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DuckDuckGo Is Google's Tiniest Fiercest Competitor

posted by mattie_p on Thursday February 20 2014, @06:31PM   Printer-friendly
from the tor-not-required dept.

Papas Fritas writes:

"There's an interesting read today by John Paul Titlow at FastCoLabs about DuckDuckGo, a search engine launched in 2008 that is now doing 4 million search queries per day and growing 200-500% annually. DuckDuckGo's secret weapon is hardcore privacy. When you do a search from DuckDuckGo's website or one of its mobile apps, it doesn't know who you are. There are no user accounts. Your IP address isn't logged by default. The site doesn't use search cookies to keep track of what you do over time or where else you go online.

'If you look at the logs of people's search sessions, they're the most personal thing on the Internet,' says founder Gabriel Weinberg. 'Unlike Facebook, where you choose what to post, with search you're typing in medical and financial problems and all sorts of other things. You're not thinking about the privacy implications of your search history.' DuckDuckGo's no-holds-barred approach to privacy gives the search engine a unique selling point as Google gobbles up more private user data. 'It was extreme at the time,' says Weinberg. 'And it still may be considered extreme by some people, but I think it's becoming less extreme nowadays. In the last year, it's become obvious why people don't want to be tracked.'"

 
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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by jcd on Thursday February 20 2014, @07:09PM

    by jcd (883) on Thursday February 20 2014, @07:09PM (#3851)

    Honestly, you can't really trust a packet that goes anywhere near the US. But at least DDG is a step in the right direction - away from the corporate overlords that want to hoover up every little detail about you to sell you MOAR STUFF.

    --
    "What good's an honest soldier if he can be ordered to behave like a terrorist?"
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +4  
       Insightful=4, Total=4
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  
    Total Score:   5  

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 21 2014, @11:29AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 21 2014, @11:29AM (#4359)

    Then where can you trust your packets to go? Is it NSA == bad guys, everyone else == good guys? You're not one of those "USA is the Great Evil" guys and work that into all your comments are you? That pretty much ran me off of the other site and I shudder to think that cancer will be picked up here so soon, but your +5 mod suggests otherwise.