
Google transferred ownership of Duck.com to DuckDuckGo - rahiel
https://www.namepros.com/blog/confirmed-duck-com-transfers-to-duckduckgo.1113728/
======
cosmojg
NamePros user, Thelma, made a good point:

> The story of Microsoft floating a significant loan to Apple in order to keep
> Apple solvent in the late '90's is well-known. Microsoft didn't do so out of
> altruistic impulse; they did so to decrease the odds they'd be the target of
> anti-trust legislation. I'm sure the c-suite at Google is very aware of that
> history lesson, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a more likely anti-trust
> target than Google. Alphabet was a proactive effort to stay ahead of that
> curve. This is another. It's also why I suspect they either gifted
> Duckduckgo the domain, or sold it at a modest price. Even if they squeezed
> Duckduckgo for every penny they could and maximized the duck.com sale price,
> that's a penny in the couch for Google, and of insignificant benefit,
> compared to the license to print money that they maintain as a monolith.

~~~
johnfn
Is this not just a classic example of HN looking for the negative in every
positive? Apple was on the brink of bankruptcy and MS pushed them off it.
Conversely, DDG is nowhere near bankruptcy and although it may be easier to
type, a shorter domain name is not going to drastically increase the
competitive edge that DDG has over google. To me they seem in totally
different categories.

~~~
TheKarateKid
> Is this not just a classic example of HN looking for the negative in every
> positive?

A company single-handedly helping to save a direct competitor defies all
business logic and obligations to shareholders of that company. The truth is
this was a business move to benefit Microsoft, even though it had a benevolent
factor to it.

Thinking otherwise is overly optimistic, similar to how you believe it being a
classic example of HN pessimism.

~~~
Gatsky
DuckDuckGo is hardly a competitor to Google. I struggle to think of some
future scenario where Alphabet looks back and thinks "Damn, we never should
have given DDG that domain name, it was all down hill from there!". No
antitrust investigation is going to believe that this small action makes any
difference to Google's total dominance of search.

~~~
jhall1468
There is nothing illegal about a monopoly. A monopoly that uses it's position
to prevent competition is illegal. Giving DDG a very valuable domain name
(given their name) _absolutely_ does what you're saying it doesn't.

~~~
Gatsky
How is not giving the domain name to DDG using their monopoly to suppress
competitors? This is not equivalent to say, removing DDG from their search
results.

~~~
cstrahan
I don't think that's what they're saying. The point isn't that withholding the
domain name is the end of the world, the point is that handing it over is a
small token that Google can use to claim that they aren't anti-competitive. I
don't know what my stance is on that interpretation, but that seems to be (to
me) to be the intended interpretation.

Does that make sense?

------
zenexer
Meta:

NamePros tech admin here. This hammered our servers so hard that we actually
uncovered a fairly obscure bug in Nginx's FastCGI caching. It's gone unnoticed
for years, including during rigorous load testing.

~~~
jedberg
Nginx has had some strange bugs under heavy load. Way back in the day, reddit
used Nginx as its frontend webserver/load balancer. All of a sudden one day I
noticed that it was sending 99% of the traffic to the app server listed first
in the config, then 99% of the remaining traffic to the next one, and so on
down the line, such that the last app server in the list (only about 10 at the
time) was essentially getting no traffic. If I changed the config, the traffic
pattern was still based on the config order, so it wasn't a bug in the hashing
or the numerical values of the IPs of the app servers or anything like that.

Never did figure out what caused that problem. We just switched out Nginx for
Haproxy and never had a problem again. :)

~~~
Calib3r
ConnectionLeaseTimeout?

------
ElijahLynn
Nice! Now DuckDuckGo needs to just change their name to Duck Search and it can
be used as a verb.

No longer will you have to say "Did you DuckDuckGo it?" and can instead say
"Did you Duck it?".

Even on the domain alone I will use Duck more since I won't have to type in
the full DuckDuckGo.com domain.

I _feel_ like this could really bring some measurable growth to Duck search. I
_feel_ like I certainly will use it more and talk about it more. Time will
tell.

~~~
biztos
My iPhone is constantly autocorrecting "fucking" to "ducking" no matter how
many times I write the former and never write the latter, so this could be a
huge thing.

Me: "Ducking Donald"

Siri: "Duck Search found a McDonald's two blocks away, should I reserve you a
table?"

~~~
Romanulus
lol @ reserving tables at McDonald's.

~~~
Sohcahtoa82
If you search Google Images for "romantic dinner at McDonalds", you get some
fun results.

~~~
minikites
[https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jun/08/mcdonalds-c...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jun/08/mcdonalds-
community-centers-us-physical-social-networks)

>When many lower-income Americans are feeling isolated by the deadening
uniformity of things, by the emptiness of many jobs, by the media, they still
yearn for physical social networks. They are not doing this by going to
government-run community service centers. They are not always doing this by
utilizing the endless array of well-intentioned not-for-profit outreach
programs. They are doing this on their own, organically across the country, in
McDonald’s.

------
sjroot
This is cool and I hope it leads to a rebranding. While I like DDG a lot, the
name has always felt off-putting to me. I'd much rather say "I'll just search
Google" than "I'll just search DuckDuckGo."

Does an extra syllable really cause that much additional friction?

~~~
electrograv
Also, rather than saying “Google it” maybe we can now say “Duck it”.

~~~
dweekly
Suggested title of blog post announcing change: "Duck Yeah!"

~~~
barrow-rider
I rarely use the term "ducking" in conversation, though auto-correct thinks
otherwise. Maybe now I will.

"I was ducking around and found a few good resources for fixing the OSPF
problem."

~~~
Arkdy
In Trinbagonian dialect, "ducking" is the act of skipping work/school.

See: [https://youtu.be/2qunog47EVo](https://youtu.be/2qunog47EVo) for musical
reference.

~~~
owaty
"Ducking" is also a term used in audio mixing.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ducking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ducking)

~~~
faiz7412
"Are you good at ducking mate? Let's party!"

------
ddtaylor
DDG is great - have been using it for months and I really enjoy the results.
Google searches seem to be more of an echo chamber whereas DDG results seem to
be more representative across a broad spectrum of sites.

~~~
bad_user
To be honest I've never noticed the filter bubble everybody is talking about
with Google. They can infer a lot from context, like city or previous
searches, however that's primarily helping users, because coming up with
precise search queries is not something that normal people can do and even
power users like us fail at it.

I have been using DuckDuckGo because I'm making health related queries and I'm
pretty scared of companies profiling me based on that.

But the experience with DDG has been worse, although it is definitely
improving. And it's bearable, plus protecting my privacy is worth it.

~~~
1001101
> To be honest I've never noticed the filter bubble everybody is talking about
> with Google.

Filter bubbles are personalized, so YMMV.

~~~
rocqua
Nice Kafka trap!

~~~
dvtrn
That's not what a Kafkatrap is. Though I suppose if one stretches the metaphor
far enough...

------
SeanLuke
In the 1980s an engineer named Dave Smith, who ran a very popular music
synthesizer outfit called Sequential Circuits, proposed an open protocol for
connecting music synthesizers. The idea was scoffed at by a number of
manufacturers, but relatively soon Roland, and eventually the other major
Japanese firms (Korg, Yamaha, Kawai) got on board, and that caused everyone
else to join in. The standard became known as MIDI.

In the late 80s, Sequential Circuits went belly up due to some bad product
decisions. Yamaha bought the remnants of the company, and Smith himself went
to work at Korg, where he helped develop an important line of machines (the
Wavestation).

In 2002 Smith decided to try again with his own company. As Yamaha owned the
Sequential Circuits name, he settled on Dave Smith Instruments (or DSI). The
company did quite well in its own boutique business (high-quality analog
polyphonic synthesizers).

In 2015, Roland's founder Ikutaro Kakehashi, who had collaborated with Smith
on MIDI, went to Takuya Nakata, the President of Yamaha -- a 3.5 billion
dollar revenue company mind you -- and together they decided to unilaterally
give Smith the famous Sequential Circuits trademark back as a thank-you and
gesture of good-will. Kakeshashi said "I feel that it’s important to get rid
of unnecessary conflict among electronic musical instrument companies. That is
exactly the spirit of MIDI. For this reason, I personally recommended that the
President of Yamaha, Mr. Nakata, return the rights to the Sequential name to
Dave Smith." DSI has since been renamed Sequential.

I'm not sure Smith was even aware of their plan. Two of the most powerful
people in the music instrument business just gave him his famous company name
back for free.

I like to think Google was doing this.

------
projectramo
Don't fall for it duckduckgo!

If you change your name to duck, your name will no longer be searchable!

It's a trap!

~~~
krylon
When I ask Google for "duck", duckduckgo is literally the first hit. My
experience may be biased, because I am from Germany, but outside of English
speaking countries, they should do just fine.

~~~
ChrisRR
Incognito search in the UK here:

1st result: Wikipedia Duck

2nd: Wooden Ducks

3rd: BBC duck recipes

4th: Toilet duck cleaner

5th: BBC iplayer, Sarah and Duck

It goes on. The only mention of duckduckgo on the first 5 pages is this recent
news

~~~
Retr0spectrum
Same experience here. I wonder if this is some kind of bug?

~~~
Arnt
It's locale sensitivity.

Duck doesn't mean very much in Germany, so there's little that competes with
duck.com. In Britain duck has many other meanings.

If you search for an abbreviation that's commonly used as company name, you
may find that Google's top result is the one near you, and that the eponymous
company in Petrapavlovsk isn't listed.

------
devy
According to wikipedia,

    
    
       On2 Technologies, formerly known as The Duck Corporation...
    

So it all makes sense now and all the conspiracy theories about Google's
ownership proven false. And kudos to Google for transferring a high value
domain ownership out to a competitor!

~~~
utopcell
Even before handing over the domain, Google had a landing page that was
essentially saying: "If you want to visit DuckDuckGo, _click here_."

------
mwachs
Technical question: Since DuckDuckGo uses Bing Ads, and Bing Ads have tracking
that allow for remarketing, is there a point?
advertise.bingads.microsoft.com/en-us/solutions/audience-targeting/universal-
event-tracking

~~~
dbrgn
Ads on DDG don't use tracking / remarketing, they are only based on your
search terms.

See [https://duck.co/help/company/advertising-and-
affiliates](https://duck.co/help/company/advertising-and-affiliates) for
details.

------
jerrre
Might be a nice step towards rebranding for a bigger audience? I use DDG as a
default search engine, but the name doesn't roll off the tongue nicely at
all...

Edit: It doesn't roll of my fingers either, I didn't even type out the full
name...

~~~
electrograv
I love DuckDuckGo and use it on all my devices, but, WOW what a horrible
name/branding. What were they thinking?

Every time I mention/recommend it to someone the response is always a blank
stare followed by something along the lines of “I would never use that if only
to avoid that horrible name / brand URL”. And I can’t say I blame them.

~~~
rpeden
Maybe it's a geographic thing?

I feel like anyone who grew up in a region where duck, duck goose was a common
game for children to play wouldn't be too confused about the name.

Not that being confused about the name or disliking it is a bad thing. But I
like the name, and it's part of the reason I chose to start using DDG.

If they changed it to something more generic, I'd be less likely to keep using
it because I'd feel less of a connection to the brand. If I'm going to use
something that generic and corporate, then Binging sounds more fun than
Ducking.

I do realize that potentially losing _me_ as a user doesn't mean this would be
a bad move for DDG overall.

~~~
simias
I'm not a native English speaker and "duck duck go" doesn't evoke anything at
all to me. I learned the reference from your comment even though I've been
using DDG for years.

If they want to expand to non-English speaking countries having a long and
somewhat complicated name like "duckduckgo" seems like a liability.

~~~
basil-rash
I am a native English speaker, and I played duck duck goose as a kid, and I
didn't make the connection until just now.

Part of the reason I use Bing is the name is nicer in my head. Also the
background images are cool (it's my homepage).

------
brink
No mention of a sale?

That seems so strange. I cant think of any other times that a business has
given charity to a direct competitor like this.

~~~
chadash
I wonder if Google wants them around so that they can point to them as a
competitor when anti-trust suits come up in court.

~~~
pentae
Ding ding ding.. we have a winner

~~~
hoffs
Bing exists?

~~~
setquk
Does it?

~~~
Spivak
I mean it's bigger than DDG?

~~~
setquk
Well only because DDG aggregates some of their stuff plus Microsoft ship
everything to glue into Bing (windows login screens / default browser config /
Cortana / XBox).

I know no one who consciously uses it to do anything other than my mother who
uses it search for Google.

If none of the other default integrations exist it'd be dead on it's arse.

~~~
TheCraiggers
There are memes out there about people using it to search for porn and I've
seen it referenced in forums, so there's at least one use case. Although why
anybody has to actively /search/ for porn is beyond me.

~~~
setquk
Well it's not like you find it in a bush these days so you have to put some
effort in.

------
azatris
I wish everyone used DDG for the sake of privacy, but I cannot. It just
doesn't give me answers that I am expecting. It reads my mind less than Google
and that's a problem.

~~~
nroets
I may be the only one, but I do think most companies don't use my data for
evil purposes. For example, if a search engine can track me on the web, they
can deduce which web page answered my query. Then they put that page near the
top of the list the next time anyone runs the same query.

Furthermore: if a retailer can use my location data to predict demand, they
can optimize their logistics and save fuel.

~~~
zanmat0
> if a retailer can use my location data to predict demand, they can optimize
> their logistics and save fuel.

Do you think those cost-savings will be passed down onto you?

~~~
macintux
I’m no fan of privacy violations, but if everyone uses a little less fuel
there are huge gains for our future, regardless of whether the cost savings
trickle down to me personally.

------
Tobaz
I'm hoping the phrase "duck it" will become as widespread as "Google it"

~~~
djsumdog
I always say, "Search for," e.g. "I searched for it online"

I hate how Google has become a verb and I don't want to see another one named
after a company. I miss the days of Lycos, Hotbot, Dogpile, Excite and where
you could search for terms on different engines and get different results.

~~~
craigsmansion
Using, "google" as a verb pretty much started out as a meme-like phenomenon; a
bit of an in-joke for the more tech savvy when Google was still rising to
prominence.

As these things sometimes go, mass adoption happened. What used to be cute and
funny is now free marketing for a search tech behemoth but with people
unwilling to give up this initial connotation of "tech savvy."

I've long since reverted to "search online" or "search the web", but I do hope
"to duck" gains some prominence; it could be the new "tech savvy" verb to use.

------
jrobn
Google is like a french word that rolls off the tongue. Duck is like a
anglo/norse, sharp and harsh but satisfying like our other favorite 4 letter
word.

~~~
djsumdog
It made me wonder if ente.de is in use (Ente is Duck in German). It is .. and
it's full of 90s Internet.

~~~
depressedpanda
> Last Update 21.07.2003

Not quite, but the design, layout and editing is indeed hilariously outdated.

------
abhiminator
Though this is a good move, DuckDuckGo should really try and work toward
taking ownership of [http://ddg.com](http://ddg.com).

With the 'D' and 'G' key separated by just one key in between on a standard
QWERTY keyboard, this should really make it exponentially easier to get to
DuckDuckGo's homepage.

~~~
alpaca128
They already have ddg.gg which is even easier to input. Not that owning
ddg.com as well would be a bad thing, though.

~~~
amvalo
"ddg.gg" is quite awkward if you ask me... or am I the only one who finds
repeated letters harder to type than alternating ones?

------
dominicr
How nice it must be to be so big that you don't have to worry about helping
the "competition".

~~~
sct202
It's also funny when Google does 'nice' things, it still gets attacked, even
though they don't seem to have bought the domain to be malicious.

~~~
ric2b
I don't see what's so nice about this if all they were doing was squatting on
the domain. It's good that they stopped squatting, let's leave it at that.

~~~
Oletros
Why it was squatting?

~~~
ghostly_s
If you own a domain you have no intent to use, which someone else may
conceivably want, you're squatting.

~~~
jonas21
Google owned the domain because they acquired a company that used to be named
"Duck Corporation" and predated DuckDuckGo.

A few months ago, DuckDuckGo asked for the domain, Google agreed to give it to
them for free, and the transfer took place today.

That doesn't really seem like squatting, at least not how the term is
generally used.

------
se7entime
DuckDuckGo People, now you need to buy duck.it domain!

~~~
dragosmocrii
So if anyone asks you something you don't know, you just say "Let me duck
that!"

~~~
castis
If anyone ever said that to me, I'd assume they were verbally confirming that
they were trying to get out of the situation.

------
jondubois
It's hard to think of a worse name than 'DuckDuckGo'. It's amazing that the
company managed to survive with a name like that.

------
Geekette
Seems quite the timely strategic PR move from Google; this might alleviate
some of the bad press it's been battling lately (public leak of DragonFly
project, workers' protest and public petition against it, etc). Good for DDG,
though.

------
rc_kas
What? that was weirdly nice of Google to do this. I'm very shocked at this.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
Google facing anti-trust investigations is inevitable at this point. When the
hearings and inquiries come, holding onto domain(s) directly connected to the
trademarks of would-be competitors is going to be a liability. It might not be
unlawful in any way whatsoever, but having to answer why you're holding onto
these properties in a way that doesn't demonstrate a promotion of anti-
competitive values is going to be, at best, challenging.

------
drawkbox
If using Firefox, you can now browse the web and search it with some animals,
_the Fox and the Duck_.

~~~
zymhan
But in which order do you ferry the animals across the river so as to not have
the fox eat the duck?

------
mcintyre1994
I'm quite surprised there's no .go tld, I could see it being used quite a lot.

~~~
CydeWeys
Two-letter TLDs are ccTLDs, and all the existing countries already have their
ccTLDs. In order for this to happen, you'd need to have a new country spring
into existence that can plausibly be abbreviated to .go, and then they would
have to treat it like a faux-generic (like .io) instead of imposing
registration/use restrictions as some countries do for their ccTLDs.

~~~
djsumdog
I love how you can still buy .su (Soviet Union) domains.

~~~
CydeWeys
I tried to buy one but it bought me instead :(

------
babuskov
No details?

I need to duck the web to find out more about this. :)

------
asadkn
Having heard and tried DuckDuckGo many times over the years, the other day, I
thought about giving it the nth try, to finally switch from Google.

And what did I type? duckgogo.com.

I'm sure there are others who find the name not so memorable. duck.com makes
it simple.

------
dplgk
Is this to fein competition?

~~~
simias
I'm guessing that's it's more like a PR move to show that they're "playing
fair" that doesn't cost them much. Or alternatively, a way to avoid bad PR
from squatting a domain that would be beneficial to a competitor.

------
ConfusedDog
I do feel like DuckDuckGo is too long to type. That's a barrier for me.
Rebranding to just Duck might be a good thing, but why "duck" ... not my
favorite animal, or why animal at all...

~~~
kowdermeister
That would be D+Enter if you indeed use it regularly. Add it yo your bookmark
bar => no typing :)

~~~
ConfusedDog
I did. My D+Enter is draw.io...

------
IronWolve
I use also use ddg, but maps.google is far better for maps. So I mix both,
using an addon, I can right click an address and send to google maps. Its a
nice compromise.

~~~
laken
you can also just add `!gm` to your query and it will then populate Google
Maps with it :)

~~~
FabHK
!m is enough, for another 33% saving :-)

------
gesman
Welcomed change!

I never remembered whether to type duckgogo.com or duckduckgo.com - either of
them i had to type twice due to normal fat-fingering :)

~~~
bhandziuk
It's like Duck Duck Goose

~~~
gesman
Or was it duck goose goose? :)

duck.com!

~~~
bhandziuk
The game where you tap tap two heads and all 3 of you run in a circle. At
least two people collide and are knocked out. The 3rd gets the website they
wanted.

------
_puk
Interestingly transferred, not bought.

Does Google buying DDG at this point make sense?

Given their stance on privacy, it would allow Google control of the
narrative..

~~~
forgotAgain
I don't see it. Google needs an independent DuckDuckGo to show it does not
have a monopoly on search.

~~~
_puk
True.

So a helping hand doesn't taint the DDG brand, buys good will, and provides
competition to the defacto monopoly. Good move.

How much is a 4 letter domain worth these days? 10s - 100s of thousands?

~~~
fipple
Duck.com would have been worth $500K+ on the open market.

------
bch
I used to refer to the tape like this, but we can now utter “If you can’t Duck
it, fuck it.” in (casual) technical conversations.

------
paul7986
That's cool and I wish DDG would offer Duck mail.

I'd like to diversify my digital life and move away from Google as much as
possible!

~~~
usuallymatt
I'd suggest not mailing the same mistake again. Go elsewhere for your email. I
switched my domain to a paid provider recently and really like it. As much as
an @duck.com address would be cool and I'd use it as a 2nd email, I wouldn't
want it as my primary.

~~~
paul7986
Cool for me I’m all good using one company’s svc as long as that company is
ethical and stands behind their values.

------
ElijahLynn
Imagine if Google had GoogleGoogleGo as their branding from the start. Would
they be where they are today?

~~~
h1d
ggg.gg?

------
nojvek
That’s nice of Google to not be a duck.

------
cft
This makes me think that DDG is Google's effort to counter the anti-monopoly
arguments.

------
cylinder
So will DuckDuckGo change their name to Duck? DuckDuckGo is a terrible name.

~~~
h1d
Duck isn't much of an improvement, the word doesn't sound serious in business.

------
marmot777
Now that fits their motto of “don’t be evil.” I’m happy to read this story.

~~~
hulahoof
I believe it's "do the right thing" now

~~~
marmot777
That's probably better as it's something to do, an action, the right thing, as
opposed to avoiding being something. And if someone does the right thing
they're not being evil. Much better motto.

------
k__
I use DDG most of the time.

But for dev related stuff I use Google, results are simply better

------
izzydata
Where does DuckDuckGo get the money to keep this service alive?

~~~
TheCoreh
Ads. Just not tracking-based ads, only keyword-based ads.

~~~
izzydata
Thanks, that makes sense.

------
foxhop
I would be amused if DDG flipped the domain for cash.

------
krylon
ddg.gg is still easier (and for some reason more fun) to type. It might sound
silly, but that's what won me over in the beginning.

------
bprasanna
A good gesture, which is not powered by AI!

------
garysahota93
I love DuckDuckGo! Been using it for years!

------
ddoolin
Now give us back the .dev TLD.

------
thanatropism
Has anyone noticed DDG results getting worse lately, btw?

------
faiz7412
This is cool!

------
scns
Classy move.

------
robotrout
I fear the Goog, even when they bear gifts.

------
phoe-krk
About time!

------
pcmaffey
Why did google own duck.com?

Edit: lol

~~~
drpgq
I'm curious who owns the other animal domains.

~~~
baroffoos
I really want a .fox domain but the whole tld is reserved for Fox news which
doesn't seem to use it.

------
ex_angry_guy
pretty awesome. except I saw accidental penis via dick.com and my fat fingers.

edit: u is right next to i guys. this is not a valueless comment. it’s a
legitimate thing that will happen to someone you know.

------
kevmo
This is not charity. Google needs DDG to exist, because Google is a monopoly.
That economic reality is increasingly translating into political calls for
GOOG to be broken up. Supporting DDG is just Google preparing for future legal
and legislative/regulatory battles. They can point to DDG and say, "Look!
There is another search company!"

Google also probably accelerated this potential action to this week because
they're taking so much heat and needed positive press.

~~~
ars
> Google needs DDG to exist

DDG is just a frontend to Bing. They need Bing to exist, not DDG.

~~~
tombert
I thought DDG had its own indexer as well, and aggregated from several
sources, including Bing.

~~~
Kiro
Their own crawler is only used for widgets and stuff. All the organic results
are from Bing and Yahoo.

See
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18664967](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18664967)

