Gabriel Weinberg’s search engine “DuckDuckGo does not track users. It doesn’t generate search results based on a user’s previous interests, potentially filtering out relevant information. It is not cluttered with ads,” Michael Rosenwald reports for The Washington Post. “In many ways, DuckDuckGo is an homage the original Google — a pure search engine — and its use is soaring, with searches up from 10 million a month in October 2011 to 45 million this past October.”
“The attention to DuckDuckGo comes as U.S. and European Union officials are stepping up scrutiny into Google’s search practices, which have been criticized for unfairly elbowing out competitors’ content and results in favor of its own. Earlier this year, in a response to criticism that it was acting monopolistically, Google publicly identified DuckDuckGo as a competitor — a move that pleased and entertained Weinberg but that also reflected a bit of hyperbole about just how close DuckDuckGo is to truly competing,” Rosenwald reports. “Google processes billions of searches a day. DuckDuckGo processes millions.”
Rosenwald reports, “‘The reality in the United States is that we still really only have two search engines — Google and Bing,’ said Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineLand.com. ‘I think it’s entirely unlikely that DuckDuckGo is gonna put Google on its back and crush it.’ But what if that’s not really Weinberg’s goal?”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “sid knowles” for the heads up.]
It would be nice if DuckDuckGo were one of the Apple search options or if users could easily add other search engines
I agree. I’d appreciate DDG on my MBP. I use it on my 4s and iP mini and I like the results.
Why wait? The OmniBar extension allows you to replace the default search engine with several others, including DDG.
Totally agree.
Apple should support the small unsung Herod of pure search.
Maybe apple will buy them and rebrand it as ‘isearch’?
Install the Safari extension available here… http://help.duckduckgo.com/customer/portal/articles/216447-safari
Lets Hope Weinberg’s goal is to sell his search engine to Apple.
Siri singing DuckDuckGo Go Go away Google.
So if there are no ads and no related searches, how will DDG survive without revenue? Another failed search engine.
It’s not cluttered with ads, but it does have ads in the search results similar to adwords.
If it gets big enough, it will be purchased.
If a dog with flees get big enough, will someone buy it?
Not if the dog flees, first.
Thanks. I meant fleas.
Easy to use DDG with Safari
Modify your Hosts file per these instructions
http://help.duckduckgo.com/customer/portal/articles/255650
That is one ugly kludge, hacking the hosts file to redirect traffic from another search engine to DDG. Better to use one of the alternatives.
what’s ugly about it? care to elaborate a bit? it’s not about redirecting traffic from another search engine. It’s a pointer for yahoo to go to duckduckgo service instead, because there’s no duckduckgo in the drop-down in safari preferences, that’s why you just change IP of one of the offered search engines. really, seriously, do some research before you cry.
Do need that. Install their Safari extension. It seamlessly turns DDG into the default search engine…
http://help.duckduckgo.com/customer/portal/articles/216447-safari
Of late I have been using the Ixquick search engine, which bills itself as the world’s most private search engine. Ixquick was the first search engine to receive the European Privacy Seal. Ixquick is the first and only EU-approved search engine.
Just tried out Ixquick but Ixslow. Thanx but no thanx.
“The reality in the United States is that we still really only have two search engines — Google and Bing.”
Even though Yahoo is currently using Bing to power its searches, Yahoo should still be listed as a separate search engine. As such, it is pretty even with the “pure” Bing searches. DuckDuckGo is pretty decent though.
DuckDuckGo is great, Apple should really add it to the list of search engines on Safari.
What not everyone realises is that an alternative doesn’t need to “crush” Google to be disruptive. Getting relevant search results is exponentially hard, Google needs a near monopoly on everyone’s browsing to keep that game up (and fight with the hordes SEO companies spamming their results)
Even if ony 10% of users dropped Google, their search result quality would drop considerably more.
Their Adwords money printing machine needs all the eyeballs it can get also. If sites see a drop in Google referrals they won’t spend as much on Adwords.
At first I couldn’t take the name seriously but DDG is okay. It would be weird saying the full name out loud.
Aging myself I suppose, but people used to say the same about the name Google. This was back when people were using AltaVista, and when the Web was so small it would probably fit on a modern hard disk 😀
http://www.startpage.com
I used DDG for a while, but was not happy with the search results. Startpage has better results, plus is very protective of your privacy. Also, all searches are https.
So what’s the proper verb form when using DuckDuckGo to search?
“I DDG’d it.”
“I Ducked it”
“I DuckDuckGo’d it”
Something else?
I ducked it up.
DDG seems to deliver really good results… less commercially cluttered than google. I’ll try it more.
Current user of Firefox and DDG. No complaints at all …. can’t find a compelling reason to go with any other configuration at all.