I read an article this morning and this surprised me, “…DuckDuckGo has greater market share than Bing [Microsoft’s search engine]…”
Think about that for a minute, with all of the enormous resources of Microsoft, Bing has less market share than an internet search engine that had only one full time employee in 2010 working out of a basement in Valley Forge, PA.
So, what makes DuckDuckGo so special? It’s all about online privacy.
Unlike Google and many other search engines, DuckDuckGo doesn’t follow its users around with personalized ads. DuckDuckGo doesn’t store search history, won’t track IP addresses, it essentially has no personal data to sell.
DuckDuckGo saw more than 1 billion searches per month in 2019. That’s a lot of people who want to use an internet search engine that simply distinguishes itself from other search engines by doing the right thing and respecting the privacy of its users.
Curious readers are probably wondering how DuckDuckGo makes their money and if it makes any money at all. Surprisingly, DDG has been profitable since 2014. Yup, I got tired of typing the whole name, gonna use “DDG” from here on out…
How does this search engine stay in business? DDG makes money with untracked advertising and untracked affiliate marketing. Advertising is tied to the actual search terms and NOT the person doing the search. Affiliate marketing is done anonymously with no personally identifiable information involved.
Try DDG on your phone. You can install their mobile app for IOS and mobile app for Android. The DDG web browser also blocks Google and Facebook’s hidden trackers on websites that you visit while using the DDG app.
If you don’t want to add the DDG app to your phone then give it a try on your desktop or laptop at https://DuckDuckGo.com. Try it for a week and comparing the results you get with your current search engine and see which you prefer.
Additionally, you can install the DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials extension in your favorite desktop browser and further enhance your online privacy protection.
You can also change your desktop’s default search engine to use DuckDuckGo instead of Google, Bing, or whatever your operating system comes pre-installed with.
Where’s the downside to using DDG? Well, just like other search engines it relies on advertising revenue – so you will see advertisements in your search. It also doesn’t offer any sort of nanny-mode to stop someone from viewing whatever they want to online, so if you are concerned about that in your household you may want to avoid using it.
The quote in the first paragraph is from this article: https://www.techrepublic.com/google-amp/article/how-duckduckgo-makes-money-selling-search-not-privacy/.
