DuckDuckGo has been profitable since 2014 through private search ads, and our company is not controlled or beholden to venture capital (or VC or other money).

Our product vision is an "easy button" for privacy, an all-in-one privacy app. Email protection is part of that, along with search, browsing, etc. Put another way, we see email protection as part of our core product, and within our app we autofill duck addresses in email forms.

We will take your comment into consideration, though we prefer free services where possible so more people can get privacy protection, which is in line with our mission. This service comes with it a set of privacy guarantees here: https://duckduckgo.com/email/privacy-guarantees and we will not be putting ads on it.

This answers the VC money fear, but not everything else OP brought up.

If a product is subsidized by a company's other products, it's hard for me to believe it'll be around forever. For an email product, that's a huge problem, because I use my address in hundreds of contexts that take a long time to identify and migrate, much longer than a typical company's sunsetting notice.

EDIT: The parent comment was edited to note that they perceive DDG Email as part of the core product, not a separate product. That's helpful to know, but I'm still skeptical that that's sustainable in the long term. This would not be the first time a feature was cut from a product because it was too expensive to maintain. I'll be waiting to see their unified privacy solution really take off before I place any bets on this feature.

The business case seems pretty obvious: They're using this as a way of getting people to install a browser extension / app, and changing their default search engine. A search user is valuable, which makes customer acquisition expensive. This also makes their extension way more sticky.

Just because you're a product doesn't mean the service is not sustainable. It should be very easy for them to figure out whether the feature is profitable or not compared to other acquisition methods.

Perhaps for them it's a loss leader, but for someone using this to sign up to stuff.. I would like to use this for almost all services but given the business model here I would be uncomfortable using this beyond the more spammy stuff (not that that's not useful!)

Nothing will be around forever.

DDG has regularly raised money from VCs including a Series D about a year ago. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/duck-duck-go/company...

I can't speak for their circumstances, but I'd assume a VC-backed company describing themselves as "not beholden" to VCs means they're default alive without additional fundraising, and that they haven't given over majority control of the board to their investors.

Part of privacy is reliability and certainty. Just take people's money like Proton, you can still have a free tier.

You have "email protection" but do you have nice stuff like sandbox detonation and private intel partnerships with companies like Proofpoint? That as a premium might be worth charging. Heck, even public yara rule scanning and allowing inbox owners to set things like DMARC enforcement and custom rules and actions would be a nice premium.

Can you build an email hosting service on par with Gmail? I'd really like to get out of being on Google

Have you tried FastMail? Probably the closest thing to a G Suite/Workspace alternative that doesn't have ties to "Big Tech".

How does it compare to ProtonMail? I’m paying for the Proton VPN/mail bundle, but I haven’t really used the mail yet.

Not GP, but here are a couple of differences.

Fastmail’s email servers are in the US and the company is in Australia. Both are in the five eyes jurisdictions, plus Australia has some draconian laws (see Assistance and Access Bill, though email itself is generally not a secure enough channel). ProtonMail is in Switzerland, which is better surveillance-wise, but it still complies (as one would expect a company to) with court orders and has disclosed the IP address of an activist due to a court order.

Fastmail supports IMAP, which means you can use any email client on a desktop or phone. ProtonMail does not support IMAP directly on desktops and requires a “bridge application” for IMAP. This is provided for paying customers. ProtonMail does not have any support for IMAP on smartphones, where you’re either left to using the browser or using the ProtonMail app.

+1 for Fastmail.

I love that DuckDuckGo is based in Paoli. Grew up in the area and it's crazy to think there's an innovative tech company in a sleepy Philly suburb haha. Keep up the great work!

Even if ads do not appear on the product, it doesn’t mean that the data isn’t used to drive ads revenue. Are these addresses used for conversion measurement?

But why prioritize this over building your own index and not relying on Microsoft?

In terms of value to the end user, and a mission of expanding privacy-improving practices through their services, I can see why a feature like email protection would be prioritized over a proprietary index.

While one may marginally improve some aspects of the service and has strategic value, the other actually moves the needle in terms of an end-user's overall privacy.

What’s the point of email forwarding for a search engine that no longer has an index? Licensing Bing results is all of DDG business but a rounding error for Microsoft. That’s a very precarious positron to be in.

Email forwarding and search are orthogonal products solving different issues, so first, I’d point out that the value of the email forwarding service doesn’t change.

But presumably DDG has contractual agreements with Microsoft so “no longer has an index” is a hypothetical that isn’t really grounded in reality or something that would be likely to happen without warning.

And if Bing is no longer viable at some point for some reason, that would be a good reason to change the priority of building an index.

But clearly DDG feels secure enough in their current agreement, and as of now, we have no reason to believe otherwise.

He/she probably meant: keep it free with a donate button.

yegg is the ceo and founder of Duck Duck Go

This.

This is also the reason I'm not particularly excited about DDG in general. They have exactly the same business model as Google, so there is no reason for me to feel confident they won't follow the same trajectory as Google.

But they don't. Google is much bigger than search from an office competitor to a cloud provider to a phone software vendor. DDG will not become google. Something with a bigger reach like tiktok might.

Being funded by search ads was never an issue with google and privacy until they switch from contextual ads and morphed into personal ads.

DDG winning search on bing search isn't the same trajectory. At best lycos like would be the most likely trajectory.

Google in 1999 was an upstart search provider promising a clean, minimal, user-focused ad-supported search experience as an alternative to entrenched search engines like Lycos, Altavista, Yahoo.

DuckDuckGo in 2022 is an upstart search provider promising a clean, minimal, user-focused ad-supported search experience as an alternative to entrenched search engines like Google.

I'm old enough to remember when Google was the new and exciting thing (just give it a try and ignore the stupid-sounding name!). For the longest time there wasn't even such a thing as a Google account, it just saved preferences like safe-search locally using cookies, and ads were just a small distinctly colored text bar above the organic search results, directly related to your search keywords.

The original Google ads were actually to the side - no way of confusing them with organic listings. Ads above results weren’t rolled out until 2007ish. Internally there was a lot of debate as to whether this might be confusing to users/evil, so the decision was to only show ads above results on queries that appeared to be high commercial intent. RIP old Google

True.

Not sure how paying for this service makes it any less likely that DDG will flip a switch to make that targeted advertising money though. That temptation will exist either with a paid service or a non targeted ad supported service.

Nothing is guaranteed, but at least you are the customer not the product if it's a paid service.

I have very little tolerance for companies that double-dip though. I subscribed to the New York Times for a while, but cancelled, in part, because they still stuffed their pages with ads both explicit and implicit.

What are some of the reasons you expect a $4.25/week digital subscription to have fewer ads than a $20/week newsprint subscription?

You need to be explained why it's cheaper to publish news to a website than print physical papers every morning and deliver them to homes across the country every single day in time for it to be relevant?

Lmao show the numbers then. Is the cost of printing 75% of the newspaper- probably not.

What search engine do you use ( I am assuming its not google ) ?

I currently use Neeva. They're okay, but I'm still looking for a better option. I don't subscribe to their paid version because the upgrades you get just seem like silly gimics to me. They have some good ideas but fall short on execution in my mind.

I really want the option to turn off certain sites (eg. w3schools) entirely from search results, not just demote them.

Consider paying for kagi.com.

As a paying subscriber, I 2nd this - it's great.

Thanks, I'll check them out.

Personally I see a difference between a search company funded by ads vs a privacy company that leverages anonymous search ads to pay for its privacy offerings. I mean yeah DDG could completely flip its business model but what would they actually flip to? Their only main differentiator is that they are privacy friendly.

As long as ads are their core revenue stream, there is a risk of compromising users. If you aren't paying for hte product, you aren't the customer, as the old saying goes, and no superficial rationale for why they are "different" will change this.

Firefox relay premium will take your money (currently $1 a month).

https://relay.firefox.com/premium/

I pay for this and use it regularly. It's awesome!

“ Email Protection is not available in this browser.

Open this page in the DuckDuckGo app to continue.”

Reminds me of Reddit shenanigans…

I don’t understand why people think the converse of “if you are not the customer, you’re the product” is true.

Contrapositive yes, converse no. Companies could still make money from both sides of a market. Look at the lack of net neutrality. Look also at how ISPs used to be able to sell your data, despite you paying them !

In the meantime, you can pay either Apple or Fastmail for this feature as part of their larger product offerings. Maybe there are other paid services which offer this as a feature. These are just the ones I'm aware of.

I work at Mozilla, and we've got https://relay.firefox.com/

I have read the FAQs page but I am not seeing an answer to a question just yet: can one lock the 0.99 USD limited time discount forever?

I think the honest answer there is that there is no way to promise that (who knows who's managing the project in the future). But I do know that the folks currently on the team are planning that, when we do raise the prices, we only do so for new subscribers (but again, this is not a promise, just my personal expectation).

And this is why I switched to kagi.com. Also, helps the search results are better.

How much would you pay? I've moved to posteo and I can't think of paying more than 1€/month for email. I never considered Protonmail because 4€/month is what i consider way too much for email. My root server is 6€/month (atom/4gb/1tb/100mbit).

To me email is one of the most worthwhile services to pay for—it is the backbone of your digital identity after all.

That being said, there’s probably not much need to pay more than $5/mo. I’m very happy with Fastmail at $60/yr.

I personally pay 10$ a month for GSuite basically to handle the mail of my personal domain name. Is it worth it? I'm not sure yet but I had way to much issues with email not delivered in the past (blacklisted IP ranges, reputation, etc.) when I had my own mail server.

I prefer paying 10$ a month and forget about mail server issues and wondering if my mail is going to the spam folder..

For a mail relay service, I'd probably pay $24-$36/yr. I happily pay Proton $50/yr for quality email service. $12/yr would be a no-brainer.

Plenty of stuff you pay for has ads. Newspapers, Cable tv even Netflix are talking about getting them. The corporate imperative to serve the shareholder trumps all others.

> Newspapers

Newspapers is free or dirt cheap. You basically pay the paper and distribution costs if anything. Those that do charge to read it online don't show ads to subscribers.

> Cable tv

The main selling point of cable TV was no ads. Eventually they started adding ads, and that's probably the reason cable tv is fading away.

> Netflix

Doesn't have ads right now, and if they do in future, people will just move away.

There is https://simplelogin.io and https://anonnaddy.com

Which support custom domain and more features, and not locked to a specific browser.

Both open source and self-hostable, SL is by Proton(Mail).

DDG email protection isn't locked to a single browser, I've been using it on Chrome/ium and Firefox for around a year now.

I meant on mobile, you can't use it without using DDG browser.

Same, it is not available on Safari though.

https://sneakemail.com/ is another one that's been around for a long time.

Just go to https://anonaddy.com (it just cannot filter out trackers in messages)

(Low cost) paid service, no browser extension: 33mail.com. Happy customer for well over ten years.

Fastmail is paid and has this feature.

Dear DuckDuckGo,

Please stop censoring search results, no matter how morally/politically opposed to them the organization may be. Privacy + Censorship is not a good mix.

The truth needs no defense.

We are not (and never were) censoring results. I realize I caused the misunderstanding due to own my unfortunate phrasing in a tweet, and since then, how our news results rankings work has been highly misinterpreted.

We (DuckDuckGo) subsequently made a help page to explain it in detail: https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/ne.... Tl;dr: we don’t censor, we don’t move things so far down that they are effectively censored, we don't evaluate individual stories or narratives for "truth", and we don’t rank based on any political agenda or opinions. This is just a summary though so would read the help page for details.

I also put out a clarification thread about various misconceptions that included this topic amongst others (like the fact that no, we’re not owned by Google), but the help page referenced above is the best and most thorough explanation of our news rankings. https://twitter.com/yegg/status/1515635886855233537

I think you lost all credibility when you made that tweet. If you want to regain it, you should be completely transparent about which sites you have taken any specific ranking action regarding, and why. This should be relatively easy to do, as you say you take action very rarely.

I'm sorry, but this does not seem to counter your initial tweet at all. Your first tweet said, and I quote, "At DuckDuckGo, we've been rolling out search updates that down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation."

This is censorship, since DDG is now deciding what is considered "Disinformation".

Your clarification thread does not state DDG is not down-ranking these sites based on what DDG feels is "disinformation". It merely asserts DDG is not purging results - these are two very different things.

Just to be clear, I too support Ukraine, and am aghast at the deliberately misleading information ("disinformation") coming out of the Russian War Machine. However, as I previously wrote, the truth needs no defense. Hiding away things we don't like doesn't make them go away, it just makes them go underground. We need this information freely available so it can be discussed and disproven out in the open.

If users wanted curated search results, they might as well use Google or Bing...

Lastly, to repeat, Privacy + Censorship (of any kind) do not go together. This was quite a large misstep for DDG, and has burned a lot of trust.

They rank based on relevancy. Domains that are found misleading readers often are less relevant than domains that are misleading readers less often. That's it. All search engines have to make these calls all the time, and I see no viable alternative approach that would be better. There is no 'natural' ordering of the web...it's all judgment. If you think DDG's results are less relevant than those you get elsewhere, use the better engine!

Not sure if you read the whole thread as it says explicitly "We are not ranking based on any political agenda or my (or anyone else's) personal political opinions. We are also not assessing any individual news stories."

That said, the help page I referenced is the most detailed explanation of how our news rankings work: https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/ne....

To be clear, that means we do not have a definition of "disinformation". I'm to blame for tweeting something that was highly ambiguous but we were never actually doing what we've been accused of doing.

Accused is a strong word. It's more like "what we accidentally claimed to be doing".

It's a very tough situation, needing to assure people that you honestly aren't doing what you claimed and just misspoke.

[Original comment removed by author 'cuz it's now moot]

Edit: My bad, I missed a legit link in parent comment. That said, that link should have been front & center. (Edit 2: it now is. Good on you!)

The help page referenced is only about this topic and provides the most thorough and up to date explanation of how our news rankings work: https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/ne...

@yegg Even if you don't agree with one side, you can't consider the side to be "spam", "disinformation" or "propaganda" and hope people will just be OK with that. What is spam to you, is useful information for somebody else, some people love what Tucker Carlson have to say, others prefer Brian Stelter. That's why freedom of speech exists[1]. I think the right approach to down ranking is having a banner with a link with undeniable proof of what the article says is wrong, which is very hard to do, I get it. Otherwise, is preferential down ranking, and whatever you argue on Twitter won't change the minds of people. I too have been using DDG from the beginning, and I'm grateful more private alternative to Google exists, I just hate censoring as much as privacy violating businesses.

1- https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-neo-naz...

I think you may have misinterpreted how this works. We do not do any page or story or narrative level assessment or fact checking at all, or any fact checking for that matter.

Please don't post like this to HN, regardless of what someone else did or you feel they did. Regardless of what you do or don't owe them, you owe this community better if you're participating in it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html