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Comment by skinkestek | Hacker News Reader

Their business model is simple:

- build a useable search engine

- show ads to users

User acquisition is based on word of mouth and a bit of guerrilla marketing: they are a search engine with decent quality that doesn't spy on you.

Not spying and not selling tracking data to others cost them some opportunities but gives them "free" users that would otherwise have stayed with Google.

The last few years Google has been busily lowering their quality so even if DDG haven't improved much they feel very close to Google these days. (Also, retrying in Google takes 2 seconds from DDG, while retrying in DDG after trying in Google first takes 15 seconds and more thinking.)

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One of their core tenants (privacy) is unprofitable. There will be internal pressure to drop it.

Note how their predecessor, Google, started out lovable and quirky but then that facade crumbled under the weight of success.

I like DDG, I use DDG, I recommend DDG. And I don't even care about the privacy. All that matters to me is my search habits, emails and business-related-data are controlled by different entities.

But at some point I expect the privacy aspect of DDG will be a memory rather than a current talking point. The incentives are pretty simple.

When DDG does that we move on to the next option. It seems like the only way to not be eventually screwed over is to periodically move on from what you use.

This is why it's important to have replacements around. Particularly smaller and newer businesses that aren't yet interested in squeezing out every drop from you.

My worry with that business model is that people concerned about privacy enough to switch to DDG probably are really likely to use adblock

My worry is that if they ever achieved a dominant, Google-like position in the marketplace, that they would eventually lapse and go for greed. Even if the current DDG leadership is principled in this respect, companies go through turnover. Can't be evil > don't be evil.

If/when that happen the HN crowd should look at it as a business opportunity.

I can be an early customer.

Given that Google owns that position, and is being evil in order to maintain it, that is very, very unlikely. I'll stick with DDG and take that risk.

If it ever leaked that DDG was tracking user data, they would lose their only competitive advantage and lose all their users

Personally, I don’t mind an ad or two. It’s not ads, per se, that have me using an ad blocker... it’s the “bad UI impact of tons of ads and pop-ups” that keep me in ad block mode. When a site wants me to turn off the ad blocker and it doesn’t look insane, I’m happy to comply. Same with DDG.

DDG lets you turn off their ads in their own settings, so I don't think they're worried about it.

I use an ad blocker and DDG, but I still see ads when I search for something. The ads appear like Google search ads, but clearly labeled, so I doubt my ad blocker is going to be able to detect them without a feature to specifically target DDG.

I don't have a problem with those ads, since they're not overly intrusive, they're clearly labeled, and they're not targeted to me based on my personal information. Plus, DDG actually gives me the option to disable ads completely.

That's what "don't be evil" should look like.

DDG is registered as a Brave creator, so they can get some revenue from Brave users without ads.

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