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Pro-Privacy Search Engine DuckDuckGo Hits 30 Million Daily Searches, Up 50% In a Year (techcrunch.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Some nice momentum for privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo which has just announced it's hit 30 million daily searches a year after reaching 20 million -- a year-on-year increase of 50%. Hitting the first 10 million daily searches took the search engine a full seven years, and then it was another two to get to 20 million. So as growth curves go it must have required patience and a little faith in the run up. It also recently emerged that DDG had quietly picked up $10 million in VC funding, which is only its second tranche of external investment. The company told us this financing would be used to respond to an expanding opportunity for pro-privacy business models, including by tuning its search engine for more local markets and expanding its marketing channels to "have more of a global focus."

141 comments

  1. DNS redirect by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    On the network I manage, all requests for google.com resolve to duckduckgo.com.

    1. Re:DNS redirect by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      I'm sure both of your cats are very disappointed about this.

    2. Re:DNS redirect by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have heard that of the 20m requests, some may be routed through google, bing, etc. I wonder what the breakdown is across all these other search engines. Do they plan to expand their own search in the future or find even more search engines with niche qualities. It would be interesting to read how they optimize their strategy as time passes.

    3. Re: DNS redirect by BanHammer · · Score: 1

      I would like them to drop their depebdency on google,bing in the long run too

    4. Re:DNS redirect by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sounds like we should be happy that you are not running Google, because you might actually make the company worse than it is already.
      This is petty tyranny and control freakery. I feel sorry for your users.

    5. Re: DNS redirect by BanHammer · · Score: 1

      What happens when they hit !g at the end of a searxh query? Infinite loop?

    6. Re:DNS redirect by lgw · · Score: 1

      I have heard that of the 20m requests, some may be routed through google, bing, etc. I wonder what the breakdown is across all these other search engines.

      They don't use Google. They do use Bing and Yandex (for effectively all searches, AFAIK).

      DDG used to be simply an anonymizing front-end for Bing. They've since moved to using Yandex, though I don't know what the mix is. Their own work, from what they've said and what I can tell, is to search sites like Wikipedia and StackOverflow and display results up top where appropriate.

      They don't seem to do that for Wolfram Alpha, which is a shame but no doubt a licensing thing. (Wolfram Alpha is the best search for any "fact" with a numerical answer, as well as the best online calculator.) Fortunately, you can search Wolfram Alpha explicitly from the same search box with !wa, for example "!wa per-capita gdp of canada".

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    7. Re: DNS redirect by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bing?

    8. Re: DNS redirect by jtgd · · Score: 1

      Recursive acronym: Bing Is Not Google.

      --
      J
    9. Re: DNS redirect by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What does that even mean, fan-child?
      Duckduckgo is disrupting Google 2018 by simply being Google 2008. A nice clean set of the most relevant search results, without the algorithmic censorship and paid results

    10. Re:DNS redirect by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Funny you should mention that. Back when that search engine was basically just scraping google for results, it kicked ass. Once they tried to move away from that, I had to stop using them because I want to be able to actually find what I'm searching for.

      I have few complaints about ixquick/startpage. It's not perfect, but at least it's scraping a search engine that can actually find what I'm trying to find.

  2. Thought it said Pro-Piracy by jfdavis668 · · Score: 4, Funny

    I would have been up for that.

    1. Re: Thought it said Pro-Piracy by BanHammer · · Score: 1

      come to think of it,a pirate SE which would only link to free stuff would be really cool!

    2. Re:Thought it said Pro-Piracy by mjwx · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I would have been up for that.

      Oddly enough, that's what I use DuckDuckGo for mostly. If you're looking for a torrent it's easier to find using DDG due to the number of DMCA takedowns Google has to comply with (and I dont blame Google for that either).

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
    3. Re:Thought it said Pro-Piracy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      YO! I got your torrent to find your torrents to torrent your torrents! You won't avoid takedowns any other way!

    4. Re: Thought it said Pro-Piracy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >java

    5. Re:Thought it said Pro-Piracy by BlackOverflow · · Score: 1

      Tor-ception!

  3. Censorship by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Google's poor results (some due to censorship) are as likely a cause for people seeking other search engines as privacy. I don't seen any indication that DuckDuckGo is above censorship either. We need a flagship open search engine, like a Firefox or a Linux, but for search. Although it does seem like the censors are invading those projects as well.

    1. Re: Censorship by BanHammer · · Score: 2

      I agree,and I wish DDG would publish its source code.I'd like to see what forks come out of it.

    2. Re:Censorship by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Lately I've found Google results to be stunningly poor. It seems that in addition to indexing a page's straight content (the body text of an article) it also indexes anything that may be on the sidebar like a news feed. You end up with top results that don't even contain the word you are searching for.

    3. Re:Censorship by ReneR · · Score: 4, Interesting

      it also feels to me that Google became worse, often when I look for open source stuff, build errors, errors, patches (for #t2sde https://t2sde.org/ I do not find much anymore, a decade ago I usually found hits on mailing lists, bug trackers, etc. Maybe Google focused more on gossip and social drama, then actual hard facts :-/

    4. Re: Censorship by BanHammer · · Score: 1

      I have the same experince,and I believe that this is due to the bubble effect which DDG speaks of

    5. Re:Censorship by dryeo · · Score: 1

      OTOH, when searching for info when working on my truck, Google usually returns better results. There are certain forums with knowledgeable people who have walked people through similar issues that Google will return close to the top, which DDG hasn't seemed to have indexed, or at least doesn't list.

      --
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
    6. Re:Censorship by Mashiki · · Score: 4, Interesting

      To put it simply? Google became normized, dropped functions and search options that made it popular and then started 'curating results' that it believes you should see instead of of what you're searching for. You made a point about how bad it's gotten for OS/FOSS type stuff, but it's almost impossible to find information with google for generic troubleshooting of windows codes these days. The bit about google being focused on gossip and social drama? Well probably more truth to that then we think, google wanted to be the "search page" of the internet, the first thing everyone went to for everything from email to news. They got there, and...it all went to shit.

      There's an upside with this though, it's fostering competitive behavior and people are looking for other options. Now the question will be, will google try to go full walled garden when people move to other sites or try to bring people back.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    7. Re:Censorship by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We need a flagship open search engine

      You already have one, and the censors will have a terrible time trying to meddle with it, but it needs lots of users to be effective.

    8. Re: Censorship by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I largely stopped using Google in part because of how polluted the results have gotten. Rarely did the front page have useful links on it.

      I do wish DDG would add some way of having things like expert sexchange removed from the results as I can't make use of their partial pages.

    9. Re:Censorship by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

      In short, I don't think Google can put up a walled garden, no matter what they try. They're a browser based service, and as such will always be subject to the disconnected nature of browsers.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    10. Re:Censorship by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Google's poor results (some due to censorship) are as likely a cause for people seeking other search engines as privacy. I don't seen any indication that DuckDuckGo is above censorship either. We need a flagship open search engine, like a Firefox or a Linux, but for search. Although it does seem like the censors are invading those projects as well.

      There was YaCy back in the day. Not sure if it's still around.

    11. Re:Censorship by Mashiki · · Score: 3, Interesting

      In short, I don't think Google can put up a walled garden, no matter what they try. They're a browser based service, and as such will always be subject to the disconnected nature of browsers.

      Newspapers also didn't believe that if they went walled garden it wouldn't backfire in a spectacular fashion either, but it did. The thing is, google might try to do it if it looks like there are massive drop-offs in continuous users, but enough of a user base to remain profitable. In the worst case scenario? They try to leverage their ad service so it only works with one or two browsers, in turn sites starved for money try to force users to use a particular browser. The usual useragent tricks no longer work as the browser requires authing off a unique hash.

      There's plenty of ways they could do it, of course they'd also set themselves up for some ripe trustbusting.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    12. Re: Censorship by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Lol.

    13. Re:Censorship by jwhyche · · Score: 4, Informative

      You found them stunningly poor? I have found them for the most part to be completely useless. 90% of the shit that gets sent back is nothing but ads. I'm doing a search for kernel RAID tweaking and I get a page full of shit where I can hire someone to do it for me, or shit that has nothing to do with the shit I'm looking for.

      I found what I was looking for using duckduckgo. Damn, Linux has a nice RAID level.

      --
      I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
    14. Re:Censorship by AlwinBarni · · Score: 1

      Agree, Google used to be a good place to find information about something, now it's a good place to find companies selling the very "something".

    15. Re:Censorship by lgw · · Score: 1

      Please take 1 minute and give them feedback! Just copypaste your post, and add a link to the forums they suck at finding. You may make the world a better place.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    16. Re:Censorship by Gr8Apes · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Newspapers also didn't believe that if they went walled garden it wouldn't backfire in a spectacular fashion either, but it did. The thing is, google might try to do it if it looks like there are massive drop-offs in continuous users, but enough of a user base to remain profitable. In the worst case scenario? They try to leverage their ad service so it only works with one or two browsers, in turn sites starved for money try to force users to use a particular browser. The usual useragent tricks no longer work as the browser requires authing off a unique hash.

      There's plenty of ways they could do it, of course they'd also set themselves up for some ripe trustbusting.

      First on Google - while I admit there are technical methods to make it happen, they can't because any of those proposals would cut their audience in major ways. And they don't have the pull for the most desirable US target audience - iPhone users. So if you can't get iPhone users, you've already failed. Google needs their iPhone target audience more than Apple needs Google.

      Newspapers screwed up a long long long time ago. They made some serious miscalculations, in ways that were painful to watch even as they made them. The things they should have done, but didn't:

      • Made your monthly subscription include the web automatically
      • Made a web only version subscription a little less than a paper subscription
      • Offer only "front-page" like headings etc on the "free" front page side

      Instead, they charged a full plus subscription fee for their content, meaning almost no one went to their websites. Then they offered it up for free. Then they tried to go to a subscription model again. It's almost as many mistakes as Sears made. I mean, explain to me how America's mail-order catalogue super store didn't automatically become America's web store? Instead we got Amazon. Whomever was running Sears in the 90s should be saddled with the full failure of Sears. That was some spectacular lack of vision there.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    17. Re:Censorship by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Lately I've found Google results to be stunningly poor. It seems that in addition to indexing a page's straight content (the body text of an article) it also indexes anything that may be on the sidebar like a news feed. You end up with top results that don't even contain the word you are searching for.

      I did notice that too. Google becomes less and less useful.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    18. Re:Censorship by dryeo · · Score: 1

      Good idea. Too bad that the feedback option seems to be hidden by default, or at least starting out by right clicking feedback and choosing search and then clicking various things in the new browser window, didn't allow me to find it. Something else to give feedback on.

      --
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
    19. Re:Censorship by Mashiki · · Score: 1

      Good points.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    20. Re:Censorship by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'd love to see an uncensored distributed search engine project that actually worked and could scale. Every once in a while I check to see if such a thing exists yet, and I'm always disappointed. Quite a few people have had the idea over the years, but it never gets off the ground, and the ones that didn't die out (yacy for example) are useless.

      If it was easy, or my abilities were more prolific, or I had a longer attention span, I'd try to do it myself.

  4. Goose! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I love the duckduckgo browser app for my phone!

    1. Re:Goose! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      it takes a tough man to make a tender duck

    2. Re:Goose! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      stop trying to make this a meme, it'll never catch on!

    3. Re:Goose! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      e e e e e

    4. Re:Goose! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      it takes a tough man to make a tender meme

  5. People avoiding evil by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    People don't trust the creepy haters at Google.

  6. Privacy versus advertiser incentives by sjbe · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Some nice momentum for privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo which has just announced it's hit 30 million daily searches a year after reaching 20 million -- a year-on-year increase of 50%.

    To provide perspective Google does 1.2 trillion searches per day. Good progress but pretty much a rounding error compared to the big boys.

    The company told us this financing would be used to respond to an expanding opportunity for pro-privacy business models, including by tuning its search engine for more local markets and expanding its marketing channels to "have more of a global focus."

    Having trouble parsing this sentence. It's so vague as to be effectively meaningless.

    I've seen what DuckDuckGo's business model is supposed to be and I'm rather dubious how much it can scale because advertisers and retailers don't generally give a shit about your privacy and in fact your privacy is somewhat at odds with their incentives. Furthermore Google and Bing and the others get all the network effects so advertisers and retailers aren't generally going to flock to a small search engine that isn't going to give them as much data or reach as many potential customers. If DuckDuckGo is really doing what they say they are trying to do I wish them well but it's not going to be an easy battle.

    1. Re:Privacy versus advertiser incentives by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Some nice momentum for privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo which has just announced it's hit 30 million daily searches a year after reaching 20 million -- a year-on-year increase of 50%.

      To provide perspective Google does 1.2 trillion searches per day. Good progress but pretty much a rounding error compared to the big boys.

      This is a good thing.

      T

      I've seen what DuckDuckGo's business model is supposed to be and I'm rather dubious how much it can scale because advertisers and retailers don't generally give a shit about your privacy and in fact your privacy is somewhat at odds with their incentives. Furthermore Google and Bing and the others get all the network effects so advertisers and retailers aren't generally going to flock to a small search engine that isn't going to give them as much data or reach as many potential customers. If DuckDuckGo is really doing what they say they are trying to do I wish them well but it's not going to be an easy battle.

      I dunno about you, but I much prefer to use less "popular" things in life. I prefer the National Hockey League to the NFL, and DDG to Google, both on it's privacy model, as well as knowing that huge amounts of money drive corruption. That is probably heresy in a world where Kim Kardashian is considered the best because of her gazillion Twitter followers.

      And if DDG gets too big and falls to evil, I'll dump them in a New York City minute.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    2. Re:Privacy versus advertiser incentives by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, Google does 1.2 trillion searches per year. That's about 3 billion searches a day which means that DuckDuckGo is at 1% of its size. That's not a rounding error at 50% yearly growth.

    3. Re:Privacy versus advertiser incentives by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your perspective is incorrect. Google does 1.2 trillion searches per year, or about 3.5 billion searches per day.

      If you extrapolate DDG's growth, they will hit that end 2023. If that really happens it will hurt Google badly.
      Admittedly, that is a big "if", but it would not be the first time for an internet company to replace another virtually overnight thanks to exponential growth. Google itself being a prime example of this.

    4. Re:Privacy versus advertiser incentives by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      She IS the best.

    5. Re:Privacy versus advertiser incentives by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      She IS the best.

      For some folks, i suppose so.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    6. Re:Privacy versus advertiser incentives by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm better than her in every way. My boobs are bigger, my ass is bigger, I'm more self-absorbed and I'm even more hairy.

    7. Re:Privacy versus advertiser incentives by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You might consider moving to Canada. We live and breathe hockey, and talk about it 12 months out of the year. That's what we breathe. We drink maple syrup and Canadian whiskey.

  7. Dumping Google - not just Search by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I think more people are getting fed up of Google as a whole, myself included. While I still have gmail and an android phone, I don't use gboard as the default keyboard, I dumped Chrome v69 for Firefox, no longer use Google News since they destroyed the UI and use DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine. I still use Google search for the odd few things, but only a few things DDG struggles with. I now find myself consciously trying to find alternatives to Google's products.

    1. Re:Dumping Google - not just Search by OneHundredAndTen · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'll have to try DuckDuckGo again. I used for a few weeks earlier this year, and I had to revert to Google - the quality of DuckDuckGo lagged, at the time, well behind that of Google's. I dislike Google more and more - in fact, they look like the MIcrosoft of old more and more with every passing day - but until an independent search engine reaches parity with Google's, I'll have to stick with it.

    2. Re:Dumping Google - not just Search by cyberchondriac · · Score: 4, Informative

      Same here.. for the past two weeks, I tried DuckDuckGo on my work linux box. When looking for technical documents or more detailed info, DDG just didn't cut it, regrettably. I'm back to using google again, for now.
      For personal use though, I think DDG might just work out fine.

      --

      Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
    3. Re:Dumping Google - not just Search by the_skywise · · Score: 1

      DDG is hit and miss for technical stuff for me - I'd say about 20% of the time it provides better results than Google and 20% of the time on par. Ultimately though I'll usually end up having to search on Google but even then I've noticed Google's stuff is driving me more and more to corporate white pages and market copy rather than actual technical stuff or independent blogs.

    4. Re:Dumping Google - not just Search by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I've just about given Google up completely for about a year and a half now. I only use Google in very rare instances which are mostly long shots anyways and I simply need to try a 2nd engine, not necessarily Google. In my experience, DDG is waaay better than Google for technical stuff. Especially coding references. One of the really nice things is how they put the main answer to stackoverflow questions right in the top of the search page.

    5. Re:Dumping Google - not just Search by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's a lot easier to use if you just remember that putting !g into the search bounces it to google for those times where you don't get the results that you were looking for.

      You might use it a lot at first, convinced that google will be giving better results, but after a while, you'll notice that google's results aren't always that much better, and you'll probably use it less and less.

      !g and !bi (bing image search, which I find superior to google's) are my two big escapes when I can't find stuff of DDG, but probably 90% of my searches are done with DDG now.

  8. Re:DuckDuckGo is liberal biased by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It would be really nice to see an extremely advanced search where you could feed it a list of sites to search or exclude a list of sites from the results. Or maybe even flat out have a check box or something to exclude results from X from now on. Almost like Safe Search.

  9. Yep, count me in by ReneR · · Score: 1

    Google's new "be evil" mantra pissed me off enough, I use it as default, too, only revert to google if I can not find someitng, e.g. obscure open source bits & such.

  10. probably run by microsoft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is probably a microsoft project to try to get some more search hits. You do know that 90% of all duck duck go searches are run through microsoft servers even when it links to google. This was and always has been a project to get more bing searches. That is why i said it is probably run by microsoft just with a decentrilised management and office. EEE ever heard of it? If your under 35 probably not and you are really really ignorant of microsofts motives and dont really understand tech.

  11. Re:DuckDuckGo is liberal biased by butchersong · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm sure this is a troll but 97% or thereabout of corporate media coverage on Trump is negative so... I'd expect any search engine to reflect that whatever that companies particular political affiliation.

  12. Yes, yes, yes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    As a former Google engineer, I am so happy to hear this. I am currently phasing Google out of every part of my life. The last thing I have, that I don't know if I can ever really get rid of, is my Gmail. That said, most of my personal emails have cut over to another already, and I do everything I can to keep my access to it isolated to avoid giving Google any freebies when it comes to tracking. I am not anti-ad (though I am anti invasive/malicious ad), as ads thanklessly power the free internet that everyone expects that they should be handed for free, but the threat Google and the other massive multinationals pose in terms of censorship, spying, and information control is unforgivable. They should all be regulated as publishers and utilities.

    1. Re:Yes, yes, yes by jellomizer · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Got fired did yea. I just got that vibe, due to lack of any detail, on what the issues are. And you just want to hurt Google, who probably had hurt you.
      I am not saying Google is a saint. But if you are going to preface your opinion with "As a former Google engineer" it is implying that you have some insider knowledge on sometime on some interesting tidbits. Then when you elaborate with reasons such as "censorship, spying, and information control is unforgivable" this isn't anything new to us.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    2. Re:Yes, yes, yes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      No, I quit and am contacted by their alumni recruiters quarterly. Nice try, though. And yes, I do have knowledge of how extensively their political views penetrate their business practices, both because I worked there, and from what's readily available in the news.

    3. Re: Yes, yes, yes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Such as....

  13. Impact of tech community by illiac_1962 · · Score: 1

    This is a perfect example of the influence of the tech community. Many on Slashdot take a dim view of our ability to impact the wider discussion but we do. It is the small army of people like us who drive things like this. No one would be using DuckDuck without the influence of the privacy aware tech community. Same thing happens with browser choice. I attribute this to word of mouth. Track that shit Facebook.

    1. Re: Impact of tech community by BanHammer · · Score: 1

      I agree. I see many tech enthusiasts use DDG,not only for tuhe privacy factor but also because DDG is better for tech questions

    2. Re:Impact of tech community by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I don't think the Tech community has a Dim view of our ability to impact the world on a large scale. But our ability to affect on a small scale that affects our lives seems to be the harder push.
      Trying to get work to make business decision on products not from the sales of the product, but from a good understanding of the underlining infrastructure behind it.
      Trying to get your friends and family to be more secure with their systems, so they are not breaking down all the time and asking you to fix it.
      Having people realize as a tech professional your Job isn't "Fixing Computers" (My apologies to those who are actually in systems repair you are a professional too)
      Having people with with basic understanding trying to tell us how to do things, and get pissed off because what we do is too complex for them.

      Sure if there is a big problem with Microsoft, Google, Facebook. The tech community on the whole has a power to put them in their place. But most of our chips on our shoulder is from the small things that happen daily.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  14. Media will start attacking DuckDuckGo as "Nazi" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Just like they will with any alternative to Big Tech.

    Did you notice a lot of people in the media are the same tribe as the guys who run Google and Facebook? Weird!

    1. Re:Media will start attacking DuckDuckGo as "Nazi" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And you will start attacking the media as "SJW", as you always do with anyone who doesn't agree with your point of view.

  15. Re: DuckDuckGo is liberal biased by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    An admission that the corporate media is biased against Trump on slashdot?Interesting.

  16. How can I trust that assertion. by jellomizer · · Score: 1

    Unless Duck-Duck-Go releases who has been using the service.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    1. Re:How can I trust that assertion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They asked 30 people to search for "million daily", and now they can claim 30 Million Daily Searches.

  17. Hey junior, I have done 1500qps avg monthly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It was for a publishing house, but live public search. It was half ad robots licensed to crawl the data, but the other half was real integrated live queries from their 1000's of magazine/journal readers and the sites were all A-OK in response. Also, all the 1000's of relevant news silos were guaranteed by my feeder to be live in under 15 minutes. I was the ops guy, it was my architecture, pipeline, etc.. It always amazes me how boring and shit public search still is today.

    I love duckduckgo's perl based meta search and I am happy they are profitable, but that is still tiny.

  18. Re: DuckDuckGo is liberal biased by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Biased in favour of letting him speak for himself so that any thinking person can see he's incompetent, petty, corrupt, and not really very bright?

    That kind of "biased", yes.

  19. How are the results? by Dan+East · · Score: 1

    Just curious for those who have been using DuckDuckGo - how's the quality of the search results?

    --
    Better known as 318230.
    1. Re:How are the results? by TadMSTR · · Score: 2

      I usually find what I need on DuckDuckGo fairly easily. I have it as my default on several browsers, computers and my phone. I suggest just force yourself to use it for a week and see how things go. Can't hurt.

      --
      There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who don't.
    2. Re:How are the results? by Rufty · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Good enough. Generally I use DDG by default, and if that doesn't find it (last time, a few days ago, was errors for a discontinued bluetooth module) and then if google also fails I read the manual.

      --
      Red to red, black to black. Switch it on, but stand well back.
    3. Re:How are the results? by Rufty · · Score: 2

      Oh, and google still seems better for image searches.

      --
      Red to red, black to black. Switch it on, but stand well back.
    4. Re:How are the results? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      DDG is OK if you're looking for answers in English but the range of relevant hits is lower than when using larger search engines.
      If you search in languages other than English it is definitely not up to par.

    5. Re: How are the results? by BanHammer · · Score: 2

      Far better for tech stuff and a lot of things,as DDG shows a short summary or the relevant command(from askubuntu/Stack) at the top of the page. Saves me many clicks.

    6. Re:How are the results? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I actually prefer it to Google as it doesn't try to guess what I'm searching for and insert junk results based on previous queries (yes I was looking for jquery this morning now I'm looking for something else now.)

      It's "good enough" as others have said

    7. Re: How are the results? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I run Google for work queries, DDG for personal ones. I cannot tell them apart.

      Between kids and job I hardly have a life, so it's not like I'm DDGing a bunch, so I presume there are differences, they're just not noticeable.

      I've kept my Gmail account, but now read mail via outlook, so I don't share with Google when I click on an link in an email.

    8. Re:How are the results? by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 1

      Just curious for those who have been using DuckDuckGo - how's the quality of the search results?

      Overall quite goo.

      I find that I usually only need to revert to Google for 1. really obscure technical searches (most are fine on DDG), and 2. super new stuff

    9. Re:How are the results? by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 1

      "Good", not "goo" ...

    10. Re:How are the results? by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 1

      Just curious for those who have been using DuckDuckGo - how's the quality of the search results?

      Works well for me.

      When I’m searching, most often I’m looking to resolve some coding issue or another. DDG seems to do a pretty good job returning helpful results for that. On the occasions it doesn’t, I haven’t found Google to provide anything substantively better.

      --
      #DeleteChrome
    11. Re:How are the results? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You can still save full size images from the search results as well.

    12. Re:How are the results? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh, and google still seems better for image searches.

      Unless you're looking for porn. Bing comes out best for porn searches. That was due to one of Google's "improvements" a couple years ago. Damn I hate to use Bing, but they sure do a great job crawling smut.

    13. Re:How are the results? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I really wanted to love it. I set it as default on all my devices and gave it a really good go, but my experience was that it was ok for lots of common things, but sub-par for more technical or niche things.

      I ended up reverting to Google, but I look forward to the day that I can leave them.

  20. Might be from VPN users avoiding Google captcha by EnOne · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If you use a VPN and not the Chrome browser Google search will sometimes do a captcha check where you have to click on all the images of cars or storefronts or crosswalks. Because of this it makes DuckDuckGo the default choice for those users.

    You can verify yourself by using Opera on a VPN after you clear Opera's cache and cookies

    --
    Calvin:Do you believe in the devil? Hobbes:I'm not sure man needs the help.
  21. Seeking unpopular things? by sjbe · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is a good thing.

    It is neither a good thing nor a bad thing. What it does tell us is that it is not a popular thing. Increasing a tiny number by 50% is not actually very impressive compared to growing a big number by a smaller percentage. For Apple computer to grow by just 10% next year they will have to generate more business than the entire revenue of eBay over the same period. That is FAR more impressive than DDG growing 50% from close to zero.

    I dunno about you, but I much prefer to use less "popular" things in life.

    I don't give a shit if something is popular or not. I care if it does what I want/need and provides good value. The only reason I consider something's popularity is to evaluate whether that popularity or lack thereof will cause me problems. For example if a product is unpopular chances are that service and support for it are going to be hard to find in the future. Similarly I sometimes avoid something popular because of excessive crowds or because the popularity of it will cause my needs to be dismissed as unimportant.

    I prefer the National Hockey League to the NFL, and DDG to Google, both on it's privacy model, as well as knowing that huge amounts of money drive corruption.

    If you prefer the NHL to the NFL because hockey is your particular brand of vodka then that's fine, although calling the NHL unpopular is objectively kind of ridiculous. If you prefer it solely because it is less popular it means you are a hipster. You be you and use what works for you but I am not impressed by anyone who chooses something just because it is popular or explicitly because it is not.

  22. Re: DuckDuckGo is liberal biased by BanHammer · · Score: 0

    Incompetent? Can you please tell me the level of Unemployment prevailing at this moment?

  23. Re: DuckDuckGo is liberal biased by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The media isn't biased against Trump?

    You learn something new everyday.

  24. Re: DuckDuckGo is liberal biased by hierofalcon · · Score: 1

    Presidents sign bills Congress passes - or not. They also do some foreign policy stuff and supposedly manage the executive office via the cabinet and a few other things. Nothing that they do really touches unemployment (unless they start a war and institute a draft or increase work to replenish used up weapon stores).

    Most of the legislation Trump has signed he provided little constructive help on that any other Republican president couldn't have done better. Mostly his mouth and Twitter feed have been in the way of doing constructive work and have caused a lot of damage.

    As a Republican, I hope we do better next time in picking a candidate and managing the primary process to keep rich tycoons from buying an office. If we hold either house of Congress in November it will be amazing considering all the ammunition Trump and the Supreme Court nomination process has given the Democratic party. The market meltdown due to tariffs, interest rates (which he can't do anything about either) and worry over a blue Congress undoing everything the red Congress has done don't help either.

  25. Re: surprise voted down by biased slashdot mods by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "disgusting tanned leathery orange skin"

    Trump's a racist!

  26. Re: DuckDuckGo is liberal biased by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What are you talking about?

    Trump pulled your party back from the brink of irrelevancy.

  27. Sure hope they don't sell to Google by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It'd be sooo disheartening if these folks make a dent in the market, only to be sold to the censoring, leftist, anti-free speach, hypocritical Nazis that Google has become.

    If I were the VCs or the management there, it'd be really hard to stand on principle if all the founders were paid say $100M - I'd sell.

  28. Re: DuckDuckGo is liberal biased by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    NPC No. 15367A: "orange man indeed bad!"

  29. Re: DuckDuckGo is liberal biased by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Biased in favour of letting him speak for himself so that any thinking person can see he's incompetent, petty, corrupt, and not really very bright?

    That kind of "biased", yes.

    Obama left office almost two years ago.

    Please try to keep up.

    Obama, 2015: "Those jobs are never coming back."

    <Trump wins, those jobs start coming back...>

    Obama, 2018: "I built that! And remember, if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor."

    Fucking "progressive" idiots. How deranged are you going to get when Kanye and others help enough blacks off the Democrat's thought plantation that the 95% stranglehold Democrats have on the black vote in the US is gone and Democrats won't be able to win anywhere?

    It's already starting to happen.

  30. Re: DuckDuckGo is liberal biased by Luthair · · Score: 0

    You mean the economy he inherited from the previous government and is proceeding to ruin?

  31. Re: DuckDuckGo is liberal biased by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Pretending to be GOP has been his best acting job yet!

  32. and google is at: by scrout · · Score: 0

    3.5 billion searches per day. So DDG is an infinitesimal bump on googles ass?

    1. Re: and google is at: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Let me help you with some high school mathematics:
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_function

  33. Leftist? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    > leftist
    > Any corporation ever being leftist
    Wow, just wow. Americans are so fucking stupid, that I can't believe how stupid they are.
    What are the chances that a corporation would support actual left values (as in trade unionism, workplace democracy) rather than whatever the fuck you think that word means.
    Wew ... Americans.

  34. Re: DuckDuckGo is liberal biased by atrex · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Incompetent? Can you please tell me the level of Unemployment prevailing at this moment?

    Trying to use the unemployment rate as an example of Trump's competency doesn't make a very good argument.
    Just look at the 10 year graph of the unemployment rate https://tradingeconomics.com/u...
    All Trump managed to do is not screw up the trend that very clearly was established under the previous president.
    And it's the same for wage growth: https://tradingeconomics.com/u... although when you compare/contrast vs inflation https://tradingeconomics.com/u... real world wage growth has actually decreased the last two years vs the previous two years.
    You can try arguing GDP next, but, https://tradingeconomics.com/u... https://tradingeconomics.com/u... again we're mostly still seeing the same kind of numbers/trends that began in mid/late 2010.

    Now, lets have a look at something that did drastically change under Trump, Health Insurance. https://tradingeconomics.com/u...
    See that big giant increase in the price index at the end of 2017 compared to the rest of the graph? That's the result of the GOP gutting parts of the ACA and Trump refusing to pay out the by law guaranteed Medicare/Medicaid subsidies.

    Okay, I'm sure you want something to criticize the previous president for, so here we go: https://tradingeconomics.com/u...
    Those are some pretty bad deficit numbers under Obama's first few years. The country hadn't run that big an annual deficit since WW2. On the other hand, he used that deficit to drag the country out of a pretty bad economic recession left behind by the W Bush administration and managed to decrease it back down to 2008 levels by the end of his term. Unfortunately, instead of the deficit continuing to go down under Trump, it's gone up instead thanks to a massive tax give away to the rich and corporations. https://tradingeconomics.com/u...

    My bad, I guess that wasn't as much of a criticism of the last guy as the graph initially made it out to be.

    Ok, here's one we can really criticize Obama for, excessively increased military spending: https://tradingeconomics.com/u... ... or can we?
    Oops, sorry. I guess it was actually Bush who decided to start a war in Iraq in 2003 that didn't end until they hauled out Bin Laden in 2011. Oh, let's not forget the War on Terror in Afghanistan from 2001-2014 either, that at least in was in response to us being attacked first on 9/11. Except, 15 out of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia...

  35. Re: DuckDuckGo is liberal biased by TimMD909 · · Score: 1

    I don't think an ideological safe search feature would do anything other than make echo chambers sound proof...

  36. Yeah, its like Tesla sales increasing by 18000% by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 1
    It is true Tesla Model 3 sales, year over year, have gone up by 18000% in Q3 of 2018.

    That is because last year this quarter they sold some 300 cars, and this quarter they sold 53000. Percentage growth year over year could be very misleading when you start from very small base.

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    1. Re:Yeah, its like Tesla sales increasing by 18000% by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You say that now, but just wait until this time next year when they've sold almost 9.4 million cars in the quarter, and the year after that when they'll sell almost 1.7 BILLION cars. Hell, by this time in 2021 everybody on the planet will own on average more than 40 Teslas.

      I'm gonna need a bigger garage.

  37. Re: DuckDuckGo is liberal biased by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Nice try but https://tradingeconomics.com is liberally biased.

  38. Another tinfoil hat republican by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Everybody take a drink

    Conspiracy theories running rampant on the right, business as usual.

  39. Pro-privacy? by Jzanu · · Score: 2

    That claim about a search engine that filters everything through Yandex, the openly Russian intelligence service scoop, is idiotic.

    1. Re:Pro-privacy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      <sup>[citation needed]</sup>

  40. Reminder that DuckDuckGo is a U.S. company by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    and as such it is subject to U.S. law and U.S. court orders, the type that f.ex. say "hand over all search terms originating from this IP starting today".

    If you want a a search engine that is private and secure, for real, then you use the European alternatives, biggest and most popular being startpage.com, preferably configured to strictly use EU servers.

    1. Re:Reminder that DuckDuckGo is a U.S. company by Shaix · · Score: 1

      Except that duckduckgo doesn't collect your IP, nor your search terms, so there is nothing to hand over.

    2. Re:Reminder that DuckDuckGo is a U.S. company by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Here is a great European (French) alternative: Qwant.com

      Has been my go-to search engine for some time now and it is secure and pretty good actually.

      The main reason I don't suggest using DDG is that it is a U.S. company.

    3. Re:Reminder that DuckDuckGo is a U.S. company by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It won't be long before it's required to by law, I'm sure.

  41. Re:DuckDuckGo is liberal biased by Jzanu · · Score: 1

    That is called google with search operators. It works very well for removing the poor quality links like ask-dumbass or wiki-junk spammed throughout and ruining otherwise useful results. You can modify them to filter anyway you like though, and even combine multiple operators.

  42. the slippery UP slope by epine · · Score: 1

    Up 50% In a Year

    For that AMAZING statistic, you pretty much HAVE TO capitalize "Up".

    One exclamation mark for the price of none. Who would ever turn that offer down?!!

    But then, what do you do with "in"?

    Lower cased, after the gleeful orgasm, it has a conspicuously deflationary appearance.

    So UP it goes TOO.

  43. Re: DuckDuckGo is liberal biased by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No, it just displays data. Reality will have a "liberal bias" when it is correct.

  44. Re: DuckDuckGo is liberal biased by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What are you talking about?

    Trump pulled your party back from the brink of irrelevancy.

    Can't argue that one.

  45. Re:DuckDuckGo is liberal biased by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Also, just to make this clear, 93.57% of all statistical claims on social media are entirely made up.

  46. Re: DuckDuckGo is liberal biased by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    based and redpilled desu

  47. Re: DuckDuckGo is liberal biased by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Search operators used to be great until Google decided to handle them as an ignorable suggestion.

  48. Re: DuckDuckGo is liberal biased by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    when you accept the absolute and total bullshit spouting out of chief toupee's mouth or twitter or one of his other soap boxes as fact, you are part of the problem.

  49. Re: DuckDuckGo is liberal biased by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You must type them precisely as written. Capital or lower case, and with colon where it is used.

  50. Re: DuckDuckGo is liberal biased by BigDogCH · · Score: 1

    Data and facts do seem to be liberally biased these days. Facts are pesky things.

  51. Re: DuckDuckGo is liberal biased by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    News flash buddy, it still ignores them.

  52. Re: DuckDuckGo is liberal biased by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Data and facts do seem to be liberally biased these days. Facts are pesky things.

    Funny, when the other side points out that a particular demographic that accounts for 6.5% of the general population commits 50% of the violent crime, liberals usually come unglued.

  53. Re:DuckDuckGo is liberal biased by jtgd · · Score: 1

    It would be nice to have a search engine that WORKED! None of them do.

    I search with terms like "+WORD" which means "do NOT show me any search results that don't have WORD in it" and I get a million results and NOT ONE of them have "WORD" on it.

    Web search is useless and broken.

    --
    J
  54. Re: DuckDuckGo is liberal biased by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Trump really is bad. Reporting that he is bad is not bias, it's truth.

  55. Re: DuckDuckGo is liberal biased by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Try "Word" without the plus.

  56. Contradicting the corporate tech narrative by jbn-o · · Score: 1

    If the corporate narrative were true you'd expect there to be no increase in privacy-focused search engine proxies, after all people just don't care (or so we're told). It's interesting how this contradicts the (almost entirely) corporate tech press narrative often repeated here: that people don't value their privacy. We're told some variation of that establishment-defending excuse on corporate repeater sites like this one whenever someone finds it necessary to stress a privacy-preserving alternative not found in the corporate media (such as bringing up the freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify published computer software, or valuing free software for its own sake as well as the practical outcomes such as helping users preserve their privacy and more fully control their own computers).

    This strikes me as another example of how hard it is for the corporate media, their sycophants, and their stooges on sites like these to promote the fiction that non-freedom and its consequences are good for us. That we should think of proprietary software on (what are ostensibly) our computers and the amount of data we give services as right and proper. That we're better off understanding things in terms of short-term values like financial cost and convenience, and that anyone who dares to raise any other values is rightly outside the bounds of allowable debate.

  57. Microsoft: Never finish anything. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Recursive acronym: Bing Is Not Good.

    Frequent comment: People who have Bing as their default search engine use Bing to search for Google.

  58. Re: DuckDuckGo is liberal biased by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Since it won't be discussed on CNN, you'll probably be a bit shocked and start ranting about conspiracies and plots when you see how many Latino people will be voting for him next time around. It's quite a thing how enacting policies that result in you getting jobs that wasn't available to you in the last administration can have that effect, and that's what happened for a looooooot of Latinos, and actions speak louder than words.