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DuckDuckGo : What I think?

DuckDuckGo!
Some Facts about DuckDuckGo: 
  • DuckDuckGo is a privacy-focused private search engine.
  • DuckDuckGo was founded by Gabriel Weinberg on February 29, 2008, in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.
  • DuckDuckGo is advertising-supported, but the user has the option to disable ads. The search engine is written in Perl and runs on Nginx, FreeBSD, and Linux. DuckDuckGo is built primarily upon search APIs from various vendors.
  • In July 2010, Weinberg started a DuckDuckGo community website (duck.co) to allow the public to report problems, discuss means of spreading the use of the search engine, request features, and discuss open-sourcing the code.
  • DuckDuckGo was self-funded until Union Square Ventures and angel investors invested in DuckDuckGo in October 2011.
  • By July of 2016, DuckDuckGo was provided in the web browsers of many UNIX-based OS like GNOME and also included in Apple's Safari and Mozilla's Firefox.
  • DuckDuckGo launched its open-source Instant Answer platform DuckDuckHack in 2012.
  • In December 2018, it was reported that Google transferred ownership of the domain name Duck.com to DuckDuckGo. It is not known what price, if any, DuckDuckGo paid for the domain name. Also adding DuckDuckGo to the default search engine list in Chrome 73.
  • DuckDuckGo hit a record 1 billion monthly searches in January 2019 with a daily average of 44 million queries as of August 2019.
Business Model:
  • Keyword-based advertising is the primary business model for DuckDuckGo. When you search on DuckDuckGo, they show you an ad based on the keywords you type in. 
  • The only other way they use, which currently accounts for a much smaller portion of our revenue is non-tracking affiliate partnerships with Amazon and eBay.
Competition and Why DuckDuckGo over Google?
  • Google tracks you DuckDuckGo doesn't.
    →On Google, your searches are tracked, mined, and packaged up into a data profile for advertisers to follow you around the Internet through those intrusive and annoying ever-present banner ads, using Google’s massive ad networks, embedded across millions of sites and apps.
  • The so-called “Incognito” mode on Chrome won’t protect you either. That’s another myth. “Incognito” mode isn’t really incognito at all. All it does is delete your local browsing history after your session on your device but does nothing from stopping any website you visit, including Google, from tracking you via your IP address and other tracking mechanisms.
  • Google tracks you on more than just its search engine. They also track you on YouTube, Gmail, Chrome, Android, Gmaps, and all the other services they run.
  • Get unbiased results, outside the Filter Bubble:
    → This is where all the aforementioned privacy issues add up. When you search, you expect unbiased results, but that’s not what you get on Google. On Google, you get results tailored to what they think you’re likely to click on, based on the data profile they’ve built on you over time from all that tracking I described above.
    → This Filter Bubble is especially pernicious in a search context because you have the expectation that you’re seeing what others are seeing, but what you’re actually seeing is what Google thinks you want to see.
    → So if you have political inclination one way or another, you’re more likely to get results you already agree with and less likely to ever see opposing viewpoints. 
  • DuckDuckGo has !bangs
    → DuckDuckGo has a built-in feature called bangs that enables you to search other sites directly, completely skipping DuckDuckGo if you like. This is the feature that I personally like the most.
    Example: Let’s say you want to go to the Wikipedia article for ducks. You can just search for “!w duck” and DuckDuckGo will take you right there.
  • Search without fear.
    →  When people know they are being watched, they change their behavior. It's a well-documented behavior called the chilling effect, and it happens on Google.
  •  Google is simply too big, and too powerful.
    →  The world could use more competition, less focus on ad tracking, fewer eggs in one basket. Join the Duck Side!
 Valuation/Worth and Future Plans:
  • Valuation/Worth
    → As a private company, there is no exact answer to this question since its shares are not liquid. Since these shares are not actively trading, it is difficult to determine what they are really worth, and by extension, what DuckDuckGo is worth.
    → But according to “Worth Of Web Rank” DuckDuckGo.com has an estimated worth of $910,000,000/-.
  • Future Plans
    → DuckDuckGo’s CEO and founder Gabriel Weinberg wishes to transform DuckDuckGo to set a new standard of trust online.
    → DuckDuckGo’s mission is to provide users with simple and seamless tools to reduce their digital footprint online, as well as privacy knowledge to go along with that. This started with its search engine that doesn’t track its users and is now expanded to its apps and extensions that protect you no matter where you go on the Internet.
P.S. Google is GIANT, the epitome of Silicon Valley, with a market cap of around $750 Billion, 75,000 employees, dominating search, browsing, online advertising, and more, with tentacles in everything tech, online and offline.
A monopoly on the internet is bad for consumers. The world could use more competition, less focus on ad tracking, fewer eggs in one basket. 
Join the Duck Side!



Thanks for reading
Shammi Anand

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