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Comment by Zambyte | Hacker News Reader

Who would buy it? It seems like the kind of thing where they would lose all the people who use it if they sold to just about anyone who could buy it.

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Most people would not care, once a brand name is established it can sell out and continue to profit for at least 20 years or more.

Proof is just about any footwear or fashion brand you care to think of.

People specifically use DDG for the sense of privacy they have established, and that works be shattered by a buyout. People who use DDG are savvy enough to change their default search engine, and therefore would not have trouble doing it again.

The people I know who use DDG do so because there are no ads, nothing more.

I agree, the original cohort of users may fit your description though.

There are ads on duckduckgo.com.

Are they just using ad block? That should work with any search engine as well as it does on DDG.

It’s just a Bing wrapper with Bing ads. What is there to sell?

What a disingenuous take.

Give me another one then? It’s a search engine with no search index. It’s an ads supported site without an ads network. What is it then if not a wrapper?

>DuckDuckGo is an American software company that __offers a number of products__ intended to help people protect their online privacy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo

“A number of products” that make no real revenue other than driving users to…Bing ads.

The discussion here is what you would get if bought DDG, and the answer is…very little.

>The discussion here is what you would get if bought DDG, and the answer is…very little.

Goal posts are moving. You said DDG = Bing wrapper. Now you are saying DDG has low revenue products.

The second could be true. The first isn't, which is why I said it was disingenuous.

I’m saying it’s not worth anything because it is a Bing wrapper. The other “products” are just to drive more traffic to Bing ads. There’s no there there.

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