DuckDuckGo Acquires Duck.Com Domain Name from Google

• DuckDuckGo is a search engine that focuses on privacy, and it purchased the duck.com domain name from Google for an undisclosed fee.
• Google received the domain name during its acquisition of The Duck Corporation in 2010.
• The tech giant owns other high-value domain names as well.

Privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo has purchased the domain name Duck.com from Google according to a report by NamePros. DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg was reported to have asked Google to transfer the domain name last week as it would help the search engine out. The deal was made between the two but neither Google or DuckDuckGo have revealed the cost of the domain.

DuckDuckGo is a private search engine that blocks advertising trackers and keeps your search history private. User data is not collected as per the company’s terms of usage and users have complete control over their data. With duck.com being held by Google, the company has been trying to get the URL for months. The domain name has been with Google since it acquired On2 Technologies in 2010. On2 Technologies was known as The Duck Corporation back then and held the Duck.com domain name which was transferred to Google during the acquisition.

DuckDuckGo expressed its problems due to Google owning the search engine as users would be redirected via the tech giant’s duck.com page instead of DuckDuckGo’s own. Google had tried to ease the situation by adding the official DuckDuckGo URL to the duck.com page.

With the domain name now being owned by DuckDuckGo, the URL no longer takes users to Google’s website. Duck.com is not the only website Google has control over with thousands of websites being registered or owned by Google over the years. A lot of them were received through acquisitions while others are simply misspellings of the word Google itself or other products like Gmail, Chrome, and others. It helps the tech giant prevent fake websites being created to scam users. Google also owns a number of short and valuable domain names including like.com and zero.com.

What do you think about DuckDuckGo finally getting its desired URL from Google? Let us know in the comments below. Let us know in the comments, and don’t forget to visit our Facebook and Twitter page for more news.