Duck.com is owned by Google, not by DuckDuckGo | Hacker News Reader

Duck.com is owned by Google, not by DuckDuckGo

duck.com

34 pointseam20 comments

I accidently discovered this when I mistyped www.duck.com instead of duckduckgo's www.duck.co

-----------------

Registrant: DNS Admin Google Inc. 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View CA 94043 US Email Masking Image@google.com +1.6502530000 Fax: +1.6502530001

    Domain Name: duck.com

        Registrar Name: Markmonitor.com
        Registrar Whois: whois.markmonitor.com
        Registrar Homepage: http://www.markmonitor.com

    Administrative Contact:
        DNS Admin
        Google Inc.
        1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
         Mountain View CA 94043
        US
        Email Masking Image@google.com +1.6502530000 Fax: +1.6502530001
    Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
        DNS Admin
        Google Inc.
        1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
         Mountain View CA 94043
        US
        Email Masking Image@google.com +1.6502530000 Fax: +1.6502530001

    Created on..............: 1995-02-22.
    Expires on..............: 2015-02-23.
    Record last updated on..: 2010-11-19.

    Domain servers in listed order:

    ns3.google.com
    ns4.google.com
    ns2.google.com
    ns1.google.com

At least duckit.com is still open!

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2027691

Since then, I've asked again to get it, and MattCutts was nice enough to forward it to the right people. Haven't heard back yet though.

Duck.com is probably worth at least $200k - $500k on the open market. Are you going to offer them that kind of money for it?

On2 was the original owner of Duck.com which Google paid ~$102m for in August of 2009.

Doubt this was related to fear of DuckDuckGo.com but that sure would be a nice domain pickup!

http://techcrunch.com/2009/08/05/google-acquires-video-compr...

I'm curious, if you don't think it's related to DuckDuckGo.com, what do you think the point of their buying the domain for 100 million and pointing it at their search page was?

Is duck slang for search in some areas, or languages, or something?

The On2 purchase was about video codec technology as I understand it. On2 used to be known as The Duck Corporation so that is why they owned duck.com. The domain just came with the deal.

Ah, that makes sense.

Also, to those down-voting: that was an honest question. I was not aware of the naming history of On2. Please familiarize yourself with the voting etiquette here.

On2 created what is now called WebM, a video code that Google is promoting instead of H264. Google (and others, pike Gorilla) believe that h264 is patent encumbered and not in keeping with the web's open nature. This is why FireFox doesn't play h264. By put purchasing On2 and releasing WebM, Google is trying to prevent video on the web from being controlled by one patent pool. They paid all that money to try to protect the web's openness.

So they first started using duck.com for Internet search in 2009, while DDG had applied for registration of Duck Duck Go as a trademark in the field of Internet search on April 2, 2008 (edit: USPTO does not give stable URLs - removed link).

Sounds like a potential case of trademark infringement by Google, if Duck.com can be considered to be confusingly similar to "Duck Duck Go".

This is one reason even small startups should consider registering their trademark. Depending on timing, it wouldn't necessarily have prevented Google or its predecessor in interest from registering and using the domain, but it could prevent Google from re-purposing the domain for use as they have here. Just because the prior company was using the name in commerce for a different purpose doesn't necessarily mean that they can then turn around and use it in a confusingly similar manner in a different area. While there are common law trademark rights that base on usage, a registered mark could have been a valuable tool in preventing this kind of cross-purpose usage.

Wierdness here: http://sanfransis.co/

"Not Found The requested URL / was not found on this server."

I should have said more.

I wanted this domain, and it points to Google, but it's owned by some other guy. My point is, why does it point to Google? I think that's odd. Maybe it's not very interesting though. ;-)

http://whois.domaintools.com/sanfransis.co

Abhishek Sood

A-5, Akshay

Mumbai Maharashtra

400053

India

Anyone can register a domain, point that domain to google's IP address and get the above message.

In the same way I can just call forward my home phone to Pizza Hut if I want...

Beats a dead domain, or awful parking page. I've done it before.

this could be a good publicity stunt for DDG, sue google for trademark infringement(probably even a legit case here)...which will get you a lot of press covering how Google is so scared of DDG

If would cost a lot of money to go up against the big G. The only people who win are the lawyers, I'll bet Google has lots of experience defending trademark lawsuits.

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