“Speaking in an interview with CNBC, DuckDuckGo CEO Gabe Weinberg said that the company’s traffic has grown 600 percent over the past two years,” Chance Miller reports for 9to5Mac.
“A variety of factors likely played a role in this explosion of growth, but it is mainly attributable to the NSA’s surveillance program, which was revealed two years ago, and Apple adding it as a default search option with iOS 8 and Safari 7.1 on the Mac,” Miller reports. “With iOS 8, Apple added the option for users to choose DuckDuckGo as their default search engine within the operating system. Weinberg explained that this, coupled with increased privacy concerns, has led to extraordinary growth for his company.”
“DuckDuckGo heavily touts the fact that it doesn’t track the information of users and is a privacy-focused company,” Miller reports. “Weinberg says that DuckDuckGo is currently doing three billion searches a year. When asked how DuckDuckGo makes money without any sort of personalized search, Weinberg explained that the company simply uses keyword advertising. For instance, if you search for “car,” you’ll see ads relating to cars. Weinberg says that there isn’t a big enough difference between the revenue DuckDuckGo would make by tracking users compared to keyword advertising to justify the method.”
Read more, and see the video, in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: If you haven’t already, give DuckDuckGo a try!
And visit the Apple-backed reformgovernmentsurveillance.com today.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Dan K.,” Lynn Weiler,” and “Albert P.” for the heads up.]
DDG just works! That 600% increase to DDG is likely a huge decrease gor Gaagle. Yeah!
Unfortunately, that’s not likely. A 600% increase for DDG might be a rounding error for Google.
I used DDG via their web site and iOS app before it became an option as the default on Safari. I use it for 99.5% of my searches with good results. I use Yahoo or Bing if I just have to double check. I avoid Google like the shadow plague that I feel they are.
I’ve been supporting Duck Duck Go for years. Over time, they only keep getting better. They’re not always the best! But they aren’t using surveillance across the Internet in order to sell us as their product. IOW: Privacy is the result, just as we demand.
How to get started:
Set up https://duckduckgo.com as your home page,
OR
Install the DDG add-on extensions for Safari, Firefox, and Chromium. (Yes, even for Chrome!)
Goodbye Goople!!! Hello DDG! 😀
DuckDuckGo is great and I have it as my default search engine but it is not perfect. The biggest problem with DDG is that you cannot do time-based searches in it like you can in Google. If DDG would implement that capability, I’d never need to use Google again.
If this were Apple’s new search engine extolling the virtues of privacy, everyone would be dwelling on how the results aren’t as comprehensive as Google’s and blasting Apple’s effort as half-assed. Pretty much in line with everyone’s comparison between Apple Maps and Google’s Maps.
Turned on DDG. Let’s give it a try
I use it, but I find I almost always have to exit and go to Bing or Google. I’ve set it up for others explaining the advantages of not being tracked, but almost all of them get back to me and want to be configured for Google as default.
I hadn’t noticed the time-based search problem with DDG. Likely legit. I have noticed and read about image searches not being as good, but that seems to have improved significantly over the last couple of weeks. If that has been your complaint, give DDG another whirl. It is improving with age. 🙂
THIS IS ACTUALLY HOW YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO DO IT.
Keyword – realtime response. If I am searching for plumbers, I will be happy to see ads related to plumbing. If the next day, I did a new search, I do not want to see ads for plumbing, because I have moved on I am no longer interested… However that is how lame Google Ads are. They are always a late and a dollar short.
You’re welcome.
waiting for an alternative to youtube.
Dailymotion.com has been around for years and it’s pretty good depending upon what your video needs are. It would definitely be considered an alternative to youtube.
I like their iPhone app.
I switched when it was able to be a default. While DGG is not perfect it solves the problem for me most of the time. I probably only use Google 1% of the time now.
I like Startpage and Ixquick much better.