DuckDuckGo Charitable Donations (2020): $750k to Organizations Worldwide | Hacker News Reader

DuckDuckGo Charitable Donations (2020): $750k to Organizations Worldwide

spreadprivacy.com

74 pointsffpip30 comments

Looks like all political organizations, several of whom advocate against DDG's competitors. No funding to free / open source software providers, except Tor.

Quite savvy.

Wait what? The EFF, the Markup, open rights group, and probably others on the list absolutely provide open source software and/or datasets.

I was paid to build an open source project for one of them, and it isn't Tor.

Previous Donations - https://duckduckgo.com/donations

how do they even have that kind of money

While they might not track your search history, their business is still built on ads in search results served by Bing.

Call me old-fashioned, but I think that's a very good monetization model for the web that I can definitely get behind. It's almost exactly like ads in dead-tree newspapers, which is to say much less intrusive than the ones on TV, for example.

Or like how Troy Hunt does it on his blog: he just sells his top banner for ad space, with strict rules for the size of the ad. Of course this only works if you already have a sizeable following, but for the end user I view it as a very unintrusive way of monetizing.

Microtransansactions are often brought up, but I don't feel like they are a solved problem from end user perspective. Too much setup and hassle to read random articles from random sites.

Most of our revenue is from ads on DuckDuckGo Search. These ads are not behavioural, i.e. not based on search history or personal info (which we don't have). Instead, they're contextual with scope limited to individual searches.

Here's more info about our business model: https://spreadprivacy.com/duckduckgo-revenue-model/

Disclaimer: DuckDuckGo staff

Affiliate Commission.

Anytime a user clicks an Amazon or eBay link and makes a purchase, DDG receives the referral commission

Don't spread false information.

Only when you use a !a bang, (a service they offer) is a affiliate link added.

? it says so right here

> Affiliate revenue

> DuckDuckGo is part of the affiliate programs of the eCommerce websites Amazon and eBay. -When you visit those sites through DuckDuckGo, including when using !bangs, and subsequently make a purchase, we receive a small commission.

https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/company/ad...

It happens only through bangs. Not 'Anytime a user clicks an Amazon or eBay link and makes a purchase, DDG receives the referral commission'

The don't serve different search results with affiliate links added.

Oh, you talking about adding affiliate links, right, I agree that I don't see them serving search results with affiliate links. On this page the claim is phrased slightly different, and says receive a commission from searches that leads to purchases

https://spreadprivacy.com/duckduckgo-revenue-model/

> When you visit those sites through DuckDuckGo, including when using !bangs, and subsequently make a purchase, we receive a small commission.

50million searches, or $.015/search in ad profit.

What are Google's or Bing's numbers? That seems high to me.

DDG is 70 million. https://duckduckgo.com/traffic

Bing is smaller than DDG in some countries

Source of profit numbers? Or is it an estimate?

That's just the $750k from the article title divided by 50 million posed in the comment.

How are they making so much money?

Here's more info about our business model: https://spreadprivacy.com/duckduckgo-revenue-model/

Disclaimer: DuckDuckGo staff

Ads

https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/company/ad...

Affiliate Commission

Anytime a user clicks an Amazon or eBay link and makes a purchase, DDG receives the referral commission.

How is it set up? I can't see Amazon ref links in their result page (containing plain Amazon links).

I assume the http referer header?

The claim is directly from the bottom of page - https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/company/ad...

When you use an Amazon bang, they add a affiliate link. Not to any search results.

https://duckduckgo.com/bangs

Is it a form of lobbying? I was expecting more universal charitability like peace in the world, but it looks like a disguised investment.

Why would DuckDuckGo donate to causes like peace in the world? Even though it is a good cause, it's not related to DDG. They have a privacy first approach and have donated money to similar organisations.

They do this every year - duckduckgo.com/donations

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