Google releases domain name Duck.com to search engine DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo, the search engine that it claims does not track the user, has acquired the domain name Duck.com after years of frustration. It has been owned by Google since 2010.

Anyone who goes to Duck.com will from now on automatically end up at the DuckDuckGo.com search engine. The news was confirmed on Wednesday by DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg in a conversation with NamePros. Weinberg had been eyeing the shorter domain name for many years, because his search engine would be much easier to find that way for the general public.

Initially, however, Google did not feel called to give up the domain name. The search giant came into possession of Duck.com in 2010 through the acquisition of the company On2 Technologies, formerly known as The Duck Corporation. To the great frustration of DuckDuckGo, visitors to Duck.com all those years ended up on the homepage of arch-rival Google. To ease the conflict, Google eventually added a link to DuckDuckGo on that page, but since Wednesday the domain belongs entirely to the alternative search engine. Whether, and if so how much money DuckDuckGo had to pay to Google, is unknown.