change his mind about this :)

------
sometimesijust
'duck' autocompletes to duckduckgo in my google search bar. I don't see a
story here except for the fact that duckduckgo is now willing to fight just as
dirty as google in the public opinion space and thus have undermined the one
thing I use ddg for (trusted unbiased search).

------
an_account_name
> Examples include preventing the DuckCuckGo [sic] search engine from being
> added to Chrome on Android, while featuring the Chrome widget prominently on
> most Android builds.

I’m much less willing to assume good faith for this particular misspelling
than once I was.

------
Brakenshire
Clickbait title, but here are the concrete claims in the article:

* preventing the DuckDuckGo search engine from being added to Chrome on Android, while featuring the Chrome widget prominently on most Android builds. (does the Independent mean Widget or App here?)

* “Every time we update our Chrome browser extension, all of our users are faced with an official-looking dialogue asking them if they'd like to revert their search settings and disable the entire extension.”

* Google have bought duck.com and redirect it to Google.com

------
beenBoutIT
I would love to know how many people hear about DuckDuckGoose.com and for
whatever reason decide to instead navigate to duck.com, and then out of this
elite crowd how many of them continue using Google.com via duck.com on an
ongoing basis.

------
bitskits
I'm not sure that I agree that owning a domain is a bizarre tactic.

~~~
oconnore
If ddg registered gogle.com and gooogle.com would you think that’s fair play,
too?

~~~
bitskits
I never said it was fair play, I disputed that it was a "bizarre tactic".

There is a trademark angle to your example, so if DDG has a Trademark
argument, they should challenge (although "duck" is pretty broad, so I doubt
it). Otherwise, try to snipe the domain like the rest of us.

~~~
LinuxBender
Apple is rather broad as well.

------
pedalpete
on the on2.com page, it literally says "if you meant to visit duckduckgo.com,
go here"

I don't know if this somehow redeems microsoft or not.

Apparnetly on2 used to be called duck.

------
wean_irdeh
It was apparently someone's decision, nobody at Google told him to redirect
duck.com to google.com. Comment on slashdot:

[https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3270187&cid=42074845](https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3270187&cid=42074845)
I started working at The Duck Corporation (duck.com) in 1996, a few years
before it went public as On2 Technologies/The Duck Corporation (on2.com and
duck.com), and was working with Google/Duck/On2 until a year and a few months
after the acquisition in 2010. At Duck/On2, I was responsibile for everything
related to building our networks and maintaining all the hardware, software,
servers, domains, networks and a ton of other stuff, you know the typical
system administrator job.

Prior to the acquisition, but after going public as On2, we likely didn't sell
duck.com because that was still my primary email address and I and a few
others still actively used it, and we still kept up a basic website for
information about our old and basically no longer supported software; and it
was just one of those things still tied to the company with a lot of history
as The Duck Corporation, so we decided to keep it. Feel free to blame me,
since I always requested that we keep it when we saw the many offers for the
domain over the years, mostly in the hundreds to couple of thousand dollar
range; and because of my history with the company, I am sure I was a big part
of that decision to not sell it.

When Google bought us, I knew I was still going to be there for a while to
make sure all our company data, and some specific services that had to stay
up, was migrated into their servers. Since we hosted all our own servers with
our own hardware and software and they had to ulimately be shut down, I had to
get things moved over and still needed to get my duck.com email.

So at that point, since I was still getting a lot of duck.com emails and had
my duck.com email address for literally many hundreds of websites,
publications, mailing lists, business contacts and other things, since I
mainly used duck.com for well over a decade, I wanted to make sure Google's
DNS and email was configured to still get duck.com emails. I actually had
started trying to switch all my duck.com to google.com, but it was an
overwhelming process. I still wonder how much email is still going to my
duck.com email address.

I took it upon myself to learn the Google way of configuring their public DNS,
email and a bunch of other things because I was nosey and wanted to learn and
did learn some really cool and interesting stuff about them while I was there.
I made sure the MX record for duck.com was still configured to deliver my
email (and a few other email addresses) to my Google email account. Since it
was decided to no longer keep the website up, I can't give you a real
explanation, but I ended up configuring duck.com websites to point to the
google.com main page instead of nothing. So you can go ahead and blame me, but
no one at Google specifically told me to point duck.com to their site.

------
nine_k
I hope whoever wrote this will not intervene in DDG's public relations again.

------
azurezyq
I don't think it is common sense to correlate a duck and duckduckgo in real
life...

Duck... is just delicious.

~~~
ilikehurdles
I agree. It's common sense that duck.com takes me to google. Usually when I'm
thinking about eating ducks, I'm actually thinking about google.com.

------
rc_bhg
"Duck Duck Go" is such a silly unprofessional name for a website anyways. I
really wish they would pick a completely new name, get the .com and rebrand. I
do love the search engine itself.

~~~
Apocryphon
It's a little verbose, but if you're looking for professional serious names,
you've come to the wrong industry.

~~~
rc_bhg
Fair enough. "Google" is/was a silly looking word too. Perhaps DDG just needs
a shorter and more memorable name though.

~~~
colonelxc
Maybe "Duck", is duck.com available? /s

