SoylentNews

takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Duck.com now points to DuckDuckGo, not Google [techcrunch.com]

Non-tracking search engine, DuckDuckGo [duckduckgo.com], is now a little easier to find online after the company acquired the premium generic domain name duck.com [duck.com] — thereby shaving a few letters off its usual URL. This means browsing to duck.com now automatically redirects to DuckDuckGo.com.

The twist in this tale is that duck.com's prior owner was Google. And DDG had accused the search giant of anti-competitive behavior — by pointing duck.com to its own search engine, Google.com, and thus "consistently" confusing DDG users (duck.co [duck.co] having long pointed to the DDG community page.)...

[...] [Calls] for antitrust scrutiny of tech giants have been rising in the US. And Google's dominant position in Internet search and smartphone platforms, along with its pincer grip (along with Facebook) on the online ad market, position it for some special attention on that front. So the company quietly passing off duck.com now — after using it to redirect to Google.com for close to a decade — to a pro-privacy search rival smacks of concern over competition optics, at the very least.

Also at Gizmodo [gizmodo.com].

Previously: Google Throws DuckDuckGo a Bone, Adds Redirect on duck.com Landing Page [soylentnews.org]

Original Submission