DDG makes me nervous because I don’t actually understand their business model. Which isn’t to say they don’t have a well-known and viable one but I haven’t personally looked into it and as a result my gut feeling is that they are probably not an exception to this.

I use them anyway because they at least claim to be private and haven’t yet given me specific reason to doubt it. I probably should at some point take the time, though, to try to actually understand how they can viably exist in a way that isn’t going to succumb to the same corrupting incentives as google.

Their business model is simple:

- build a useable search engine

- show ads to users

User acquisition is based on word of mouth and a bit of guerrilla marketing: they are a search engine with decent quality that doesn't spy on you.

Not spying and not selling tracking data to others cost them some opportunities but gives them "free" users that would otherwise have stayed with Google.

The last few years Google has been busily lowering their quality so even if DDG haven't improved much they feel very close to Google these days. (Also, retrying in Google takes 2 seconds from DDG, while retrying in DDG after trying in Google first takes 15 seconds and more thinking.)

One of their core tenants (privacy) is unprofitable. There will be internal pressure to drop it.

Note how their predecessor, Google, started out lovable and quirky but then that facade crumbled under the weight of success.

I like DDG, I use DDG, I recommend DDG. And I don't even care about the privacy. All that matters to me is my search habits, emails and business-related-data are controlled by different entities.

But at some point I expect the privacy aspect of DDG will be a memory rather than a current talking point. The incentives are pretty simple.

When DDG does that we move on to the next option. It seems like the only way to not be eventually screwed over is to periodically move on from what you use.

This is why it's important to have replacements around. Particularly smaller and newer businesses that aren't yet interested in squeezing out every drop from you.

My worry with that business model is that people concerned about privacy enough to switch to DDG probably are really likely to use adblock

I use an ad blocker and DDG, but I still see ads when I search for something. The ads appear like Google search ads, but clearly labeled, so I doubt my ad blocker is going to be able to detect them without a feature to specifically target DDG.

I don't have a problem with those ads, since they're not overly intrusive, they're clearly labeled, and they're not targeted to me based on my personal information. Plus, DDG actually gives me the option to disable ads completely.

That's what "don't be evil" should look like.

Personally, I don’t mind an ad or two. It’s not ads, per se, that have me using an ad blocker... it’s the “bad UI impact of tons of ads and pop-ups” that keep me in ad block mode. When a site wants me to turn off the ad blocker and it doesn’t look insane, I’m happy to comply. Same with DDG.

If it ever leaked that DDG was tracking user data, they would lose their only competitive advantage and lose all their users

My worry is that if they ever achieved a dominant, Google-like position in the marketplace, that they would eventually lapse and go for greed. Even if the current DDG leadership is principled in this respect, companies go through turnover. Can't be evil > don't be evil.

If/when that happen the HN crowd should look at it as a business opportunity.

I can be an early customer.

Given that Google owns that position, and is being evil in order to maintain it, that is very, very unlikely. I'll stick with DDG and take that risk.

DDG lets you turn off their ads in their own settings, so I don't think they're worried about it.

DDG is registered as a Brave creator, so they can get some revenue from Brave users without ads.

As others have mentioned, they run ads — based on the search query of the page they appear on. They also (not unlike Brave) participate in affiliate programs. They get referral commissions when they funnel people to Amazon or eBay, whether through their shopping carousels or through !bangs.

> use them anyway because they at least claim to be private

Me too, at least there's probably some chance they get sued if they’re as terrible as Google. But

> haven’t yet given me specific reason to doubt it

I do doubt they’re as private as they could be, because they act a lot like I imagine a honeypot does, hide their source code, and have had serious past privacy problems in other products (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23708166 ‘We’re not collecting your info, our servers are receiving it but just trust us we just throw it away’).

Don't they have ads? In reality, tracking doesn't do much when it specifically comes to search engine ads, since the user is literally giving you their intent in the search query itself. Tracking is more useful for showing ads as you browse the web in general. DDG can do effective search ads without any actual tracking, and that's their business model, which is very similar to Google Search.

DDG does have ads, but with a limited scope, your search patterns are only used for a limited time.

'tracking' is a broad term but websites do track what you click on and if you return to the search results and click another link after clicking on the first link - this indicates that the first link didn't give the searcher the correct answer they were looking for. Whether or not that's tracking is up to you. DDG also of course does tracking for security purposes - scraping their search results doesn't go over well unless you also have a financial stake in outwitting their anti-abuse stuff.

> 'tracking' is a broad term

Right, in this context though it's referring to users themselves being tracked. Tracking how well the results to a specific query did doesn't require any sort of user-specific data. You're just logging stats about the results themselves, not the user.

I'm not sure DDG can be considered an example of the default position in the search market.

Granted, OP didn't explicitly state they were discussing the most common behaviour in the market, but it remains a stretch to take them to be be stating a law that must be strictly true for any social construct that could be called a market.

Well, since the thing it is "necessary but not sufficient" for is me to be convinced you aren't tracking me, it does not. I use them as the best current alternative, but as I alluded to in my first comment, I'd be much more comfortable with them if I could give them some money.