Dev.SN

DuckDuckGo Is Google's Tiniest Fiercest Competitor

posted by mattie_p on Thursday February 20 2014, @06:31PM   
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.'"

• Re:search bubble Re:search bubble (Score: 2, Interesting) by JimmyCrackCorn on Thursday February 20 2014, @08:09PM

  by JimmyCrackCorn (1495) on Thursday February 20 2014, @08:09PM (#3891)

  Maybe a more powerful statement toward search diversity is to accomplish economic boycott on a mass scale by not using Google and using some other search that does not use Google. DuckDuckGo has a sponsored link at the top of the search results, presumably an income stream.

  The general rule of thumb seems to be that a company has value if it has users.

  It is not that google doesn't give me results, it is the results of us using google that give me pause.

  Parent

  Starting Score:	1		point
  Moderation		+1
  Interesting=1, Total=1
  Extra 'Interesting' Modifier		0
  Total Score:		2

• Re:search bubble (Score: 1) by SMI on Thursday February 20 2014, @09:41PM

  by SMI (333) on Thursday February 20 2014, @09:41PM (#3961)

  Very insightful, especially that last line..

  Parent

• Re:search bubble (Score: 1) by TheRaven on Friday February 21 2014, @05:21AM

  by TheRaven (270) on Friday February 21 2014, @05:21AM (#4177) Journal

  DuckDuckGo has a sponsored link at the top of the search results, presumably an income stream Not only do they have them, they're actually pretty good at showing useful things there. It's certainly not universal, but I quite often find that the sponsored link is actually the one I want to click on. If I'm shopping, it always is, although it may not be the one where I actually spend money eventually.

  --
  sudo mod me up

  Parent