Please read this scenario and answer these questions regarding that which are given below.

Google dominates U.S. online search with its massive 64 percent market share. Two other giants Microsofts Bing and Yahoo! combine for another 34 percent of the market. That leaves a precious 2 percent sliver of the market for dozens of other search engines trying to get a foothold. Whats more, Google and the other search giants have deep pockets from their non-search businesses, letting them spend abundantly to hold and grow market share. So how does a small search engine wannabe compete against global powerhouses? The best answer: It doesntat least not directly. Instead, it finds a unique market niche and runs where the big dogs dont.

Enter DuckDuckGo, a plucky search engine start-up thats carving out its own special market niche. Instead of battling Google and other giants head-on, DuckDuckGo provides a customer benefit that the market leaders cantprivacy. Then it energizes its unique niche with brand personality and user community. One look at DuckDuckGos icona quirky bow-tied duckgives you the sense that, like the small locomotive in the classic childrens story, this might be the little engine that could. DuckDuckGo isnt just surviving in its niche, its exploding. The company is still comparatively tinyit averages about 3 billion searches a year compared with Googles more than 1.2 trillion. But DuckDuckGos daily search volume has surged nearly tenfold in just the past three years, whereas Googles volume growth has lagged a bit.

When Gabriel Weinberg first launched DuckDuckGo eight years ago, most people questioned his sanity. How could a small upstart challenge the likes of mighty Google? But rather than simply mimicking Google, Weinberg went a different direction, developing a quality search engine with a key differentiating feature. DuckDuckGo now positions itself strongly on Smarter Search. Less Clutter. Real Privacy.

DuckDuckGo focuses only on search. It offers a streamlined, clutter-free, customizable user interface with far fewer sponsored ads. As with other search engines, a DuckDuckGo query returns link-by-link search results based on third-party sources, but the results are filtered and reorganized to reduce spam. And beyond the usual search-result links, for many searches, DuckDuckGo provides direct Instant Answers in the form of zero-click information boxes above the search results. When you do a search, you generally want an answer, says Weinberg. Its our job to try to get an answer. With Instant Answers, DuckDuckGo can help you get where you want to go in fewer clicks.

The Instant Answer feature is a good one, so good in fact that it has now been copied by Google and Bing. For example, run a Google search for davinci or how long is the great wall and along with the familiar list of blue links youll get a white box containing a mini-biography of Leonardo Da Vinci or displaying the length of the Great Wall of China (5,500.3 miles) and other interesting facts about it.

DuckDuckGo would tell you that its Instant Answers are often better. Its answers rely not just on third-party data sources but also on the deep and diverse knowledge of its active, growing, and loyal community of users and developers. DuckDuckGos community provides additional power behind its searches. In a Wikipedia-like fashion, DuckDuckGo users come up with ideas about what the answers should be, suggest sources, and even develop answers themselves. DuckDuckGo is a search engine driven by community youre on the team! says the company. Were not just servers and an algorithm. Were so much more. Still, even though DuckDuckGo had Instant Answers long before Google, Googles response illustrates a typical nicher dilemma. Market leaders usually have huge resources and can quickly copy the start-ups most popular features. At any point, notes one analyst, the Googles or Facebooks or Apples of world can just mimic what made you different, slam- dunking your shattered dreams into the waste bin of tech history. Fortunately for DuckDuckGo, it has one crucial differentiator that the Googles of the world simply cant mimic. Real privacy. Googles entire model is built around personalization for customers and behaviorally targeted marketing for advertisers.

That requires collecting and sharing data about users and their searches. When you search on Google, the company knows and retains in detail who you are, what youve searched for, and when youve searched. It then integrates your online identity and data with its services. By contrast, DuckDuckGo is specifically designed to be less invasive and less creepy than its competitors. DuckDuckGo doesnt know who you are. It doesnt log user IP addresses or use cookies to track users over time or other online locations. Users dont have accounts. In fact, DuckDuckGo doesnt even save user search histories. Perhaps most important, when users click on DuckDuckGos search results links, the linked websites dont receive any information generated by the search engine. As one privacy advocate puts it, DuckDuckGo is a solid search engine that lets you surf the web without leaving behind a bunch of bread crumbs for Uncle Sam or anyone else to follow. . . . The sites you visit are being kept at arms length. So DuckDuckGo has become the preferred search engine for people concerned about online privacy, and thats a fastgrowing group. If you look at the logs of peoples search sessions, theyre the most personal thing on the internet, Weinberg says. Unlike Facebook, where you choose what to post, with search youre typing in medical and financial problems and all sorts of other things. Today, more and more people are thinking about the privacy implications of their search histories. It was extreme at the time, says Weinberg of DuckDuckGos early privacy positioning. But today, he adds, Its become obvious why people dont want to be tracked.

How does DuckDuckGo make money? Last year, Google made 90 percent of its $74.5 billion of revenue from search-related advertising, and most of that business involved large-scale, behaviorally targeted advertising that relies on the very tracking tools that DuckDuckGo shuns. However, even without tracking users, smaller DuckDuckGo can be profitable. It simply focuses on the other part of Googles business delivering contextual search ads based on the topic of the search itself. So when users search for curved OLED TVs, DuckDuckGo shows ads and links for TV manufacturers and retailers whove paid for the associated key words. Thus, in many ways, DuckDuckGo is David to Googles Goliath. But unlike David, DuckDuckGo isnt out to slay the giant. It knows that it cant compete head-on with the Googles and Bings of the worldit doesnt even try. Then again, given the depth of consumer engagement and loyalty that DuckDuckGo engenders in its own small corner of the online search market, Google and the other giants may find it difficult to Page 4 of 4 Assignment compete with DuckDuckGo for privacy-minded users.

DuckDuckGo is currently the nations 11thmostpopular search engine based on unique monthly visitors. And as privacy grows in importance, so will DuckDuckGo. Thats what niche marketing is all abouta well-defined brand engaging a focused customer community with meaningful brand relationships that even large and resourceful competitors cant crack. Smart niching has made DuckDuckGo Googles tiniest, fiercest competitor, says the analyst. Our vision is simple, says DuckDuckGo. To give you great search results without tracking you.

Question 1: What is the unique selling point of DuckDuckGo and do you think other companies can replicate their strategy?

Question 2: Do you think the strategy adopted by DuckDuckGo is strong, or do you thik they need to improve certain aspects of their marketing/business?

Question 3: Major companies like Google make money from selling or processing user data. How does DuckDuckGo make its money if it promises private browsing?