Advertisment

DuckDuckGo: Fewer clicks,Better Answers,Real Privacy

author-image
CIOL Writers
New Update
CIOL DuckDuckGo

With technology tracking us everywhere we go, everything we do, “DuckDuckGo” might become our best guard against scrutiny- a search engine that doesn't track you. DuckDuckGo is a web explorer that emphasizes guarding searchers' privacy and evading the filter of personalized search results. DuckDuckGo positions itself from other search engines with ten million searches a day by putting privacy first and voluntarily showing all users the same search results for a given search term.

Advertisment

The privacy-focused web search engine startup boasts of ‘superior search experience with fewer clicks, smarter answers, less clutter and real privacy.’ The distinguishing feature of this browser is that it doesn’t collect any personal information and therefore, has none to share.

DuckDuckGo began on 29th February 2008 by Gabriel Weinberg as an idea for a better search experience with more instant answers and less spam. The name DuckDuckGo was adapted from children's game duck, duck, goose.  The search engine is the default browser of GNOME and is available as an option in the Apple iOS 8 and OS X.

DuckDuckGo's results rely primarily on APIs. The search results are a compilation of "about 50" sources, including Yahoo! Search BOSS; Wikipedia; Wolfram Alpha; Bing; its own Web crawler, the DuckDuckBot; and others. It also uses data from crowdsourced sites, including Wikipedia, to populate "Zero-click Info" boxes – gray boxes above the results that display topic summaries and related topics.

Advertisment

In May 2014, DuckDuckGo released a redesigned version to beta testers through DuckDuckHack. The new version added many new features such as images, local search, auto-suggest, weather, recipes, social media bio of people without leaving the search engine page, app store search, shorten and expand links, and stopwatch.

There are many points that make DuckDuckGo stand higher with respect to the traditional Google browser. Unlike Google, which filters search results based on the sites you have been visiting, DuckDuckGo shows the same results for a search term to all its users. With Google, you can use the site modifier to search for results within a particular site, but then you still have to open the link to see the results. With DuckDuckGo, you can use the site's own search functions.

Both Google and DuckDuckGo let you create a quick timer (search for "timer") but DuckDuckGo also has a stopwatch. Another useful feature shows alternatives to apps in a neat carousel. Tired of MS Office? Just search for "Alternative to Word" and see the results for yourself. It also works for Web services, so you can even search for "Alternative to DuckDuckGo", if you like.

With many more USPs like generating passwords to changing case or character check, DuckDuckGo grew at a rapid rate, having received 3.25 billion search queries last year, a 74 percent increase over previous year. Though still very small in comparison to search industry leader Google, what DuckDuckGo needs is an awareness drive as not many people have heard about it as yet.

google tech-news must-read