DuckDuckGo Offered as Private Alternative to Google
July 12, 2013
The article titled “Search Engine Privacy; DuckDuckGo Does Not Track Its Users” on Slate is an interview with DuckDuckGo founder Gabriel Weinberg. This search engine was created as an alternative to Google with the benefit that while Google stores the all of the data you give it, DuckDuckGo does not. Due to the leaks about NSA’s widening monitoring practices, DuckDuckGo’s traffic exploded, rising from 2 million queries before the story broke to over 3 million. The article explains who this search engine is aimed at,
“Different people prefer different experiences and user interfaces. Google is trying to appeal to the average user—we are trying to carve out a niche for the serious person who knows what they’re doing and wants their privacy protected and a great result. We have servers around the world, and we can see how much traffic is coming in from which areas, so we know our users are about 50 percent United States, 50 percent international. “
Painting Google as Walmart and DuckDuckGo as a boutique search engine seems to be a working strategy for Weinberg. His emphasis on privacy appeals to a great number of individuals. Weinberg mentioned just a few examples of common searches, medial and travel related, that no one wants made public. Of course the two search engines are not impossible to use together- perhaps reserving DuckDuckGo for searches that are potentially embarrassing or personal.
Chelsea Kerwin, July 12, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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