Apple Should Acquire DuckDuckGo To Put Pressure On Google Search, Analyst Argues (9to5mac.com) 94
According to Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi, Apple should acquire privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo to put pressure on Google Search and tap into lucrative advertising revenue. 9to5Mac reports: According to Sacconaghi, Apple should acquire DuckDuckGo for around $1 billion as a way to put more pressure on Google and capture the advertising revenue that comes from the search industry. As reported by Street Insider, acquiring DuckDuckGo could serve as a 'stalking horse' to pressure Google: "Google is clearly the dominant force in search today. However, we suspect the company's fear of 'rocking the boat' -- which could compromise $15B in profits it captures today from iOS -- may ultimately limit its freedom of action with Apple. Conversely, Apple may be in a stronger position than at first glance, given it controls the keys to the kingdom on who can monetize iOS search. However, it remains uncomfortably dependent on Bing to act as a counter weight to Google -- hence our suggestion that Apple acquire its own search engine. Finally, Microsoft Bing may (counterintuitively) have the most 'option value' vis-a-vis the status quo -- although it remains to be seen how aggressively it will pursue this opportunity." What do you think of Sacconaghi's suggestion? Do you think Apple should cut ties with Google and acquire DuckDuckGo?
Leave It Alone (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple should leave DDG alone. It doesn't need to be eaten and digested by a tech giant. We like DDG the way it is, independent and non aligned.
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Agree!!! Apple acquiring DDG would eliminate it as a trustworthy search tool (despite the fact that it appears to be front-ending Bing; they can obscure the identity of the searcher when doing that). Apple and Google are birds of a feather when it comes to mining user data.
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I know very well that Apple isn't different from Google because they are altruistic or anything, but that just isn't their bread and butter. They want to sell you expensive hardware. They are good at and make margins other companies can only dream of selling people expensive hardware.
What they don't do is make their money on user data like Google. You need to brush up
Re:Leave It Alone (Score:5, Insightful)
And how long will that last now that iPhone growth has stalled, they're sitting on top of a mountain of unmonetized data? They've got hungry investors to feed. Treading water won't do for the most hyped computer manufacturer... or well, brander... in the world.
Leave my ducks alone. Quack!
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I don't know, as I said I would prefer no one own them. However, the point is Apple isn't currently doing so, Google is, and the 'Apple's growth has stalled!' boy has called wolf many times, been eaten, and had his next few replacements repeat that same cycle. Apple is still at or near the top and their investors are still sated (as much as an investor can be anyway).
Anybody remember Apple+Google collusion charges? (Score:1)
Google and Apple are practically one company. They were caught working together [theguardian.com] to avoid poaching each other's employees and to keep down wages. If Apple were to buy up DuckDuckGo, that would be a really bad sign in my opinion. You can bet there would be some secret agreements being put together between Apple and Google regarding search for sure.
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Even if they're still very wealthy from hardware sales, there's still a pile of money for advertising purposes just lying there. Not even a lot of money. But if there's a $20 lying on the ground and Bill Gates walks by, chances are he's going to want to pick it up. Similarly, investors in Apple are going to start wondering why they're ignoring the unexploited revenue source.
Re:Leave It Alone (Score:5, Interesting)
You're aware that the reason our phones track our location and send the data home is because of Apple?
When Google wanted to put together a global SSID map, they could've just pulled it off of the phones of Android users - cross-reference GPS location with which SSIDs were in range of the phone, and sent the data back to Google. But they realized that would be Wrong. So instead they mounted WiFi adapters to the Street View cars they were sending around the world to take photos of every road. Their cars would detect SSIDs and correlate them to GPS locations, record the data, and the data would be shipped back to Google. But they configured something wrong, and their cars ended up capturing traffic data packets, not just SSID. When they realized this, they self-reported themselves to the EU, who promptly fined them.
Meanwhile, Apple did what Google didn't. They pulled the SSID and GPS data off of their users' iPhones to build up their own SSID map. When they were caught, they just said "that's ok, we're allowed to do it." And pointed to a clause they'd slipped into their EULA without anyone noticing, saying they were allowed to do it. The EU never batted an eye.
So the lesson here was simple. If you try to do the right thing, but screw up, you will be punished. If you do the wrong thing but cover your butt with an EULA, you will not be punished. So Google dropped their SSID collection via Street View cars program, and now just like Apple they simply lift the SSID data off of users' phones. And you have Apple (and the EU) to thank for it.
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Nothing incompatible there.
Apple doesn't track users because they don't need to.
Looters and rioters aren't users, and they stole a tracking device. Apple is well within their right to track those devices because those phones were stolen and still belong to Apple.
Apple doesn't track even though they can. They don't need to if you
Re: Leave It Alone (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Leave It Alone (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Leave It Alone (Score:2)
Who would you switch to in this case?
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Altavista of course, Excite is just a fad.
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www.ixquick.com
www.yandex.com
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The_Revelation snorted:
This Analyst clearly doesn't understand what SHE's talking about because existing users would likely abandon the platform if Apple took ownership of it.
FTFY ...
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Does Duck Duck Go even have a search engine? I thought they just re-packaged either Bing or Google searches without tracking you.
Re:Leave It Alone (Score:4, Insightful)
If Apple acquires DDG, I'll stop using it. Period.
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Here here.
I don't use DDG, but what with the degradation of Google's search quality (lots of searches now return garbage SEO sites/hijacked domains if there's not a perfect match) DDG needs to stay independant.
Hell the best thing for DDG would be for them to figure out how to de-centralize itself so that it can operate even in countries that block it.
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It makes no sense for apple to buy it just to pressure Google. Why does Apple care about search? They don't. Apple shouldn't buy Audi to pressure Tesla either.
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This a million times over.
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did anyone check that guys payroll ?
Apple Duck Duck Go? Fuck Fuck No. (Score:3, Insightful)
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How can we even know that they're following their own policy?
Re:Analyst is talking out of his ass (Score:5, Informative)
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No it's not: https://help.duckduckgo.com/du... [duckduckgo.com]. Quote: "traditional links in the search results, which we also source from multiple partners, though most commonly from Bing (and none from Google)". AKA, anything that's not from Wikipedia or not an instant answer is from Bing.
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AKA, anything that's not from Wikipedia or not an instant answer is from Bing.
Don't be stupid. Even with Wikipedia, and Instant answer there are still over 398 other sources of information *including DuckDuckGo's own crawler* that make up their search results.
So not your AKA is not on point. Though if your link hits some common news site, then it's likely from Bing. But honestly who cares whose database you use. If the results are what you're after and they are anonymised then nothing further is required.
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DuckDuckGo's results are a compilation of "over 400" sources,[9] including Yahoo! Search BOSS, Wolfram Alpha, Bing, Yandex, its own web crawler (the DuckDuckBot) and others
The question is what percentage of those results are being delivered by DuckDuckBot because the rest certainly isn't "it's own separate thing."
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I don't know, one of those you put in your quote definitely looks a lot like "it's [sic] own separate thing". I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to identify which one.
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Yes, the analyst is talking out of his ass (Score:3)
However, it remains uncomfortably dependent on Bing to act as a counter weight to Google -- hence our suggestion that Apple acquire its own search engine
DDG is its own thing, but they buy search results from Bing already. So how buying DDG would make Apple less reliant on Bing is anyone's guess. And to think that DDG is worth a cool billion is ridiculous. It's a mom-and-pop business that didn't have the cash for real employees even before the pandemic. They have moderate success in the open source world, but not a billion dollars worth. I get more search referrals on my web sites from the Russian search engine Yandex (with not a single Russian page any
How can Apple make it Better? (Score:5, Insightful)
It would only make sense for Apple to buy DDG if somehow they could make it better. Since it essentially just uses Google’s results in the background, not quite sure how they would make that work.
It seems almost as futile as Apple’s Ad program, trying to take on DoubleClick/Google.
From where I sit, a whole new paradigm is needed if you want to dethrone Google in the search world. There is an opportunity, but no clue how you would do it. (I find my search results getting progressively worse over the years due to SEO and trying to monetize every pixel of the screen— results don’t come close to addressing my question/need/verbatim clues/etc. Nothing is more annoying than searching for something and one of the terms out of three simply is not in the results.)
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Since it essentially just uses Google’s results in the background
DDG specifically does *not* use Google's results in the background. Some of the results come from Bing, but they also have their own web crawler and database.
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You can use google resuts if you want. Just start your search with "!g".
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It uses Google's results? Why am I not seeing them? DDG's search results are crap. :(
I thoiught that duckduckgo used the Google (Score:2)
Hmmm (Score:1, Insightful)
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No, Apple is just mediocre and overrated. The Mac is the Buick of computers.
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Oh no duckduckgo (Score:5, Informative)
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Doh... forgot about Maps..!
Search needs some real innovation to move us forward, and (as much as I am an Apple fan) I don’t see Apple being able to completely turn things around.
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honestly I preferred the old GNAA spam, it was at least semi-hilarious. this is just fucking tedious.
Agreed. I read right through the GNAA rant once, but I gave up on this guy's crap after three lines.
But come on mods, this is still on zero at the moment.
No (Score:2)
Buy Bing instead (Score:5, Funny)
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Ahh good old Apple Maps. A service so ill thought out that the original icon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] included the instruction "In 1/4mile turn left off the middle of the bridge and crash onto the I-280 in a blaze of glory below"
EAE (Score:2)
Why not just make a new search? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why wouldn't Apple just build their own?
But also, why would Apple want to? Search is a business for Google because Google sells ads. Google pays Apple billions to be the iPhone default search because Google sells ads. If Apple had their own search, they would use it for ... what? It would be good for Apple ... how? Are they going to sell ads?
If someone else was going to make a credible search alternative, it would be Amazon. Amazon already makes a lot on ads and runs a lot of searches. Amazon needs to work to make sure AWS stays ahead of Azure.
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It's long past time for a rethink of how searching should work. Google is only Google because their search was so much better than the alternatives, but that hasn't been true for years. It's gotten harder and harder to get actually relevant results out of Google. PageRank is largely dead. And Google seems far more interested in advertising and the invasive tracking involved to squeeze every bit of data out of their users than improving their core product, unless "improving" means "manipulating results so th
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It's gotten harder and harder to get actually relevant results out of Google.
Indeed it has.
Google seems far more interested in advertising and the invasive tracking involved to squeeze every bit of data out of their users than improving their core product.
Google's core product is not search. It is "eyes" for looking at advertisements. Google is not a search company, it is an advertising company. People searching are not the users. They are the product that Google supplies to their actual users, the people/companies paying Google to advertise to the searchers.
Please no. (Score:1)
Re:Please no. (Score:5, Funny)
Everything any of these tech giants touches goes to shit.
Come on, that’s a pretty sweeping generalization. Why, let’s look at Siri for example. Sure it started independently, but after Apple acquired it Siri has gotten even more...
Oh, I see what you mean.
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"Hey Siri, why is it that you're still useless in 2020?"
"Ok. A SWAT team is on the way and they think you have a hostage."
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iPod and multitouch were technologies Apple acquired. Siri is bad because voice assistants are a bad idea, not because Apple acquired it.
Google paid Apple $12 billions in 2019 (Score:5, Insightful)
To be the default search for Safari.
Cold hard cash. No risk. No investment.
So no, Apple will not trade that very safe cash cow for a risky challenge.
Heeell to the NO! (Score:1)
If DDG would allow that it would sign its own death sentence..
Apple should fuckquire right off, back to before September [catb.org]!
And so should Google.
KHHAAAAANN!!!!!!!! (Score:2)
I mean "Hell No." Apple is the Borg, everything must integrate and contribute to The Collective. DDG would not remain an independent company inside Apple. It would be shutdown and become Apple Search. And that would a tremendous lost to everyone.
Huh? (Score:2)
The (Score:2)
Just my 2 cents
Why? (Score:2)
First off, I don't see Apple doing this. Ever.
Why? I don't see how DDG fits into Apple's hardware strategy. Why does Apple need to enter the search market?
Apple enters markets where they see they can offer improvements to, or out of necessity. Apple Maps was created out of necessity - Google was demanding much more personal information than Apple was willing to provide. And this is effectively a critical service for a modern smartphone.
But why does Apple need to get into search? Google has their app, and yo
If Apple buys DDG (Score:2)
Lmddgtfy (Score:2)
I couldn't blame the owners if they sold out for billions, but...
"Let's buy a search engine that does no user tracking and have it do user tracking and hey why is nobody using it anymore?"
Why? (Score:1)
How do we know (Score:2)
How do we know that DuckDuckGo is actually maintaining searchers' privacy? Seems like the best way to harvest premium search data would be to claim to run a high-privacy system while actually collecting and correlating the data anyway.
The only way out (Score:1)
Definitely. The best way to combat the monopoly power of the world's 6th biggest company is to have the world's 2nd biggest company absorb the only persistent existing competitor.
Duck Duck Go (Score:1)
Why does the price matter? (Score:2)
Why should Apple acquired them FOR AROUND $1 BILLION though? How does the acquisition price put pressure on Google? Could there be some other iinterest involved?
Why bother? (Score:2)
I like Apple, and I use DDG, but I honestly don't see the advantage to Apple here. What does OWNING DDG give them that merely partnering with them doesn't? Doesn't DDG already use Apple Maps for their location stuff now? If Apple wants to partner with them and funnel some money to them to make sure they stay afloat (which DDG doesn't seem to have any trouble with right now, in any case) they could do that.
What's this 'pressure' that the analyst is talking about? Once Apple OWNS a search engine, there's no p
Please, don't (Score:2)
Unintended consequences (Score:2)
Interestingly.... (Score:2)
...in rural MD on my commute I pass three DuckDuckGo billboards. Guess they're really pushing for market share now. I've been a DDG user/anti-googleIte since they first started private search so I tend to really notice those things.
Nope (Score:2)
Apple shouldn't get involved in a business that isn't its strength.
That would wind up ruining DuckDuckGo.
No. That's dumb. (Score:2)
Skip DDG and just buy Bing (Score:1)