There's a Lot of Confusion Over Who Owns DuckDuckGo

Nov. 13 2020, Published 8:fifty seven p.m. ET

There has been such a lot discussion over the previous few 12 months about social media and the way it is influencing our lives. We speak about an echo chamber on those social platforms that most effective display us what we love to see, in hopes that we're going to engage extra. 

This has introduced up discussions of concern with people wondering if these tailored effects are doing extra harm than just right. There are some platforms having a look to turn clear of this, but folks nonetheless do not have full agree with on who owns them. Does Google own DuckDuckGo the search engine? If now not, who does?

Does Google own DuckDuckGo?

Ask anyone to search for something on the internet and the phrase is actually "Google it." That's how infiltrated the search engine has turn into into our lives and it's arduous to imagine anything will change that. Google, the search engine, has been round since August 1996 and there is no question that it is not the best search engine. 

There are some problems other people have with it — principally the undeniable fact that it tracks what you search for and serves up an algorithm that may or is probably not the similar as everybody else. The concern is this creates an echo chamber, where we only listen and spot things that we're used to and this will breed conspiracy theories and different dangerous phenomenon. 

In an effort to supply another option for everyday people who do not want to feed into the algorithm, another search engine was once designed referred to as DuckDuckGo. "The Internet privacy company that empowers you to seamlessly take control of your personal information online, without any tradeoffs," the company's web page reads.

"You deserve privacy. Companies are making money off of your private information online without your consent. At DuckDuckGo, we don’t think the Internet should feel so creepy and getting the privacy you deserve online should be as simple as closing the blinds."

The company's philosophy is that no person owns your information, and what it's you search for must now not be disclosed to any person, let by myself a company to profit off of it. With this in thoughts, the company was once introduced to present shoppers a search engine that does not serve people results in accordance with an algorithm. Basically, it's the opposite of the Google search engine.

But does Google own DuckDuckGo? Nope. It's now not affiliated with Google and began in 2008 with a want to offer other folks another option. One of its first advertisements was once urging other folks to look at Google with the slogan, “Google tracks you. We don’t,” on a billboard in San Francisco's tech-heavy SOMA district in 2011.

Google has never owned nor had any section in DuckDuckGo, but some confusion arose with Google's ownership over the domain Duck.com which, at that time, was once set to redirect someone who visited the web site to Google's search engine.

"Google kindly tried to clear up this confusion in July by adding a DuckDuckGo link to the page," The Verge reported in 2018. "Visiting Duck.com now redirects users straight to DuckDuckGo." That wasn't enough for DuckDuckGo who sought to, and have been a success at, buying the domain off Google to steer clear of any longer confusion.

DuckDuckGo is owned via Duck Duck Go, Inc. which used to be started by means of Gabriel Weinberg.

Anyone who needs to make use of DuckDuckGo can be confident they're not using a Google product in doing so.

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