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DuckDuckGo Is Google's Tiniest Fiercest Competitor

posted by mattie_p on Thursday February 20 2014, @10:31PM   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: 3, Insightful) by Foobar Bazbot on Friday February 21 2014, @12:41AM

    by Foobar Bazbot (37) on Friday February 21 2014, @12:41AM (#3917) Journal

    Nice superlatives. Funny how I don't see a word about ixquick/startpage in TFA; I guess we're to take it as a matter of faith that they are larger and/or less fierce than duckduckgo?

    I don't wanna call slashvertisement, exactly (it seems like just another US author being totally ignorant of foreign search engines), but this article is the sort of puff-piece that could really use an editorial note mentioning the other contenders.

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  • (Score: 2, Funny) by EETech1 on Friday February 21 2014, @02:15AM

    by EETech1 (957) on Friday February 21 2014, @02:15AM (#3990)

    Ahemmm... Wouldn't that be a Soilentvertisement?

     

    • (Score: 1) by Foobar Bazbot on Friday February 21 2014, @05:04AM

      by Foobar Bazbot (37) on Friday February 21 2014, @05:04AM (#4086) Journal

      Well, it's supposed to be a dirty word, so I think it's one context where retaining "slash" makes sense. ;)