
DuckDuckGo Raises $10M - exotree
https://news.crunchbase.com/news/while-google-is-attacked-over-privacy-concerns-and-perceived-bias-duckduckgo-raised-10m/
======
newfocogi
I have been using DDG for about a year now, although I had tried using it
years ago. It works fine for simple queries( e.g. search name of company
rather than typing out url). But I basically have !g programmed into my
fingers for everything more complicated. Many times when I don't find the
results I am looking for, I subconsciously assume that google would be able to
find them. This is in comparison to when I cannot find something on google, I
assume the website owner either sucks at SEO or it doesn't exist. I am rooting
for DDG, but it is going to be really hard for them to make up the literal
cognitive difference in my mindset.

Side note, if they get bought out by a big player, I will feel like my use of
them for the last year has been for naught.

~~~
arketyp
I find that Google is actually losing ground as the all-seeing-eye-reference-
objective-truth due to the increasingly tailored searches. I can no longer
refer to a search query and expect a peer to see the same results as I do.
This social bubble phenomenon, while no doubt convenient, is sometimes a
burden, and with their stricter privacy policy DDG actually has some ground to
gain here. Using DDG is more like tuning in to good old ether radio instead of
browsing through podcasts. I find that comforting, that break from a
claustrophobic solipsist trend.

~~~
amelius
> I can no longer refer to a search query and expect a peer to see the same
> results as I do.

You could try opening an incognito window, although it could still give
different results based on geo location.

~~~
dotancohen
> based on geo location.

Or user agent, or screen resolution, or Accept-Encoding / Accept-Language
headers, or installed fonts, or installed browser plugins detected, or Do Not
Track settings.

------
i1856511
DDG has the same business plan as major providers(selling keywords), but they
do it in a way that is more respectful of your autonomy.

Reasons I use DDG exclusively:

\- I prefer their business plan. Keyword ads still appear on search results
page, but I am not psychographically modeled and retargeted after I close the
browser session.

\- It performs fast and I like the visual appearance.

\- No AMP results. (Google does not give you a way to disable AMP, at all,
which surprised me. I do not like AMP because it does not feel right on iOS.)

\- It integrates Instant Answers and has surprised me with some Stack
Overflow/Superuser excerpts.

\- Mobile search is now geo-aware (again, crucially, in a way that does not
build a ad targeting profile on me over time).

\- The scale of the company is smaller and the CEO seems like a real,
reachable person.

~~~
bklyn11201
So how does DDG avoid wholesale transfer pricing to their search providers:
Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex?

~~~
yladiz
I’ve seen a little image with Yandex on the bottom right on DDG sometimes, so
I think they partner with at least them in some cases.

~~~
Kiro
Yes, they get all their organic results from Bing, Yahoo and Yandex.

------
cabaalis
> DuckDuckGo appears healthy and quite content with making money off of
> keyword-based ads alone.

This makes perfect sense. Show an ad related to what a person is interested in
and looking at. When I did adsense stuff a long, long time ago, I seem to
remember that Google would request a copy of the page, and then tailor the ads
to the content of the page. There was absolutely no interest at all in "Who"
was looking at the page. It seems to me there is still a tremendous amount of
money that could be made with only that use case.

~~~
wolco
Those were the days when people didn't mind ads because they reflected the
content of the page. When google changed this it was the beginning of the end.

------
jmah
DuckDuckGo is fantastic on mobile (iPhone). It feels way faster than Google
for me — part of that is not getting the "Can I use your location?" pop-ups
which then trigger a re-search.

Plus there's no AMP junk in the results! And links are real links — when you
copy them you get the URL, not some huge tracking string.

Occasionally I've felt like I'm not getting good results so have gone to
Google to repeat the search. There hasn't yet been a case where that's helped,
so I've stopped doing it.

~~~
jiveturkey
switched to google on mobile recently, due to DDG only option of infinite
scroll. it makes 'back' useless.

now i am back to google on desktop as well. it is markedly better than DDG for
the searches I'm doing anyway.

~~~
dhbradshaw
I hate infinite scroll.

------
swebs
DuckDuckGo's killer feature to me is that I can always depend on it to be in
English. Google annoyingly always changes the language based on the location
of the IP address you're connecting from. It's very annoying when traveling.

~~~
atticmanatee
you can always get www.google.com/ncr

~~~
slig
It's been a while since this trick stopped working.

------
csdreamer7
I find that DDG is good for about 80% of what I want. But the other 20%,
especially dev queries, I muscle memory type in !g.

Is there a bang for the type of query answer we are looking for?

Such as for 'Ruby gems' I can use !dev so the engine knows to ignore sites
like Ruby Gemstone and focus on dev only.

I know there is !so and !gh, but I am looking for something that dynamically
combines them and other dev resources as they fall in and out of search favor.

~~~
pedro_hab
I'm actually feeling google worse every day, I developed a way of searching by
only typing important keywords. eg: "js unique array"

Now that's not working well anymore, google is ignoring 2 of 3 keywords to
give me a general answer.

And even the search tricks, such as using "" don't work as before.

I think google is using far too much AI in the search is ruining it for me.

I may switch to something else soon.

~~~
mrweasel
The ignoring of keywords is annoying. Removing keyword in order to be able to
get me a result is almost always the wrong thing to do. I end up clicking
through a the first 3 to 4 links and wondering why on earth Google would think
those sites was going to be helpful. The indication that a keyword was ignored
to give me a result isn't clear enough.

Almost always, at least in my cases, removing keywords makes the resultat
useless. I would rather have a blank page say "Sorry, no results".

While DuckDuckGo searches have clearly improved over time, Googles have become
worse. I still think Google is better overall, but they're moving in the wrong
direction.

~~~
goobynight
I don't think I've ever had a keyword removal produce something worthwhile.

Perhaps there is a different class of user that this is useful for.

If only there was a way to disable it. Some sort of "advanced" mode.

------
m52go
I tried using DuckDuckGo many times over the past few years, but the results
never enticed me to stay.

But for the past 3-4 months, it's been my default. Haven't felt the need to
use Google Search even once!

Big props to Gabriel Weinberg and team!

------
hnruss
I switched to DDG ~5 years ago for two reasons: 1. Infinite scroll, and 2.
Smaller ads (which can be entirely disabled).

I stayed with DDG because: 1. !bang is addictive, and 2. Dark mode.

Also, early on I had some thoughts on how to improve DDG, so I emailed the
owner and he responded thoughtfully. I can't imagine that happening with
Google.

~~~
alpaca128
Agreed. I use !bangs so regularly I don't even notice it except when I sit at
another PC and it doesn't work.

And I often use the QR feature to quickly send links to my phone.

~~~
Zeebrommer
QR feature? Nice, I didn't know about that. Though it's kind of disappointing
that it directs to a google service...

------
nine_k
The article says that DDG was profitable since 2014.

I wonder just _how_ profitable it is, and how soon would it be able to return
the investments. A high investment load means that a company strives for an
exit. I won't like DDG to be bought by whatever party.

~~~
bobpappas
I interviewed with DuckDuckGo a few months ago and their founders, investors,
and board are not looking for the quick payout. They are more intent at a self
sustaining alternative to Google.

~~~
fabricexpert
How could you know that from an interview? Of course they would say that

~~~
nine_k
I can imagine a company where everyone is excited by the perspective of being
bought by a major corporation for a huge sum. You join the megacorp (which is
not easy to get hired to), and your options suddenly are worth a lot. Win-win!

------
Vinnl
At Terms of Service; Didn't Read, we were one of a whole host of privacy-
focused projects that received a donation from DuckDuckGo:
[https://spreadprivacy.com/duckduckgo-privacy-
challenge-2018](https://spreadprivacy.com/duckduckgo-privacy-challenge-2018)

Thus, however successful DDG will be, at least it will have supported quite a
few other projects in its wake.

------
dalbasal
Whether or not DDG is "beating" Google, they are successfully _competing_ with
Google on G's home turf. That's pretty impressive.

------
novaRom
DDG is getting better with time. I completely switched to DDG about 2 years
ago.

I tried Google search recently and found its results are less relevant and
presented in an awkward form where I cannot copy result's URL (searched for a
technical paper). DDG is clear winner.

~~~
Const-me
How do you copy the URL?

Neither of them shows direct URL to search results,
[https://duckduckgo.com/l/?..](https://duckduckgo.com/l/?..). is no better
than [https://www.google.com/url?..](https://www.google.com/url?..).

~~~
aembleton
In Google - do a search for hackernews. This site is the number one result.
Right click on it, copy the link location and this is what is in your
clipboard:
[https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web...](https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjtkqHs55HdAhXsI8AKHXhzAG4QFjAAegQIBBAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com%2F&usg=AOvVaw3F-2xUE22tTvOxNDwVuff-)

In DuckDuckGo, you do the same search and also get the same top result, but
when you copy the link location for that top result you get this:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/](https://news.ycombinator.com/)

~~~
Const-me
> when you copy the link location for that top result you get this:
> [https://news.ycombinator.com/](https://news.ycombinator.com/)

I’m getting
[https://duckduckgo.com/l/?kh=-1&uddg=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycom...](https://duckduckgo.com/l/?kh=-1&uddg=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com%2F)

Update: in Firefox I'm indeed getting
[https://news.ycombinator.com/](https://news.ycombinator.com/) But I use MS
Edge as primary browser, and for MS Edge, DDG returns me the above redirection
URL.

~~~
wallacoloo
I’ll bet this has something to do with the Referer header. Iirc DDG used to
always use this forwarding method so that you don’t leak your search phrase to
the site you’re going to. I wonder if now there’s a way for DDG to instruct
Firefox to omit the Referer header (or if DDG detects that you have Firefox
configured to not send the header), but that Edge still sends the Referer
header?

~~~
Const-me
You’re right, I’ve found the article about that:
[https://duck.co/help/results/rduckduckgocom](https://duck.co/help/results/rduckduckgocom)
And also found “Redirect (when necessary)” setting.

I’ve switched off the setting and tested with web debugger. Apparently MS Edge
respects the “referrer-policy: origin” HTTP header i.e. it only sends
“Referer: [https://duckduckgo.com/”](https://duckduckgo.com/”) without query
strings attached.

However, duckduckgo treat MS Edge the same way as IE, i.e. it doesn’t believe
it’s not an older browser. I’ve wrote their support, hopefully they’ll fix
soon. Meanwhile, I’ve switched off “Redirect (when necessary)” setting and it
works OK on this PC.

------
nikanj
I'm I the only one who's surprised to see how small this round was?

The modern SV economy seems to be built around $100M seed rounds and
valuations in the low billions, pre-launch.

~~~
Rafuino
The modern SV economy to which you refer is built around massive valuations
with huge growth expectations ahead of a buyout or (less rare these days) an
IPO. I don't see DDG going public anytime soon, and it's unlikely to be sold
to a player like Google given ethical differences (or any other similar player
given the modern SV economy is also primarily based on privacy violating
business models). Thus, a $10M investment isn't small...it's more rational. At
least that's my opinion!

------
erpellan
The fact DDG can even get to the ballpark, let alone compete against an
opponent whose budget is 3 orders of magnitude larger is astounding, and
should be applauded.

~~~
keithnz
you understand that DDG is a wrapper around bing right?

~~~
whoisjuan
I don't think a "wrapper" is the right term. They aggregate results from
multiple sources including their index which is built by their own spider.

Also I don't see how that negates the fact that they are doing a fantastic job
against a company that's is much bigger, more powerful, more experienced and
with an incredibly larger budget.

~~~
mda
Still they are a meta search engine mostly depend on bing. Have they ever
shared how much of traffic they serve from each "source"? Never.

------
wishinghand
In 2015 I tried using DDG for programming questions and the results were
inferior to my co-worker who used Google Search. Even without the comparison I
could tell DDG was inferior due to how few answers I'd find. I recently
switched away from Google services to Firefox, Fastmail, and DDG for privacy
reasons. I no longer have issues finding answers within the top 4-5 results
and if I do, Google almost never has the answer anyway.

~~~
jumbopapa
What made you opt for Fastmail over Protonmail? I'm still on gmail, but I'm
interested in switching. Want something that supports calendars too. Only
think I'm not sure I can get away from is Android... I really do prefer it to
iOS.

~~~
wishinghand
I think I was more aware of Fastmail than Protonmail. I also prefer paying for
a product so that I don't become the product, which is a big reason why I left
behind those various google services. Which reminds me that I should look for
an Open Street Maps app on iOS to replace Google Maps.

~~~
jumbopapa
I tried Open Street Maps, but it is so bad compared to Google Maps. The
results sometimes made no sense and it was just a pain to use.

------
tristanho
Fun learning from this article: the Ontario Municipal Employee Retirement
System does its own venture deals (including this one!) and has invested in a
ton of startups:

[https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/omers-
ventures#secti...](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/omers-
ventures#section-investments)

------
sam0x17
The one thing I find really painful is when I want a localized search like
searching for "[chain resturant name] grubhub" and I get results half way
across the country. Other than that it's great.

~~~
mdaniel
I promise I don't mean this in a snarky way, but: isn't the behavior you're
describing almost the exact opposite of not being tracked?

Or, put another way: does "[chain name] grubhub [zipcode]" still do what you
are describing?

Heh, as one might expect, "there's a bang for that" which will save you two
characters:
[https://duckduckgo.com/bang?q=grubhub](https://duckduckgo.com/bang?q=grubhub)

~~~
jumbopapa
I'm generally OK with a search engine using my IP Address to provide localized
results. I don't think that's really a privacy concern as that is exposed to
everyone. Maybe I'm wrong in thinking that though?

------
mhb
I've been giving DDG a try for a few weeks. A small thing - the absence of
Past Year in the time searches is a surprisingly big annoyance. Adding to the
annoyance factor is how easy it would be for that to be added and especially
since they are apparently aware of it - _P.S. We are working on implementing
the past year as well!_ [1]

[1] [https://duck.co/help/features/dates](https://duck.co/help/features/dates)

------
wafflesraccoon
DDG's bang search is by far my favorite feature, I've been using DDG for about
4 years and being about to just !w or !m for common stuff is a huge win.

~~~
TheJoYo
when the alternative is adding the search query to my browser for each and
every service, ill take the bang searches.

------
TheSmoke
i gave ddg a few tries back then but two months ago i've switched to it for
good. on all my browsers it is the default search engine. on android, chrome
does not let you set it as default engine so i also switched to firefox on
mobile. not being tracked is a good feeling. i also never had a problem with
search results, especially for development.

~~~
inciampati
You know I had the same experience bring me to Firefox on mobile. I'm not sure
that was what Google intended to happen. It isn't like they prevent you from
using other search engines. Just DDG! Maybe they identify it as a real
competitor.

------
maxhetfeld
DuckDuckGo is a great search engine, I've been using it for a while. The only
thing that stops me from fully moving to DuckDuckGo is eseential DOM load
speed. Google search results page loading speed is two times faster.

DuckDuckGo needs to hire a Frontend wizard that will address all the issues
with load speed and hopefully make it quicker than competitors.

~~~
TheJoYo
[https://duckduckgo.com/lite](https://duckduckgo.com/lite) or
[https://duckduckgo.com/html](https://duckduckgo.com/html)

might be faster for you

~~~
maxhetfeld
Wow, it's loading with the speed of light.

Bye, Google.

------
needle0
I've been lately trying to get myself accustomed to DDG, and while I
appreciate the bang feature immensely, I find myself spending more and more
time using !g to revert to Google Search. It probably has something to do with
the fact that I search a lot in Japanese as well as English; While English
search results are somewhat good, DDG's Japanese search results are just plain
bad. I suspect the similar is also true with other non-English languages as
well. Hope the new money gets spent on improving search results on non-
English.

------
nfriedly
I've been using DDG for several years now. I pretty rarely fall back to google
for something these days and, when I do, they usually don't have the result
I'm looking for either.

------
bhagone
I have been using it for more than year. I occasionally switch to google in
extreme needs. I hope it improves more in coming days. Good going DuckDuckGo.

------
netman21
I switched to DDG over a year ago. It works for my purposes. The only problem
is they do not use Google maps so I have to switch when looking for
directions.

For research though I switched to Yippy. Their business model is selling
replacements for Google Search Appliance which is at EOL in a couple of
months. So they can sustain themselves while providing a free search tool.

------
pantheon
I use DuckDuckGo as default... from time to time I need to use Google but I
try to keep it at minimum. It's not about privacy, it's because I like Google
less every fucking time that they do update on any of their products. Look at
Google News, it was simple and nice before, now looks like it is a part of
Yahoo.

------
isaiahg
For a company that aims to do ethical businesses, they have an uphill better.
But it helps that they have such a great search engine. I've been using ddc
for a few years exclusively and I think I get better results. Some of my old
google-fu works, unlike new google, which seems to ignore it now.

------
partisan
I use DDG on a daily basis. Out of ignorance, I haven’t used the bang
switches, but I think I have been satisfied with the quality of the search
results to the point where I very rarely go to google anymore.

I am happy to have an alternative to google search even if the effect is too
small to be measured.

------
Taylor_OD
I'm a recent DDG convert. However I'm pretty locked into the Google Maps
platform. I've used stars and "want to go" for years. Those don't translate
over to DDG even on their Google Maps option for maps. Anyone know of a work
around?

------
panoply
It’s still such a poor choice of name.

~~~
executesorder66
The name google also sounds pretty retarded if you remove all the context from
it.

~~~
panoply
Two syllable naming conventions will always prove dominant.

\- Goo-gle

\- Faceb-book

\- Twit-ter

\- Snap-chat

\- Git-hub

The list goes on and on. Duck-Duck-Go is just a poorly thought through name
and the fact it's 3 syllable just makes it worse. At least with Instagram you
can abbreviate it (ins-ta).

------
j0hnml
I’m probably one of the few who do this, but I use Google Chrome with DDG. I
really just have a much easier time on Chrome than I do on Firefox, and I’m
optimistic that my Internet history is not being piped to and stored on
Google’s servers somewhere.

------
MistahKoala
Not bad for general queries, but still not suited to specific, local and
timely queries - at least, in the UK, anyway. Even whilst searching with
country-specific settings, most results tend to be American.

Also, I miss pagination of results pages :(

------
figers
Love using them, hopefully with this money they will finally implement the
date filter to allow for the last year instead of just the last month. Very
important when searching for the latest coding implementations of a new
version.

------
cosmic_ape
Another happy DDG user here. But I always wonder - DDG is basically an
aggregator, it doesn't have its own general index. Isn't there a danger that
Google and Bing will just close the faucet to it one day?

~~~
batat
Rather yes than no.

I tested DDG vs Yandex/Google/Bing and I'm pretty sure Yandex acts as "main"
(if not "single") search provider for my language (or whatever heuristics DDG
uses). For some senseless Ukrainian keywords Yandex shows almost identical to
DDG results, while Google/Bing - mostly different.

In 2017 Yandex (among some other Russian companies) got ban in Ukraine and
access to its services was blocked. Roughly at the same time Ukraine region
have disappeared from DDG ("kl=ua-uk" URL parameter is still mentioned on
search params page[1], but not working).

These events are likely connected. Furthermore, if DDG is just an aggregator,
why a year later they can't switch to Google as local search provider and
bring regional search for Ukraine back? Google local search results are at
least as relevant as Yandex were. Or there are some hidden contractual
obligations, partnerships, royalties directly from Yandex etc.? This looks
unclear and suspicious to me.

[1] [https://duckduckgo.com/params](https://duckduckgo.com/params)

------
bugmen0t
They seem to be doing well, generally:
<[https://duckduckgo.com/traffic>](https://duckduckgo.com/traffic>)

------
lerie
I think either Google will awe us again and become stronger or duckduckgo will
figure out a way to finally give us better search results.

------
jaequery
am i the only one that is just too lazy to type DuckDuckGo.com? i feel i may
go there more if it was just ddg.com or something short

~~~
jahfer
[http://ddg.gg](http://ddg.gg) is a working alternate domain (:

------
bla2
What's DDG's moat? Its search index is bing so they don't have significant own
tech. Is it just the brand?

~~~
bopbop
I think it's only loyalty of userbase - they're the first mover of privacy
conscious search.

Any competitor would have to prove credibility in the field, as they'd be
trading on ethics.

I use DuckDuckGo exclusively - the only two reasons for me to stop I can see
would be some kind of ethics scandal, or the quality of the search dropping
dramatically.

I'm very happy with it currently.

------
kaskavalci
Firefox focus and DDG is the best combination on mobile. Leave no cookies
behind.

------
mdimec4
I am using DDG exclusively for over a year now. It works realy fine.

------
anilshanbhag
DuckDuckGo claims to be all for privacy. What it doesn't tell users is that it
is just a wrapper around Bing search results. The $10M they plan to spend is
just going to increase search traffic to Bing.

~~~
danielmorozoff
Is this actually true?

~~~
mdaniel
They cite Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex as "sourced from," and they do list
DuckDuckBot as its own thing -- although I am _pretty sure_ they don't have
the same resources for running their own distributed crawls as the 3 sources
they list:

[https://duck.co/help/results/sources](https://duck.co/help/results/sources)

~~~
Kiro
DuckDuckBot only handles results for Instant Answers afaik. No own spiders in
the traditional sense (following links between domains).

------
Gravityloss
It's pretty bad for non english content.

------
kbradero
i have used duckduckgo for years, they are really good :)

------
trumped
Maybe they could buy ddg.com with (part of) this money?

~~~
covercash
Or maybe google will sell them duck.com?

~~~
trumped
the Government should force them to give it away... along with a few
billions... in a monopoly lawsuit.

------
profalseidol
What happens to the pension fund if DDG fails?

~~~
jimnotgym
They lose their cash in this one investment, but only up to the 10m invested.
Funds diversify their risk by investing in lots of businesses

------
vzaliva
When I noticed that DDG is using (among other sources) Yandex.ru (Russian
search engine) index I've stopped using it.

It is not a question of privacy but rather a question of trust and bias. Of
course YMMV.

~~~
haha99
I don't believe there are any options here. All tech companies are politically
aligned, that includes all search engines.

