Slashdot Mirror
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.
Yes. DuckDuckGo bought by Apple due to increasing popularity due to DDG's privacy stance. DDG's privacy stance immediately undermined by being owned by Apple.
It may not be as bad as being acquired by the NSA, but let's face it, no matter how much Apple tries to suggest that they won't change anything... they're going to change things.
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.
No, Apple isn't looking to buy it nor does the article that Soulskill linked even say that. Soulskill made up the claim entirely.
Don't forget their short url ddg.gg its as easy to type as google.com or bing.com
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
DuckDuckGo doesn't have a crawler. Well, they say they do, and I'm sure they have some basic crawling, but they only say that so they don't look silly for being a search engine that doesn't actually do search. They buy their results from Bing, and then do some value added stuff like munging in Wikipedia results. I doubt Apple wants to buy something that sends money to Microsoft, and they certainly won't back Google. And Apple doesn't have the expertise to build an effective search engine on their own.
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
They'd never be so bold as to add tracking to duck duck go! But for performance and "other stuff" they will be adding analytics.
WTF Slashdot, why do I have to login 50 times to post?
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?
>"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/...
Fuck google's business model.
Really? Keep in mind that without it Google search wouldn't exist... and neither would DDG, because most of DDG's sources are other engines that are also funded by advertising. Odds are that without Google's business model you'd also be seeing a lot more, and a lot more intrusive ads. You are probably too young to remember what the commercial side of the web looked like in the mid to late 90s, but I'm sure you've seen the "one weird trick" sites with pages and pages to present a small amount of content buried in mountains of ads. That was pretty much where we were headed until targeted advertising came along.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Pretty much my thoughts. People use that search engine exactly because it doesn't track them. That's pretty much the only reason there is. It's slower than google, its results are far less accurate, its interface is dated, it has no, not a single, feature that reaches the levels of the big squid. Its only redeeming feature (and just think what people are willing to put up with just to get that one!) is that it does not track.
And now a company wants to buy it that has a ... let's say not toooooo awesome track of not wanting total control over its users.
The very purchase of the brand would burn it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.