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Google, Which Owns Duck.com, Confuses Users Searching For Its Rival DuckDuckGo and Redirects Them Back To Google (twitter.com) 118

Posted by msmash from the don't-be-evil dept.
Commenting on the record $5 billion fine on Google by the European Commission, privacy focused search engine DuckDuckGo said this week it welcomes the decision as it has "felt [Google's] effects first hand for many years and has led directly to us having less market share on Android vs iOS and in general mobile vs desktop." The company said: Up until just last year, it was impossible to add DuckDuckGo to Chrome on Android, and it is still impossible on Chrome on iOS. We are also not included in the default list of search options like we are in Safari, even though we are among the top search engines in many countries. The Google search widget is featured prominently on most Android builds and is impossible to change the search provider. For a long time it was also impossible to even remove this widget without installing a launcher that effectively changed the whole way the OS works. Their anti-competitive search behavior isn't limited to Android. Every time we update our Chrome browser extension, all of our users are faced with an official-looking dialogue asking them if they'd like to revert their search settings and disable the entire extension. Google also owns http://duck.com and points it directly at Google search, which consistently confuses DuckDuckGo users. "If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is google," wrote security researcher Mikko Hypponen, summing up the story.

Update: Google makes amends.
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Google, Which Owns Duck.com, Confuses Users Searching For Its Rival DuckDuckGo and Redirects Them Back To Google More

Google, Which Owns Duck.com, Confuses Users Searching For Its Rival DuckDuckGo and Redirects Them Back To Google

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  • hmm (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Friday July 20, 2018 @11:42AM (#56980832) Journal

    The other stuff sure. Amen.

    But I, for one, would not for any reason think that I would find "Duck Duck Go" at duck.com ....

    • Re:hmm (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jeffasselin ( 566598 ) <<cormacolinde> <at> <gmail.com>> on Friday July 20, 2018 @12:14PM (#56981002) Journal

      I don’t think people do.

      But maybe they search for “duck” in the browser’s address bar expecting it to find DuckDuckGo instead it adds .com and sends them to duck.com which redirects to Google. A bit weird but I can see the issue. And why would Google have bought duck.com for ANY other reason than to screw with DuckDuckGo?

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        "Duck.com redirects to Google because it was a byproduct of the purchase of On2 Technologies (VP# video codecs). On2 Technologies was formerly called the Duck Corporation."
        https://www.quora.com/Why-can-Google-continue-to-redirect-duck-com-to-google-com-when-it-is-so-close-to-duckduckgo-com
        http://web.archive.org/web/20040824015111/http://www.duck.com/

        (That's also mentioned in TFA: "Yes, duck.com came as an asset in the unrelated On2 acquisition (On2 used to be known as Duck Corp).")

      • But maybe they search for “duck” in the browser’s address bar expecting it to find DuckDuckGo instead

        Those people are computer illiterate.

      • Auto autocomplete needs to die.

      • > And why would Google have bought duck.com for ANY other reason than to screw with DuckDuckGo?

        I advice going to duck.com and read.

        Though, I may copy&paste for you:

        _____________________________________

        Google
        On2 Technologies

        Google acquired On2 Technologies and its video products and technology in February 2010.

        The On2 products Flix Pro, Flix Standard, Flix Exporter, Flix PowerPlayers, Flix Live, Flix DirectShow SDK, Flix Publisher and Flix Engine are no longer for sale.

        Please note that On2 wa

  • Someone else already bought Duck Duck Google [duckduckgoogle.com]. Still a generic landing page. Whoever owns it should just point it to Bing.

    • Domain Name: DUCKDUCKGOOGLE.COM
      Registry Domain ID: 2064927099_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
      Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.register.com
      Registrar URL: http://www.register.com/ [register.com]
      Updated Date: 2016-10-10T16:21:40Z
      Creation Date: 2016-10-10T16:21:39Z
      Registry Expiry Date: 2018-10-10T16:21:39Z
      Registrar: Register.com, Inc.
      Registrar IANA ID: 9
      Registrar Abuse Contact Email: abuse@web.com
      Registrar Abuse Contact Phone: +1.8003337680
      Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited https://icann.org/epp#clientTr... [icann.org]
      Name Server: DNS1.REGISTER.COM
      Nam

  • "Don't be evil", LOL (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Friday July 20, 2018 @11:50AM (#56980868) Journal
    Yeah yeah I know: Google dropped that motto a while back, but this sounds like something Microsoft would do.

    • This is almost worse the MS. It would be like windows buying lunix.com, lenix.com, or any other misspelling and redirecting to windows.com.

      • Five bucks says Miscreant-o-soft does exactly that in the near future.
      • Also, where I work (major chip manufacturer, LOL) the proxy/firewall blocks those domains you provided as examples, so $SOMEONE thought of that already; bet's off. xD

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Rob Y. ( 110975 )

      Perhaps. But duckduckgo seems a little disingenuous as well. They apparantly 'aggregate' search results from all the Google competitors and provide you with generic, ad-supported search results. All well and good, I guess - except for my suspicion that the reason those Google competitors allow DDG to use their search results is that they can't compete with Google, and are quietly 'funding' a privacy-oriented alternative with free data. And I'm guessing that of all those competitors, Bing is the primary

    • ... but this sounds like something Microsoft would do.

      Google: When I left you I but was the learner, now *I* am the master [youtube.com]

  • Partly their own fault (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Friday July 20, 2018 @11:51AM (#56980872)
    Don't get me wrong. I think Google should fry if they're blocking competing search engines from their browser. But:

    Google also owns duck.com and points it directly at Google search, which consistently confuses DuckDuckGo users.

    They wouldn't be so easily confused if the DuckDuckGo landing page [duckduckgo.com] didn't look nearly identical to Google's landing page [google.com]. Contrast to Bing [bing.com], Yahoo [yahoo.com], Ask [ask.com], Startpage [startpage.com], Qwant [qwant.com], Yandex (#1 in Russia) [yandex.com], Naver (#1 in South Korea) [naver.com]. The only other major search engine which makes the same mistake of copying Google too closely is Baidu (#1 in China) [baidu.com].

    • Re:Partly their own fault (Score:4, Informative)

      by Actually, I do RTFA ( 1058596 ) on Friday July 20, 2018 @11:55AM (#56980906)

      I'm not sure what you're talking about. DDG looks closer to Bind, Ask or Startpage than Google. And Google looks pretty similar to all of them (although distinctive from all of them a little bit.)

    • They wouldn't be so easily confused if the DuckDuckGo landing page didn't look nearly identical to Google's landing page. Contrast to Bing, Yahoo, Ask, Startpage, Qwant, Yandex (#1 in Russia), Naver (#1 in South Korea). The only other major search engine which makes the same mistake of copying Google too closely is Baidu (#1 in China).

      They don't look "nearly identical" to me.

    • They all appear the same to me they have a search box with the company logo/name above or to the left of it the search button to the right or below. When you search the results show up from top to bottom. Though some have garbage all over their sites and some just the search feature.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • I don't find it at all confusing and never did.

      And I don't think your example addresses the use case this article is about anyway. New users, who have *never* seen the duckduckgo.com start page use google to try to find the "duck" search engine.

      Also, at least for the real google site, when you put in duckduckgo or duck search engine, the top result is duckduckgo.com.

      Also, on my android smart phone, if I type in duck search engine, the top link is duckduckgo.com so it seems this entire discussion is based

    • TIL: Ask.com still exists!

    • They wouldn't be so easily confused

      Don't be daft. The users aren't confused in a way that they think they are using Google. They are confused as to why they landed at Google when aiming for DuckDuckGo.

  • This should have been posted before /. poll (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mykepredko ( 40154 ) on Friday July 20, 2018 @11:53AM (#56980890) Homepage

    The current question is "What do you think of the EU decision to fine Google $5 billion?" - I would think that after reading TFA, this would change some people's minds and explain one of the reasons why the (in my opinion) the fine was justified.

    • I would think that after reading TFA, this would change some people's minds....

      It changed my mind. The fine is certainly justified.

    • You mean a little over 1 day's borrowing for the annual US deficit?

      A gigantic fine, or a feather light one, depending on your rhetorical angle of attack.

  • I've been using DuckDuckGo.com on my ChromeOS laptop for the past few months. Works great and I haven't found any problems with my searches.
    Happy to have an alternative.

  • Same Old News Slashdot (Score:5, Informative)

    by mydots ( 1598073 ) on Friday July 20, 2018 @11:57AM (#56980914)

    I explained this one years ago here
    https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]

    Obviously they don't care to undo my changes from when they bought On2/Duck.

    • Re:Same Old News Slashdot (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 20, 2018 @01:50PM (#56981664)

      Here is the post for reference:
      ----------
      by mydots ( 1598073 ) on Friday November 23, 2012 @01:21PM (#42074845)
      ----------
      I started working at The Duck Corporation (duck.com) in 1996, a few years before it went public as On2 Technologies/The Duck Corporation (on2.com and duck.com), and was working with Google/Duck/On2 until a year and a few months after the acquisition in 2010. At Duck/On2, I was responsibile for everything related to building our networks and maintaining all the hardware, software, servers, domains, networks and a ton of other stuff, you know the typical system administrator job.

      Prior to the acquisition, but after going public as On2, we likely didn't sell duck.com because that was still my primary email address and I and a few others still actively used it, and we still kept up a basic website for information about our old and basically no longer supported software; and it was just one of those things still tied to the company with a lot of history as The Duck Corporation, so we decided to keep it. Feel free to blame me, since I always requested that we keep it when we saw the many offers for the domain over the years, mostly in the hundreds to couple of thousand dollar range; and because of my history with the company, I am sure I was a big part of that decision to not sell it.

      When Google bought us, I knew I was still going to be there for a while to make sure all our company data, and some specific services that had to stay up, was migrated into their servers. Since we hosted all our own servers with our own hardware and software and they had to ulimately be shut down, I had to get things moved over and still needed to get my duck.com email.

      So at that point, since I was still getting a lot of duck.com emails and had my duck.com email address for literally many hundreds of websites, publications, mailing lists, business contacts and other things, since I mainly used duck.com for well over a decade, I wanted to make sure Google's DNS and email was configured to still get duck.com emails. I actually had started trying to switch all my duck.com to google.com, but it was an overwhelming process. I still wonder how much email is still going to my duck.com email address.

      I took it upon myself to learn the Google way of configuring their public DNS, email and a bunch of other things because I was nosey and wanted to learn and did learn some really cool and interesting stuff about them while I was there. I made sure the MX record for duck.com was still configured to deliver my email (and a few other email addresses) to my Google email account. Since it was decided to no longer keep the website up, I can't give you a real explanation, but I ended up configuring duck.com websites to point to the google.com main page instead of nothing. So you can go ahead and blame me, but no one at Google specifically told me to point duck.com to their site.

      ----------

    • Stop ruining it! People are trying to be angry at Google!

  • I Googled for DuckDuckGo.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by sinij ( 911942 ) on Friday July 20, 2018 @11:58AM (#56980920)
    I Googled for DuckDuckGo and was told by Google to check my privilege and go back to using Google, or else they index me as an oppressive member of patriarchy.

  • "Duck Season!"
    "Duck Season!"
    "Duck Season!"
    "Duck Season!"...

  • 2012 Called... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Note the date of the article in the URL:
    https://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/01/30/we-bet-you-dont-know-who-owns-duck-com-and-what-it-redirects-to/

  • Meh, Google controls almost everything on the web including its domination of web browser and search. DuckDuckGo is a noble attempt but falls way short of gathering any interest from the masses. Other then tin foil hat people who obsess over privacy of which I really do not think many actually do anymore.
    The EU fails to understand that people choose Google search and nobody is forcing you to use it. While I agree Google does its best to steer you into its products. I could say the same about Microsoft or Ap

  • Google also owns http://duck.com/ [duck.com] and points it directly at Google search, which consistently confuses DuckDuckGo users.

    Everyone knows you never stop after just one duck [wikipedia.org].

  • Can someone please buy the DNS googlegooglego.com, and redirect it to duckduckgo.com?

  • It is true that duck.go redirects you Google. It is also true that you end up in a page of Google search results, at the top of which is DuckDuck.go. This aside, the problem is that DuckDuck.go is not very good. I used it as my default search engine for two weeks a couple of months ago, and had to reluctantly acknowledge that it is has (it did then) a long way to go to become comparable to Google's. Which sucks big time, for I am sick and tired of Google :-(

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It is true that duck.go redirects you Google. It is also true that you end up in a page of Google search results, at the top of which is DuckDuck.go. This aside, the problem is that DuckDuck.go is not very good. I used it as my default search engine for two weeks a couple of months ago, and had to reluctantly acknowledge that it is has (it did then) a long way to go to become comparable to Google's. Which sucks big time, for I am sick and tired of Google :-(

      It has been my default for 2 years. The results are just *different*. The major site are all up there in the first results. It shows another webscape, which is good for a change.

      CAP: esteemed

  • DuckDuckGo (Score:3)

    by thePsychologist ( 1062886 ) on Friday July 20, 2018 @12:56PM (#56981254) Journal

    I've been using DuckDuckGo for my main search engine. It almost completely replaces Google.

    The one area where Google excels is finding things like reviews of tech on people's blogs. Even with the term 'blog', DuckDuckGo returns a lot of the typical mediocre reviews from the popular tech sites.

    • Agreed - I’be been using DDG for a few years now, and it’s fine. I used to have to add “!g” (send my query to Google) fairly frequently... but I don’t do that much now, and when I do I’m generally disappointed in the Google results as well.

      DDG implements the old “I’m feeling lucky” function, which is incredibly useful for certain searches - something Google discarded years ago because of the lost ad revenue. It does site-specific searches. It does Wikip

  • I just tried to get ahead of the curve and register "peetape.ru" but apparently someone already beat me to it.

  • When I try to look up the weather for San José I get information for Carmen, Provincia San José. Ok, so I try "weather San Jose, CA", it still finds the city in Costa Rica. So I try using a zip code, "weather 95126". Nope, still Costa Rica. The folks at DuckDuckHack [duck.co] make some painful to watch bugs.

  • Is okay, I just bought the domain name for dontbeevil.com
  • Has anyone actually tried to access www.duck.com? Come on, try, i'll wait...

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