Aral BalkanJul 16

A little reminder that DuckDuckGo is venture capital (VC) funded.

The way VC works:

1. You get VC
2. You grow as fast as you can (or fail fast)
3. You sell (either to a larger corporation or to the public in an IPO; this is called the “exit”)

(In case any of you are surprised by recent/future developments.)

#DuckDuckGo #ventureCapital #VC #BigTech #capitalism

Show threadBooteilleJul 16

@aral Hi!

What recent/future developments are your talking about?

Thanks!

Show threadAral BalkanJul 16

@booteille - News (MSN)
- AI
- <insert future enshittification to sweeten the exit here>

(I’m sure there are some I’ve missed; I’m currently paying for Kagi and don’t use it day to day. Not saying Kagi is perfect in any way either; this is not an endorsement.)

Show threadBooteilleJul 16
@aral With AI, are you talking about both Duck.ai and the optional AI-generated answers or something else? (Just to be sure I didn't miss something)
Show threadBooteille

@aral Oh. From what I understood Kagi is really into AI.

I found the DuckDuckGo move (Just to propose a proxy and let the user decide of whether they want to use AI or not) better.

But thanks for claryfing your point!

Jul 16 at 2:18pmWeb
Show threadThibaultmol 🌈 🔜@WHY2025Jul 17
@booteille Kagi's ai answering thing in search is bydefault not automatic. You have to press Quick Answer OR add a question mark at the end of your query to have it popup. by default kagi search doesn't use ai.