You may remember playing Duck, Duck, Goose onthe playground when you were young. But have you heard of DuckDuckGo? Manyhaven’t. So, we thought we’d share an introduction to this privacy-focusedsearch engine.
DuckDuckGo promises to let you “search theWeb without being tracked.” The search engine site touts a simple privacypolicy: “We don’t collect or share any of your personal information.”
You can use DuckDuckGo on their iOS orAndroid app or extension by adding a private Web search to your favoritebrowser or by searching directly at DuckDuckGo.com. The site’s privacy browserextension blocks trackers and offers encryption for every device.
Google is the obvious heavy hitter in search.The problem? The company keeps your search history forever. Plus, they aretracking everywhere you go online. Their trackers are on millions of websites.
Think about it: Ever looked at a newsweatshirt and decided against it only to find it following you in digital adsfor days to come? That’s because of tracking. DuckDuckGo promises there are notrackers on its search engine. It even blocks Google’s and other company’strackers, as well.
You might think you are achieving anonymityin Incognito Mode. But this doesn’t stop Google from saving your history.Companies, internet service providers, and governments can also continue totrack you.
DuckDuckGo does not store IP addresses orother unique identifiers in its search logs. This means that they cannot createa search history or data profile on you or any other individual.
The big question, of course, is how theprivate engine’s search results compare to competitors. The company claims itprovides “truly private search results without tradeoffs in result quality.”DuckDuckGo says it offers “everything you’ve come to expect in your onlinesearch experience” including:
· maps;
· weather forecasts;
· local search;
· news;
· images.
· videos;
· shopping;
· definitions;
· Wikipedia references;
· currency conversions;
· flight information;
· calculator;
· timer;
· sports scores;
· Q&A reference.
Since its founding in 2008, DuckDuckGo hassteadily gained users. On January 13, 2022, the search engine announced it hadsurpassed 100 billion all-time searches.
According to public traffic statistics in thesame week, the highest daily number of search queries DuckDuckGo had seen was110,439,133. Just a year ago, on January 11, 2021, the company announcedhitting over 100 million searches daily.
Those numbers are impressive, yet as SearchEngine Land puts it, “DuckDuckGo remains a very niche competitor.” Google has ahuge market share (as much as 87.57 of searches). Bing, the next biggestcompetitor, accounted for 6.31%, Yahoo 3.25%, and DuckDuckGo 2.5%, according tostatcounter.com.
DuckDuckGo is an attractive and useful optionfor people who want a higher level of online privacy.
There are many other ways to protect youridentity online and secure the data on your business or residential computers.Contact our IT experts to learn more about the best solution for your businessor personal needs.
