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DuckDuckGo Sees Massive Growth In Post-Snowden World
DuckDuckGo, the privacy-oriented search engine, has been around for over six years. But when Edward Snowden revealed the extent of NSA surveillance in 2013, DuckDuckGo started a period of strong growth that hasn't slowed yet. The search engine has seen a 600% increase in traffic over the past two years, and they're now serving 3 billion searches a year. This shouldn't be a surprise — last month, a Pew survey found that 40% of American adults didn't want their search engine to retain information about them. But members of the general public are notoriously slow to change their privacy-related behavior. DuckDuckGo's growing popularity has led them to double their employee count since early 2014, now totaling 28 people. Their success is beginning to fuel speculation about an acquisition, with Apple's name being tossed around as a potential buyer.
But will they add convenient share buttons for all the social media sites? As Dice Holdings, Incorporated has shown us, that is what makes a website great.
Another good private search engine is Sequoiam, no IP addresses or search history is recorded.
I changed several browsers to use DDG as the default search. If I can't find something, I can always to go Google.com and look for it.
Hey Dice, pay close attention to this part! I don't want to have everything I do tracked and analyzed. Not by a Government nor by a company. They don't have my best interests in mind, they have _their_ best interests in mind.
I block a lot of content today that 5 years ago I never had to worry about. I'm blocking 3 sites that Dice attempts to push through their default content because two of them are under the same owner.. a former Israeli Intel head who opened social media and content sharing sites.. out of the goodness of their hearts right? Pfffft..
Using "Social Media" only increases people's ability to track. Like the new shitty "share" button where "comment" use to be. I refuse to use social media sites for the same reason I am using DDG.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Only Anonymous Cowards use DuckDuckGo.
captcha: blessed
Apple may buy a search engine used by people who like privacy!
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
with Apple a top contender to buy DuckDuckGo.
If you can't corrupt them buy them.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Their success is beginning to fuel speculation about an acquisition, with Apple a top contender to buy DuckDuckGo.
Except that there is no such speculation. No where in the link does it say that there are acquisition talks. It is just someone's opinion that Apple should buy them.
I use duckduckgo as a daily search engine for many years. I jumped to them as soon as I found out about them. Screw google always trying to find and sell my information.
That being said, I would stop using ddg.gg immediately if apple bought them. I trust apple as much as I trust google which is the exact same as I trust Micro$oft, CIA, NSA, actually any government (muricain, or otherwise).
The only reason to use ddg.gg is that they are not in the set above. As soon as they switch, I switch. Better to have your data disseminated among many small companies then pile it on one or two large companies that are guaranteed to be compromised*.
*Compromised by greed, ie will sell your data (google), or has the NSA (and other government agencies) completely imbedded in them. Small 28 persons companies are much less likely to be to be targeted.
there's no indication apple's even interested in ddg, and why would they be? they have no control over their own indexes or sources of their own databases.. they aren't true search engine, they're a meta engine, at best, compiling OTHER SEARCH ENGINES results into their own pages, they do no indexing or spidering of their own.
and why would ddg sell out? and to a large privacy-be-damned company? not going to happen... EVER.
venturebeat is blowing smoke and shoveling shit, nothing more.
Don't forget their short url ddg.gg its as easy to type as google.com or bing.com
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
To anyone. Certainly not to anyone who's got such varied motives as Apple.
Providing good, untracked, unbubbled search is its own worthy end; please let's not distort it by bending it to serve the latest iFad or getting all wrapped up in some specific ecosystem. How about we continue to build on open standards and make stuff that's useful for everyone? Apple used to understand that (so did Google) but the whole point is that their like can't be trusted at this point.
Anyway DuckDuckGo has been my default engine for a few years now, and I've been very pleased with how good it's gotten. I hope they keep up the good work and manage to avoid falling out of touch with what made them special to begin with.
This goes completely against the spirit of your post in favor of anonymity.
Notice: If you post anonymously do not expect a reply.
For the first time ever I am posting logged in just to remove the positive mod I gave you.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
How can we block the share button i use Ublock Ive tried may different options to block every social button i am not a member of twitter,fartboox so they are 10000%useless to me. Ublock is ..a pain. but the only AB i have found that lets me decide what i want to block by right click block. Ad blocker plus once allowed it now that feature is gone. and no learning to be a web coder isn't in the books ever lol
Is there a site i can go to to learn how and what to block?
:}
and yes i do use duckduckgo its not as good as google but anything past the first page on all the search engines is useless garbage IMO and for my search that's the only opinion that matters
Jack of all trades,master of none
Didn't read any of the links but didn't a Chinese company buy DuckDuckGo? For the truly paranoid, doesn't that defeat the Snowden/NSA nexus?
Do we have any independent way of verifying that DDG is not an NSA honeypot, or is this another case of Internet hipsters declaring their own set of cultural prejudices to be TRVTH because they say it is?
You are right, all that you just said is above my head and I'm in no mood to research it. To me it is simple, you want anonymity but refuse to respect that rights of others who want the same. I've been using Slashdot since before 2000, and some of the most informative and insightful posts come from those who can only post anonymously. Governments kill and people ostracize those who post unpopular things. For you to purport to want anonymity but refuse to respond to the anonymous is the pinnacle of hypocrisy.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
I don't know what happened to Yahoo numbers when Firefox switched, but I expect they went up at least a little.
Yahoo's search results are not as good as Google's. When my Google search includes the word "binding" the results bring up program language bindings. On Yahoo, they bring up a lot of weird things I have no interest in.
I have kept Yahoo as my default search engine with the idea that if they get enough traffic, they will get trained and some day be as good as Google.
But this is a silly thought. Google doesn't show me language bindings because they have learned that most people click on links to language bindings when they search for bindings. Google brings up language bindings because they know me. In fact, they will bring up language bindings for the languages they know I use most. They have learned who am, what I do, and almost how I think. This despite turning cookies off, ignoring ads, using proxies, etc.
Do I want Yahoo to become as good as Google? Come to think of it... no. Well... yes. I mean, no. Aaah! I want the great results I get from Google. But that isn't possible without giving away my privacy.
I've tried to use Duck Duck Go many times. I would think they were pretty good if I had never used Google. But I've used Google, and DDG is frustrating. Until I remember why it isn't as good. Then I make a choice between my privacy and convenience. I usually choose privacy, but sometimes, if I can't find something on DDG, I turn to Google.
It would be cool if DDG gave me an account on which I could control how much about me I shared with them. 28 years old, married male, 2 children, live in Texas, like to hunt, prefer stackoverflow results over wikipedia. If I can't find what I'm looking for on DDG, I login and try again. If I'm not satisfied, I can choose whether to share more info.
>"DuckDuckGo, the privacy-oriented search engine"
Actually, I think of startpage.com as the privacy-oriented search engine. Same results as Google, but no Google tracking and it is NOT hosted in the USA. I have been using it for years now.
https://classic.startpage.com/...
Should we trust Apple?
How about ixquick? I have not looked into them, but they are probably operating the same way as DDG.
Cite a primary source, please.
Is that you Sheldon?
I think in an ideal solution to privacy-friendly search would involve a product. Why can't search, mapping software, and similar be localized? Why shouldn't I simply connect to my own personal server which contains all the information needed to do the search locally? In theory all you'd need to do is get a couple terabytes (probably significantly less really) and sync the databases these search engines are built off. Your actual search can then be done locally without ever sending search terms to a third party. In fact you could do this for many critical apps where you don't really need to communicate with others. You could run your own local mapping site (like Google Maps or Mapquest), weather service (all it really needs to do is sync all weather data nightly), proxy cache (preferably pre-filled with the most popular websites), and so on. Then you'd not even be sending data needlessly to third parties which can track or record what your doing. If you posses the majority of content you might want to access already it'll significantly reduce the chance you'll try and access something on the internet where it reveals your location, travel plans, etc. It isn't a total solution as some things like air fair tickets, hotels, concerts, and other events will still require an advance purchase in most cases. Though some things can be avoided (hotel reservations in some instances or if your staying with friends- though you probably will end up communicating with them in the open over the phone or net anyway so they'll know your trip plans in advance anyway... but some things you can do to prevent this- ie GPG, etc).
English must not be a language that you understand. I read his statement perfectly.
PS. I do not expect a reply.
"English must not be your first language. "do not expect" in the English language does not mean the same thing as a refusal. If you can not understand phrasing in the English language, ask questions instead of making incorrect assumptions. If English is your first language, shame on you for being so weak with your comprehension skills. Based on your change of subject English is your first language and you incorrectly believe that you are intelligent."
This is poor English. 'Must not be' is more correctly used in orders or instructions. 'Weak with' should be 'weak in'. 'Comprehension skills' refers to reading ability. Oh, and there should be a comma before the 'and' in your last sentence. Physician, heal thyself.
He told the truth about the unlawful spying that the US government was not only perpetrating against its supposed allies, but also against its own citizens.
Snowden is a patriot. You and all of the fuckers in the US government are traitors and should be tried for treason.
Hey, DDG: I know it's unfounded rumors. But please, please don't go this way. I'd be willing to pay a yearly fee if that helps you to keep humming.
I really appreciate what you're doing. I'm thankful for that.
Just fuck off. You want to track others but do not want to tracked yourself. What makes you so special that gives you the right to ignore anonymous posters but makes you expect to remain anonymous yourself. And fuck Dice for allowing such a privacy invading person such as your self for being modded so high.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
works out to 25 million searches a day, which doesn't sound as impressive. It's a rounding error by the standards of Google, FB or Amazon.
I switched from Google because I began to notice that their results seemed to be skewed. Certain types of results were not coming up in my searches, even when that was specifically what I was looking for. While it mostly appeared in politically loaded searches (although the nature of the skew makes it hard for me to determine the nature of the bias...I found both "liberal" and "conservative" viewpoints dropped from results) it also occurred in some searches for answers on technical issues.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
...StartPage/IXQuick just "upgraded" and thereby royally fucked up their interface (now requires javascript AND the search box no longer accepts paste, at least for me). I'd preferred StartPage, but have now switched to DuckDuckGo in sheer desperation for a search engine that doesn't argue with me, never mind tracking me... that's almost a secondary issue in the face of usability, or lack thereof.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
is that it's a U.S-based service, and they will ultimately do as gov tells them to, and say they didn't (like gov tells them to). Try StartPage and StartMail, they are operated in the EU and are a safer bet.
3 billion searches a year works out to 95/second by my estimations. Which is laughably insignificant. Why on earth would Apple be interested in that?
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
98 searches a second
I just found out that if you search "xkcd" in DuckDuckGo, it will show you the latest XKCD in the search results, plus a link to the ExplainXKCD page for it. Awesome!
Apple would contend that nothing outside of the beautiful walled garden of Apple.com is worth searching for in the first place.
Which is why I log in, right? Good grief you are an idiot.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Then your browser will not give your search agent of much of a chance to track you, and in most cases you have the source code to verify that. Search engines don't bother to track by IP because it's both unreliable and you will likely be pissed off if you see ads which are too relevant when you take such precautions.
Presumably most of your searches are not privacy sensitive and you might even appreciate the ads that show what you are looking for right at the moment. And when you are seriously looking into overthrowing your government, you use your browser's Incognito mode to connect to Tor over a VPN provider outside the jurisdiction of your local spooks.
Use DuckDuckGo if you like it, but it can not be your only privacy measure when you need real privacy, especially as startup on American soil forwarding searches to Putin's Yandex. Most search engines track you to get some money from ad clicks. Having to produce records to various law enforcement agencies is both costly and bad for brand reputation, so some effort is expanded in degrading usefulness of stored data for this purpose while minimally complying with the law.