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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.'"
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Thursday February 20 2014, @11:39PM
I care about privacy as something I have a right to, but I also appreciate that Google provides some pretty decent services for me for 'free'. So far, Google has a very good privacy and security record. My information is valuable to them so they don't want it leaked. Yeah, if they go evil, it could be bad, but for now, the services provided are worth the information I provide. I also block ads, but when if I unblock them, I'd prefer they be as targeted as possible.
The big problem I see is not with Google search so much as the tracking cookies on all the other sites that affect those that just Google search (as an example). The 'payment' in that case may be a bit high for them, assuming they are aware. I should be easier for those people to opt out.