Pro-Privacy Search Engine DuckDuckGo Hits 30 Million Daily Searches, Up 50% In a Year (techcrunch.com) 141
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."
DNS redirect (Score:1)
Re:DNS redirect (Score:5, Funny)
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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 fo
Re: DNS redirect (Score:1)
Thought it said Pro-Piracy (Score:5, Funny)
Re: Thought it said Pro-Piracy (Score:1)
Re:Thought it said Pro-Piracy (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).
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Censorship (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.
Re: Censorship (Score:2)
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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.
Re:Censorship (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Censorship (Score:5, 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.
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Re:Censorship (Score:4, 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.
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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 th
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Good points.
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Re: Censorship (Score:1)
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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.
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Please take 1 minute and give them feedback [duck.co]! Just copypaste your post, and add a link to the forums they suck at finding. You may make the world a better place.
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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.
Re:Censorship (Score:5, 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.
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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.
People avoiding evil (Score:2, Informative)
People don't trust the creepy haters at Google.
Privacy versus advertiser incentives (Score:5, 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 [fourweekmba.com] 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.
Re:Privacy versus advertiser incentives (Score:5, 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 [fourweekmba.com] 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.
Seeking unpopular things? (Score:4, 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.
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She IS the best.
For some folks, i suppose so.
Dumping Google - not just Search (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.
Re:Dumping Google - not just Search (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Dumping Google - not just Search (Score:5, 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.
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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.
Yep, count me in (Score:2)
Yes, yes, yes (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.
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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.
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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.
Impact of tech community (Score:1)
Re: Impact of tech community (Score:1)
Re:Impact of tech community (Score:5, 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.
Media will start attacking DuckDuckGo as "Nazi" (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!
How can I trust that assertion. (Score:2)
Unless Duck-Duck-Go releases who has been using the service.
How are the results? (Score:2)
Just curious for those who have been using DuckDuckGo - how's the quality of the search results?
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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.
Re:How are the results? (Score:4, 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.
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Oh, and google still seems better for image searches.
Re: How are the results? (Score:2)
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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
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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
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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.
Might be from VPN users avoiding Google captcha (Score:4, Insightful)
You can verify yourself by using Opera on a VPN after you clear Opera's cache and cookies
Leftist? (Score:1)
> leftist ... Americans.
> 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
Yeah, its like Tesla sales increasing by 18000% (Score:2)
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.
Pro-privacy? (Score:3)
Reminder that DuckDuckGo is a U.S. company (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.
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the slippery UP slope (Score:2)
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.
Contradicting the corporate tech narrative (Score:2)
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 fo
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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.
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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.
Re:DuckDuckGo is liberal biased (Score:5, Insightful)
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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
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Re: DuckDuckGo is liberal biased (Score:5, 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.
... or can we?
Just look at the 10 year graph of the unemployment rate https://tradingeconomics.com/u... [tradingeconomics.com]
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... [tradingeconomics.com] although when you compare/contrast vs inflation https://tradingeconomics.com/u... [tradingeconomics.com] 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... [tradingeconomics.com] https://tradingeconomics.com/u... [tradingeconomics.com] 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... [tradingeconomics.com]
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... [tradingeconomics.com]
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... [tradingeconomics.com]
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... [tradingeconomics.com]
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...
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Nice try but https://tradingeconomics.com is liberally biased.
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