Why is this article even on HN?
1. Does anyone care about DDG anyway? I think it's safe to say, yes, there are some who do. I for one.
2. The problem DDG is solving is imaginary. Oh really? What precisely is that problem? Is it search itself that you're referring to, or the prospect of going up against Google? If the former, then you are delusional, and if the latter, there is nothing wrong with attempting to disrupt a monopoly.
3. A search engine costs billions of dollars. Actually, no. There is no rule of computer science that says that. If someone discovers a new, cheaper way to do search then cool!
In answer to your final question, perhaps the reason this article is on HN is to inspire comments like yours, which are wrong, and then comments like mine, which correct comments like yours.
I have worked on search (see my background), and doing search well is massively difficult. The problem has deep necessary complexity, and Google has invested thousands of PhD years against that already. If Google were incompetent, maybe I could see it. But they're damned smart and their product is extremely good.
Data is also a problem - Microsoft has been collecting all your google searches since IE8, and can probably just clone Google's search results for the top few million queries. But even given that, Bing is a massive undertaking.
Since nobody uses DDG, Google can't be expected to make them a default search choice in Chrome. Accusing Google of some malfeasance is just childish and silly.
Finally, the name DDG is atrocious. Really bad in more ways than I have time to list.
I think you're thinking of PCIPA (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protecting_Children_from_Intern... ), which would do that, but is still a long way from becoming law. I am fairly sure that the USA PATRIOT Act does not contain any such provision.
"At the very least, this change means that the government can use a pen-trap to see the email addresses of people youre sending email to and the addresses of people who send email to you, along with the timestamp and size in bytes of each email. The FBI can monitor the IP addresses of all the computers you interact with over the Internet, or capture the IP addresses of every person visiting a particular website. Under the vaguely written statute, it may even be able to capture the URL of every web page that you read, although the FBI refuses to confirm or deny whether it has done so."
Sure, I should have inserted the word [can], but it hardly changes the point. Given the direction laws have taken since 9/11, you would be foolish to rely on your search activity remaining anonymous.
The main issue I have is with duck.com. A lot of people remember that we are a search engine "duck something" and so naturally try duck.com. As a result, there is a lot of confusion, e.g.:
"I was telling someone about DuckDuckGo and they thought it was Duck.com and they went to Google. Is Google using this to find people who make the mistake to Duck.com instead of DuckDuckGo?"
"Can't you do something about this? I keep going to Duck.com when meaning to visit DuckDuckGo.com They are using the DuckDuckGo name to get people to search Google."
This only started happening after I asked about the domain name. It used to point to a history page about Duck Corporation (previous name of On2 -- http://web.archive.org/web/20100802014055/http://duck.com/), similar to http://www.on2.com/, which was acquired by Google in the same acquisition.
Google should legitimately not sell it to me, though it would have been of course nice to do so when I first asked in 2010. I think an appropriate remedy would be to either point it nowhere, point it to the original page it had been pointed to for many years, or point it to the acquisition page (as http://on2.com still does) -- all things they do in other cases if you look at past acquisitions.
Just to be clear, it is only anti-competitive because it causes confusion, and relates to their core search product. The facts of the situation (that it switched shortly after I asked, and only seemingly that one domain) make it appear to be deliberate. And if it were not deliberate, I've brought this up many times and there has been ample time (including now!) to correct the situation.
With regards to being easy to add search engines to Chrome, see http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2011/02/usability-issues.... I've written up the differences extensively, with screenshots and explanatory notes.
So if Google changes it they admit that they may have harmed you and you get a legal remedy. If Google doesn't change it you claim there's no reason not to and you get a moral argument.
Sounds like you're trying to construct a situation where you win and Google loses no matter what. How about just deal with the fact that it's not your domain? I quite like camping.com, doesn't mean I have the right to it.
In any case, there would still be no useful legal remedy available to us. We don't make much money, so what would the damages be?
The last thing a startup wants to do is take a big company to court. You're just asking to be bled dry.
This only started happening after I asked about the domain name. It used to point to a history page about Duck Corporation (previous name of On2 -- http://web.archive.org/web/20100802014055/http://duck.com/), similar to http://www.on2.com/, which was acquired by Google in the same acquisition.
Google should legitimately not sell it to me, though it would have been of course nice to do so when I first asked in 2010. I think an appropriate remedy would be to either point it nowhere, point it to the original page it had been pointed to for many years, or point it to the acquisition page (as http://on2.com still does) -- all things they do in other cases if you look at past acquisitions.
Effectively it is Google's fault because they are doing it now specifically in his case and not for others (as he mentions clearly)
Secondly, while it would be nice to pre-empt all angles and all possibilities etc., etc., but I don't think any of us can foresee every possible way something will come back to bite your backside in the future. So, no, I don't think that it is somehow DDG's fault that they did not foresee this and preempt it.
P.S: FWIW, google renamed themselves from googol to google because the VC mispelled their name on the cheque. Just goes to show that such things are a fact of life. People have every right to vaguely try to look up "Duck something" search engine. However, Google is definitely in the wrong for sneakily redirecting users back to their own engine in this case by misusing this vagueness.
Tell them that you called your search engine Duck Duck Go, registered DuckDuckGo.com, and for them to visit DuckDuckGo.com. It's not as though you were ever called Duck.com instead. This just sounds like a petty whinge otherwise. Sorry!
Doesn't sound like a petty whinge according to me though at least if you follow his full explanation of Google actually capitalising on this confusion and redirecting users to their own engine.
I have been watching your work for quite a while, and from what I have been able to grasp, currently, your main advantage is the privacy.
Now I wonder if you ever considered instead of developing a new search platform, developing a user friendly privacy proxy platform and let Google and other search engines (including bing which your results relies heavily on it) do their job, while you keep your customer's privacy in the middle.
Have you?
In an interview on Wednesday, Weinberg said it is difficult to make his
DuckDuckGo the default search site in Google's Chrome web browser.
Regardless of whether their claims are true or not, that is.
The number of votes and comments tell me people on this forum do care. Personally, I care because DDG is doing something ambitious and competition is good(it helps keep people in line). Also, even if I didn't care, I don't see a reason why I should shit on someone's hard work.
> They're trying to solve a completely imaginary problem,
Privacy isn't an imaginary problem.
> and they haven't got a hope in hell of creating a viable search engine as that costs billions of dollars.
Creating one from scratch will take time and money, and no, as blekko folks pointed out, it didn't take them billions. But DDG uses bing apis augmented with custom index.
>Why is this article even on HN?
I think its relevant because PG wrote an article about "frighteningly ambitious ideas" and DuckDuckGo seems to be inspired from it.
Let's not kid ourselves, Google is a good company but they have to defend their position. Not just DuckDuckGo, but even your supposed billion dollar search engine will face same issues mentioned in the article. So this is not about the DuckDuckGo as a company but about monopolistic practices. Let's talk about that.