DuckDuckGo

In order to shelter ourselves to some small extent from the current UK political incompetence or even vandalism, perhaps we should turn our attention to sheltering ourselves from an the all too competent behemoth that is the grasp of Google.

American though it is, Google has an even greater share of the search market in Europe than it does in the USA (where, surprisingly, Yahoo and Bing seem to give it a run for its money). Yet it is possible to avoid it and I recently came across an article by founder of the search engine which I use because it never tracks you. Thus those annoying ‘intelligent’ prompts or similarly ‘clever’ advertisements never appear.

As he writes

If you’re unfamiliar with DuckDuckGo, we are an Internet privacy company that empowers you to seamlessly take control of your personal information online, without any tradeoffs. We operate a search engine alternative to Google at https://duckduckgo.com, and offer additional apps and extensions to protect you from Google, Facebook and other trackers, no matter where you go on the Internet.

DuckDuckGo search is completely anonymous, in line with our strict privacy policy. Each time you search on DuckDuckGo, you have a blank search history, as if you’ve never been there before.

The founder (one probably appropriately named, and as ever, ex MIT) Gabriel Weinberg, actually lives on the East Coast of America rather than California, so one might speculate that that is why he is different.

He concludes:

The Internet shouldn’t feel so creepy and getting the privacy you deserve online should be as simple as closing the blinds.

I agree and have used it for about five years now and can honestly say that the results are not realistically any different to any other search engine.

The leaner set up means that it doesn’t have a European (or UK) subsidiary, yet even so, the only disadvantage I’ve ever found is that when it is not clear you are asking a UK question you may have to put UK into the search bar to increase the relevance – but those two letters amount to scant effort when you can if you wish, even watch youtube, without being tracked.

Funny name but clear purpose!

Comments

  1. bjsalba -

    I just responded to their request for how they could improve with that they needed to have a European sister company.

    Great minds think alike or Fools…..

    1. Peter May -

      The former I feel certain!

  2. Mike Parr -

    IXQuick – the search engine works well for me coupled to a battery of anti-ad applications (which I can disable if I wish). IXQuick do not track so what’s not to like? I’ll give DuckDuck a go (giggle).

  3. Zachariah -

    You can also use it as your actual browser via an android app so no browsing data at all is collected and it acts as a search engine when you type in seach terms rather than a WWW. Address.
    They also have a Firefox extension that offers similar protections.

Comments are closed.