Home » Tech Buzz » Hardcore Privacy: Use DuckDuckGo! Get 'Instant Answers' when you surf and feel safe knowing that what and where you surf Is Nobody's Business.
Inside DuckDuckGo, The BEST Search Engine that won't SELL YOU OUT
Online Privacy is now the Holy Grail for all who use the web. You don't want either good or bad people snooping on you or paying to get hold of your personal search data and taking advantage of you. Check DuckDuckGo, the hardcore search engine that keeps your online privacy protected and provides the best answers for what you are looking for.
The best query based search engine that gives you more answers and hardcore privacy
Are you nuts?
In 2008, Gabriel Weinberg put together a SEARCH ENGINE to take on Google. Everyone thought he was bonkers. As things go around today, his work is a godsend for all of us who know how important online user privacy is.
DuckDuckGo, a tiny, Philadelphia-based startup, offered one very sacred selling point: respecting user privacy. Weinberg bet that people would value this above all else for using the web. Six years later, after Edward Snowden ratted out on the U.S. government for snooping on everyone, including allied heads-of-state like Andrea Merkel, you would be risking far more than your own safety if you did not value your online privacy.
Now, DuckDuckGo is the BOMB. "Every year, we've grown 200-500%," Weinberg says. February this year has DuckDuckGo hitting 4 million search queries per day. A year ago, that number had just barely broken 1 million. No monopoly in technology can stop people from using the one search engine that doesn't sell you out.
DuckDuckGo was a coming-together of various projects Weinberg was doing after one failed startup around 2006, when he consolidated by selling another project for $10 million. He had other dev work spread across doing structured data, answering search queries with definite answers rather than a list of links, and combating spam via programmed check and blocking. "I started all of these projects independently and none of them really took off," Weinberg says. "Then I realized, maybe if I put them all together, there might be an interesting search experience there." Voila! DuckDuckGo. A search engine primarily providing direct answers to people's search queries, instead of just delivering a list of links. When the "Instant Answers," are found, the site still lists related link-by-link search results culled from third parties like Bing and Yandex BUT, and very smartly so, the list is filtered and reorganized to limit spam.
"When you do a search, you generally want an answer. You don't necessarily want to click around links....our vision is that that happens for 80% of queries, even for very niche things," says Weinberg. To deliver smarter answers, DuckDuckGo also relies on its growing community of users and developers. An intelligent community of people who support the search engine regularly come up with ideas on answering various esoterica, suggest available sources, and even develop the parts of DuckDuckGo to deliver Instant Answers. Weinberg and his small team are not fazed of the competition because DuckDuckGo has one thing going that Google could never copy. Not even if it wanted to.
DuckDuckGo's Shining Halo: Hardcore Privacy
A search using DuckDuckGo's website or any one of its mobile apps, doesn't identify or mark who you are. No user accounts are needed to avail of any of DuckDuckGo's neat stuff. Your IP address isn't tracked by default. Not even search cookies to keep track of what you do over time or what sites you check out. No default saving of your search history. When you click on a link in DuckDuckGo's results, those websites won't see which search terms you used.
Not a trace for Big Brother nor his Evil Twin...
Weinberg checked the privacy practices of Google and other search engines and was appalled by their methods for feeding marketers, at the same time, he realized that a viable business model around search without tracking users was more than just a crazy idea. Now headquartered in Paoli, Pennsylvania; inside two floors dedicated to provide everyone with the next generation in anti-establishment, search engine utility: Instant Answers and Hardcore Privacy, DuckDuckGo is hitting its stride. One recent achievement removed from their to-do list was finalizing DuckDuckGo's uniform interface for the public. Next in line is a visual redesign of the DuckDuckGo website, a relaunch scheduled for the second quarter of this year.
Just when snoops and scary busybodys scour the web like vampires for dirt on you, that crazy idea in 2008 just became everybody's lifesaver
