This decision to move away from open infrastructure actually clarifies something I’ve been thinking about DDG recently. When you think about it, DDG is actually very similar to Apple in terms of its offer to users. It is a closed service which offers privacy as part of its marketing. That’s not to dismiss it outright or say the offer is not useful or not sincere, both are valuable alternatives to Google, but in the long run their promise has no legal backing. Both could switch to a different model overnight if their incentives shifted.
We could spend a decade evangelising for DDG, it becomes a significant mainstream player, and then gets sold to someone with totally different priorities. I’m happy to be corrected if I’m wrong, is there a legal barrier to this scenario playing out?
It’s not really a choice of one or the other, most companies that contribute to open infrastructure also have a business model that relies on that. For instance Red Hat, it can be bought but both the business model and the legal backing for the tech licensing are sticky.
We could spend a decade evangelising for DDG, it becomes a significant mainstream player, and then gets sold to someone with totally different priorities. I’m happy to be corrected if I’m wrong, is there a legal barrier to this scenario playing out?