The giant that is Google has not stopped other companies from jumping into the Search Engine arena. Obviously emulating Google is not a winning strategy. Companies like Blekko and DuckDuckGo have realized this, and attempted to round out the Search Engine experience. DuckDuckGo’s current marketing strategy is aggressively taking on the G giants where it may hurt the most – privacy.
A small Search Engine, manned solely by Gabriel Weinberg which launched in 2008, has recently launched the aggressive campaign stating “Google tracks you. We don’t”. Weinberg, who is still the sole operator, makes a pretty strong claim but it still remains to be seen if the general public truly cares enough about their privacy to move away from the largest search engine. DuckDuckGo’s privacy policy is chock-full of information regarding the importance of search and how privacy should play a greater role to users. Ongoing discussions about privacy regarding social networking sites like Facebook are addressed but search engine privacy is often overlooked.
Google has recently offered the ability to opt out of Google Analytics with a browser plugin , but unless the currently casual Internet user actively seeks it out they would never know about the option. As more consumers raise privacy concerns, DuckDuckGo may have a shot at becoming an outlier site with some clout. Blekko and DuckDuckGo recently entered into a partnership. As people’s tastes evolve there may cease to be just one colossal Search Engine in several years.
I am confused; I used duck duck go’s “contact” form, to send a message to the developer, Gabriel Weinberg.
I received a reply from SUPPORT@ duckduckgo.com shortly afterwards.
While inspecting the email headers, I couldn’t believe my eyes:
He’s using gmail’s mail servers to host his duck duck go.com mail!!
Is it just me or is that a complete contradiction of what his website is all about ( anti-google campaign )?!
Try it yourself and see! Today is february ninth 2012.
thanks. i’m using it right now.
It’s sad, because if DuckDuckGo becomes big, Google will probably do something to shut it down, or maybe bills like SOPA/PIPA/ACTA will claim that using DuckDuckGo and refuse to be tracked is a form of terrorism and everyone who does it will be thrown in jail and fined.
Tried a few things and liked it. Not sure how much better it can be than google tho’. Will have to wait and see the momentum and word of mouth stuff happening
I love DuckDuckGo. I am so happy to be out of the Google bubble. Honestly, for a long time I thought, wow, everyone agrees with me. I am awesome.
Then I thought, that can’t be right. When Google said we’re tracking you. “This stuff matters.” I thought, that’s crap.
Now I am not tracked and I am not bubbled. Thank you DuckDuckGo. I have been recommending it to everyone.
The creator of duckduckgo isnt necessarily “anti-google”, but instead “pro privacy”, which is a big difference. He’s doesnt bash any of the search engines for doing what is intended of them, simply saying they keep track of you and tailor themselves to your wants by tracking you rather than giving you unbiased search results.
What this website has failed to mention in the above article is that DuckDuckGo acts like a postman, it forwards all your seaches to Google, Yahoo!, Bing and others without giving them your IP address, so these other websites don’t have your IP address and can’t track you! Simple and reassuring explanation, but Omitted! Go to How-To-Geeks.com and check out what they explain about this site.
@robbin (opinion) It does not seem that DuckDuckGo’s message is anti-google per se, otherwise I would expect to see DuckDuckGo Mail, DuckDuckGo Maps, DuckDuckGo Voice, etc. Rather they seem to be against tracking users and collecting unsolicited information on them.
Google Mail is an excellent service that many people use. It would be foolish for Weinberg to forgo using Gmail unless he suspected that Google was looking through everyone’s emails (which seems unlikely).
Also note I use Chromium as my default browser. Do I find it strange that I use a Google sponsored browser but DuckDuckGo as my default search engine? Not at all. It’s about as strange to me as using Microsoft Office to create my classroom worksheets (I am an instructor), Dropbox to distribute them to my students, and emails (which I read with Gmail) to receive their results.
I switched to DuckDuckGo as my default search engine and I’ve found so far that it provides excellent search results, very much on par with Google (whose search results are almost certainly superior to any others that exist), and the commitment to privacy gives me a peace of mind which I have not found at Google.
I use DuckDuckGo all the time and have abandoned Google other than for youtube stuff. For me it came with Opera Next and since using both exclusively Spybot hasn’t found any tracking cookies on my computer.
@john
Actually, Google does look through your gmail using algorithms that tag certain words in your email for advertising purposes.
It also stores all your emails long after you cancelled your account.
Love it. I want to work with/for duckduckgo. Where do I sign up?