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Google relents and transfers Duck.com to DuckDuckGo

Google relents and transfers Duck.com to DuckDuckGo

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Clearing up confusion for users

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DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo, the privacy focused search engine, has acquired Duck.com from Google, reports NamePros. Responding to rumors from a few days ago, CEO Gabriel Weinberg said that the new domain would make it easier for people to use the company’s search engine. The Duck.com domain was previously owned by Google, after it acquired On2 Technologies (previously known as The Duck Corporation) back in 2010. Neither Weinberg nor Google confirmed how much, if anything, was paid for the domain.

Google’s ownership of Duck.com was previously a source of frustration for DuckDuckGo, when it would redirect users to Google’s rival homepage instead of DuckDuckGo. Google kindly tried to clear up this confusion in July by adding a DuckDuckGo link to the page. Visiting Duck.com now redirects users straight to DuckDuckGo.

Duck.com was just one of the thousands of sites owned by Google, which has anywhere from several hundred to several thousand individual domains in its possession. These range from common misspellings of Google such as gogole.com, googel.com, or googil.com, to product names like gmail.com and chrome.com, to valuable unused domains with short names like Zero.com or Like.com.