A court filing in the U.S. Department of Justice's case against Google over its alleged monopoly in the search market has revealed a few notable tidbits
The filing reveals some details we already knew about DuckDuckGo — for example, that it’s been profitable since 2014 and that its source of operating revenue is currently search advertising, namely search ads provided by Microsoft in the U.S. However, Google’s proposal also attempts to paint a picture of a startup that didn’t invest in search innovation but instead focused on returning investment to its shareholders.
But it contradicts this point, too, noting that a third of DuckDuckGo’s 50 employees in 2018 were working on improving the search engine, for example.
It also dismisses DuckDuckGo’s approach to privacy as one of its failures, claiming that the approach leads to “significant trade-offs to search quality,” by not utilizing data like search sessions, a signed-in experience, and more. If anything, though, these details and others the filing includes show how difficult it is for a competitor to build a search business to rival Google’s.
Neeva was generating less than a million dollars in subscription revenue at the time and was growing, but was still a small part of the search market, the filing also informs us.
The startup exited to Snowflake for approximately $184.4 million in cash, more than double the amount that had been invested, the filing states. This is slightly higher than previous reports that had pegged the number at $150 million.
There’s a bit of editorialising that’s a little too disguised in between facts, but that’s not unusual for Tech Crunch. They’re apparently trying to push against Google’s filing and the arguing that they are indeed a monopoly - not that they’re wrong, mind.
It also dismisses DuckDuckGo’s approach to privacy as one of its failures, claiming that the approach leads to “significant trade-offs to search quality,
This is a bold claim to make considering Google’s search is almost entirely useless now. They’ve let AI-generated SEO trash completely destroy their search results and have turned a blind eye to it.
Yes Google search is more useless now than when it was before spiders when it was simply a directory index.
Pot (Google) & Kettle (DDG), they’re both shitty controlled opposition under the new Cable TV Death Grip. The Internet is enshitified, I guess we fucked up killing cable, the parasites simply followed along and made this shit too.
I hope so, let’s get some semi-healthy competition going, maybe they’ll even have to provide a better user experience instead of just seeing who can milk their users the most optimally. Probably not but one can dream.
The relevant points:
There’s a bit of editorialising that’s a little too disguised in between facts, but that’s not unusual for Tech Crunch. They’re apparently trying to push against Google’s filing and the arguing that they are indeed a monopoly - not that they’re wrong, mind.
This is a bold claim to make considering Google’s search is almost entirely useless now. They’ve let AI-generated SEO trash completely destroy their search results and have turned a blind eye to it.
Thanks chat for restoring my faith in you.
Yes Google search is more useless now than when it was before spiders when it was simply a directory index.
Pot (Google) & Kettle (DDG), they’re both shitty controlled opposition under the new Cable TV Death Grip. The Internet is enshitified, I guess we fucked up killing cable, the parasites simply followed along and made this shit too.
and how exactly is google opposition at all? lol
Yeah I don’t foresee Google staying on top for Search unless they make drastic changes.
I hope so, let’s get some semi-healthy competition going, maybe they’ll even have to provide a better user experience instead of just seeing who can milk their users the most optimally. Probably not but one can dream.
Definitely not useless but it does make finding things 10, harder