DuckDuckGo Rising Up to Challenge Google

Google has long dominated the search engine scenario. It has grown from strength to strength, expanding their empire along the way. The Android operating system has allowed Google to control a lion’s share of the smartphone search segment as well. With no one anywhere close by, Google was enjoying a free run till now. As per a report in The New York Times, DuckDuckGo is growing up to offer some sort of a competition to the search engine giant.

As per latest figures, DuckDuckGo is handling about 40 million searches every day. While this number is still a long way lesser to what Google handles in a day, it is still quite an achievement because this greenhorn search engine has its limitations. DuckDuckGo is not focused on gathering user information and location like Google does. As a result, Google is able to offer more personalized results to users. Additionally, advertisers like this sort of personalized results because it helps them make specific targeted marketing. This is thanks to the additional data about users that Google picks up through browser histories, previous searches and location tagging.

DuckDuckGo steers clear of such private information. So the results you get may not be as specific as you would get through Google searches. However, users who are concerned and worried about how much Google is using their personal information for every search conducted, can turn to DuckDuckGo as an option. After all, this newbie is the only search engine competitor of Google which has shown organic growth in the last couple of years.

The maps and local searches of DuckDuckGo are weaker than Google for obvious reasons: no location tracking is done. But then DuckDuckGo wants to stick to this format of not using private information of users. This is their unique identity and that has got them 40 million searches per day. If they played Google’s game by Google’s rules, they would have failed like the other search engines. In the last 5 years, DuckDuckGo has turned in a profit as well. So you can expect this new kid on the block to stay!