DuckDuckGo

01DuckDuckGo is an American software company focused on online privacy, whose flagship product is a search engine of the same name.

02Founded by Gabriel Weinberg in 2008, its later products include browser extensions and a custom DuckDuckGo web browser.

03Headquartered in Powley, Pennsylvania, DuckDuckGo is a privately held company with about 200 employees.

04The company's name is a reference to the children's game Duck.

05Duck.

06Goose.

07History.

08Early years.

09DuckDuckGo was founded by Gabriel Weinberg and launched on February 29, 2008, in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

10Weinberg is an entrepreneur who previously launched Names Database, a now-defunct social network.

11Self-funded by Weinberg until October 2011, DuckDuckGo was then backed by Union Square Ventures and a handful of angel investors.

12Union Square partner Brad Burnham stated, We invested in DuckDuckGo because we became convinced that it was not only possible to change the basis of competition in search, it was time to do it.

13In addition, Triskell, Linux Mint, and the Midori web browser switched to use DuckDuckGo as their default search engine.

14DuckDuckGo gains revenue via advertisements and affiliate programs.

15The search engine is written in Perl and runs on Jinx, FreeBSD, and Linux.

16DuckDuckGo is built primarily upon search APIs from various vendors.

17Because of this, TechCrunch characterized the service as a hybrid search engine.

18Weinberg explained the beginnings of the name with respect to the children's game duck.

19Duck.

20Goose.

21He said of the origin of the name, Really, it just popped in my head one day and I just liked it.

22It is certainly influence-slash-derived from DuckDuckGoose.

23But other than that, there is no relation, e.g.

24a metaphor.

25DuckDuckGo was featured on TechCrunch's Elevator Pitch Friday in 2008, and it was a finalist in the 2008 Boss Mashable Challenge.

26In 2010, DuckDuckGo began using privacy to differentiate itself from its competitors.

27In July 2010, Weinberg started a DuckDuckGo community website, duck.co, to allow the public to report problems, discuss means of spreading the use of the search engine, request features, and discuss open-sourcing the code.

28The company registered the domain name ddg.gg on February 22, 2011, and acquired DuckDuck.com in December 2018, which are used as shortened URL aliases that redirect to DuckDuckGo.com, and is also used as the domain for their email protection service.

29We did it for the internet anarchists, people that hang out on Reddit and Hacker News.

30Fred Wilson 2012 TechCrunch Disrupt Conference in New York.

31By May 2012, the search engine was attracting 1.5 million searches a day.

32Weinberg reported that it had earned 115,000 US dollars in revenue in 2011 and had three employees, plus a small number of contractors.

33Compete.com estimated 266,465 unique visitors to the site in February 2012.

34On April 12, 2011, Alexa reported a three-month growth rate of 51%.

35DuckDuckGo's own traffic statistics show that in August 2012, there were 1,393,644 visits per day, up from an average of 39,406 visits per day in April 2010, the earliest data available.

36In a lengthy profile in November 2012, the Washington Post indicated that searches on DuckDuckGo numbered up to 45 million per month in October 2012.

37The article concluded, Weinberg's non-ambitious goals make him a particularly odd and dangerous competitor online.

38He can do almost everything that Google or Bing can't because it could damage their business models, and if users figure out that they like the DuckDuckGo way better, Weinberg could damage the big boys without even really trying.

39It's asymmetrical digital warfare, and his backers at Union Square Ventures say Google is vulnerable.

40Gunome released Web 3.10 on September 26, 2013, and starting with this version, the default search engine is DuckDuckGo.

41At its keynote speech at WWDC 2014 on September 18, 2014, Apple announced that DuckDuckGo would be included as an option for search on both iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite in its Safari browser.

42On March 10, the PaleMoon web browser, starting with version 24.4.0, included DuckDuckGo as its default search engine, as well as listed it on the browser's homepage.

43In May 2014, DuckDuckGo released a redesigned version to beta testers through DuckDuckHack.

44On May 21, 2014, DuckDuckGo officially released the redesigned version that focused on smarter answers and a more refined look.

45The new version added many new features such as images, local search, auto-suggest, weather, recipes, and more.

46On November 10, 2014, Mozilla added DuckDuckGo as a search option to Firefox 33.1.

47On May 30, 2016, the Tor project, Inc.

48made DuckDuckGo the default search engine for Tor browser 6.0.

49In July 2016, DuckDuckGo officially announced the extension of its partnership with Yahoo that brought new features to all users of the search engine, including date filtering of results and additional site links.

50It also partners with Bing, Yandex, and Wikipedia to produce results or make use of features offered.

51The company also confirmed that it does not share user information with partner companies, as has always been its policy.

52In December 2018, it was reported that Google transferred ownership of the domain name DuckDuck.com to DuckDuckGo.

53It is not known what price, if any, DuckDuckGo paid for the domain name.

54On January 15, 2019, DuckDuckGo announced that all map and address-related searches would be powered by Apple Maps, both on desktop and mobile devices.

55In March 2019, Google added DuckDuckGo to the default search engine list in Chrome 73.

56Beginning in 2018, the company has offered browser extensions for popular web browsers, Google Chrome, Safari, and others, as well as its own web browser, called the DuckDuckGo private browser.

57Both of these products have protections against web tracking and other privacy intrusions for all web browsing, not limited to DuckDuckGo searches.

58Prior to August 2022, DuckDuckGo private browser did not block Microsoft tracking scripts.

592020s In July 2021, DuckDuckGo introduced its email forwarding feature Email Protection, which lets users claim an at Duck.com email address generated by the service.

60That inbox will receive emails and strip them of data trackers before forwarding them to the user's private email address.

61The feature launched in beta for users of DuckDuckGo private browser on iOS and Android.

62As of March 2022, DuckDuckGo handled 102,704,358 daily searches on average.

63On March 1, 2022, in response to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, DuckDuckGo paused its partnership with Yandex Search.

64Weinberg said in a tweet that DuckDuckGo will downrank sites associated with Russian disinformation.

65A move which some users criticized as censorship and a violation of the search engine's commitment to unbiased search.

66DuckDuckGo has defended itself from the criticism, saying that the primary utility of a search engine is to provide access to accurate information.

67Disinformation sites that deliberately put out false information to intentionally mislead people directly cut against that utility.

68In April 2022, TorrentFreak reported that DuckDuckGo had blocked search results for some major pirating websites, including the Pirate Bay, 1337X, and F-Movies, as well as video downloading software YouTube DL.

69In a statement to Engadget, DuckDuckGo said that the Pirate Bay and YouTube DL were never removed from its search results if the user searched for those websites using their name or web address.

70DuckDuckGo also said that there were problems with site.

71Search queries used for these websites and other searches and said that the problem had been fixed.

72Also in April, DuckDuckGo said that they would protect users from being tracked by Google's accelerated mobile pages framework, stating, When you load or share a Google AMP page anywhere from DuckDuckGo apps, iOS slash Android Mac, or extensions, Firefox slash Chrome, the original publisher's webpage will be used in place of the Google AMP version.

73In May 2022, a report from Bleeping Computer by security researcher Zach Edwards found that DuckDuckGo private browser allowed Microsoft's trackers to continue running while visiting non-DuckDuckGo websites, contrary to Google and Facebook trackers, which were blocked.

74In response, Weinberg said that, Unfortunately, our Microsoft search syndication agreement prevents us from doing more to Microsoft-owned properties.

75However, we have been continually pushing and expect to be doing more soon.

76He also said given that most browsers don't even attempt to block third-party scripts from loading, users would still be safer than on other browsers.

77In August 2022, DuckDuckGo began blocking Microsoft's trackers, saying that the policy preventing them from doing so no longer applied.

78In September 2022, Debian package maintainers switched the default search engine in Chromium to DuckDuckGo for privacy reasons.

79In April 2024, DuckDuckGo introduced PrivacyPro, a paid subscription that includes a VPN, personal information removal, identity theft restoration.

80The subscription launched to users of the DuckDuckGo browser in the United States.

81Features Search results DuckDuckGo's results are a compilation of over 400 sources according to itself, including Bing, Yahoo SearchBoss, WolframAlpha, Yandex, and its own web crawler, the DuckDuckBot, but none from Google.

82It also uses data from crowdsourced sites such as Wikipedia to populate knowledge panel boxes to the right of the search results.

83DuckDuckGo offers a light version of its search for browsers without JavaScript capabilities.

84Weinberg has refined the quality of his search engine results by deleting search results for companies he believes are content mills, such as eHow, which publishes 4,000 articles per day produced by paid freelance writers, which Weinberg states to be low-quality content designed specifically to rank highly in Google's search index.

85DuckDuckGo also filters pages with substantial advertising.

86DuckDuckGo down ranks websites deemed to have low journalistic standards.

87Instanceware In addition to the index search results, DuckDuckGo displays relevant results, called Instant Answers, on top of the search page.

88These Instant Answers are collected from either third-party APIs or static data sources like text files.

89The Instant Answers are called Zero Click Info because the intention behind these is to provide what users are searching for on the search result page itself so that they do not have to click any results to find what they are looking for.

90Instant Answers are created by and maintained by a community of over 1,500 open-source contributors.

91This community has come to be known as DuckDuckHack.

92As of July 2019, there were 1236 Instant Answers active.

93In the DuckDuckHack documentation, four types of Instant Answers are described.

94Goodies, Spices, Fatheads, and Longtails.

95These types of Instant Answer extensions are differentiated by how their data is retrieved.

96Goodies do not retrieve data from a third-party API, whereas Spices do.

97Goodies instead use some form of the aforementioned static data sources, such as text files or JSON files.

98Fathead Instant Answers are key-value answers hosted on DuckDuckGo's backend.

99Fathead key-value pairs function similarly to a trigger for showing the respective Instant Answer.

100Longtail Instant Answers are full-text queries to a DuckDuckGo database of articles.

101Paragraphs or snippets from any matching articles are returned, and the section that matches the user's query is highlighted.

102In March 2023, DuckDuckGo added DuckAssist to Instant Answers.

103Using large language models from OpenAI and Anthropic, DuckAssist generates answers to users' questions by scanning online encyclopedias, like Wikipedia and Britannica.

104Tor Access In August 2010, DuckDuckGo introduced anonymous searching, including an exit enclave, for its search engine traffic using Tor network and enabling access through a Tor hidden service, Onion Service.

1053G2-UPL4-PQ6-KUFK4M.ONION, Accessing Link Help, Deprecated, was the DuckDuckGo V2 Onion Service on Tor.

106This allows anonymity by routing traffic through a series of encrypted relays.

107Weinberg stated, I believe this fits right in line with our privacy policy.

108Using Tor and DDG, you can now be end-to-end anonymous with your searching.

109And if you use our encrypted homepage, you can be end-to-end encrypted as well.

110In July 2021, DuckDuckGo introduced a new V3 Onion Service, with a new link, DuckDuckGoG 42-SCHOCK-72X3-SHASO-WARFBIM-FIMFIMAF-6-TWAGSWAZID, Onion, Accessing Link Help, Bangs, DuckDuckGo includes exclamation mark bang keywords, which give users the ability to search on specific third-party websites, using the site's own search engine if applicable.

111As of August 2020, 13,564 bangs for a diverse range of internet sites are available.

112In December 2018, around 2,000 bangs were deleted.

113Some of them were deleted due to being broken, while others, such as searches of pirated content sites, were deleted for liability reasons.

114Privacy DuckDuckGo does not track its users.

115DuckDuckGo keeps favicons anonymous.

116Users' location is never sent to DuckDuckGo servers, even when they allow a third-party to collect their geolocations.

117DuckDuckGo offers limited third-party tracking protection, third-party cookie protection, name cloaking protection, limited device fingerprint protection from third parties, link tracking removal, Google Amper placement, and do-not-track requests.

118Business Model DuckDuckGo earns revenue by serving ads primarily from the Yahoo Bing Search Alliance Network.

119As a privacy-focused search engine, the ads served on DuckDuckGo are based on keywords and terms of the search query.

120As of April 2024, DuckDuckGo also makes money from subscription fees paid to Access Privacy Pro.

121Donations The company supports charitable organizations that work to improve privacy.

122In 2021, they donated $1 million to these causes and had donated $3,650,000 over the previous decade.

123Major donations for 2021 included $200,000 to the Center for Information Technology Policy, $150,000 to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, $75,000 to European Digital Rights, EDIRE, and $75,000 to the Markup.

124Source Code Some of DuckDuckGo's source code is free and open-source software hosted at GitHub under the Apache 2.0 license, but the core is proprietary.

125DuckDuckGo also hosted DuckDuckHack, a sister site for organizing open-source contributions and community projects.

126The search engine's instant answers are open-source and are maintained on GitHub, where anyone can view the source code.

127As of August 31, 2017, DuckDuckHack was placed on maintenance mode.

128As such, only pull requests for bug fixes will be approved.

129Reception In a June 2011 article, Harry McCracken of Time commended DuckDuckGo, comparing it to his favorite hamburger restaurant, In-N-Out Burger.

130Feels a lot like early Google with a stripped-down homepage.

131Just as In-N-Out doesn't have lattes or Asian salads or sundaes or scrambled eggs, DDG doesn't try to do news or blogs or books or images.

132There's no auto-completion or instant results.

133It just offers core web search, mostly the 10 blue links approach that's still really useful no matter what its critics say.

134As for the quality, I'm not saying that Weinberg has figured out a way to return more relevant results than Google's mighty search team.

135But DuckDuckGo is really good at bringing back useful sites.

136It all feels meaty and straightforward and filler-free.

137The bare-bones approach cited in his quote has since changed.

138For instance, DuckDuckGo now has auto-completion, instant results, and a news tab.

139McCracken included the site in Time's list of 50 best websites of 2011.

140Tom Hallwarda, who reviewed the search engine for OS News, praised its privacy features and shortcuts to site-specific searches, as well as criticizing Google for tracking pretty much everything you do, particularly because of the risk of such information being subject to a U.S.

141Government subpoena.

142In 2012, in response to accusations that it was a monopoly, Google identified DuckDuckGo as a competitor.

143Weinberg was reportedly pleased and entertained by that acknowledgement.

144In November 2019, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey revealed his preference for using the DuckDuckGo search engine rather than Google, stating, I love at DuckDuckGo.

145My default search engine for a while now.

146The app is even better.

147Conservative political commentators Ben Shapiro and Dan Bongino have also endorsed DuckDuckGo.

148Traffic.

149In June 2013, DuckDuckGo indicated that it had seen a significant traffic increase.

150According to the company's Twitter account, on Monday, June 17, 2013, it had 3 million daily direct searches.

151On average, during May 2013, it had 1.8 million daily direct searches.

152Some relate this claim to the exposure of PRISM and to the fact that other programs operated by the National Security Agency, NSA, were leaked by Edward Snowden.

153Danny Sullivan wrote on search engine land that despite the search engine's growth, it's not grown anywhere near the amount to reflect any substantial or even mildly notable switching by the searching public for reasons due to privacy.

154And he concluded no one cares about private search.

155In response, Caleb Garling of the San Francisco Chronicle argued, I think this thesis suffers from a few key failures in logic because a traffic increase had occurred and because there was a lack of widespread awareness of the existence of DuckDuckGo.

156In September 2013, the search engine hit 4 million searches per day, and in June 2015, it hit 10 million searches per day.

157In November 2017, DuckDuckGo hit 20 million searches per day.

158In January 2019, DuckDuckGo set a record of 1 billion monthly searches, and in November of the same year, it hit 50 million searches per day.

159As of March 2022, DuckDuckGo was receiving 102,704,358 queries per day on average.

160On January 11, 2021, a record of over 102.2 million daily searches was achieved.

161A new record of 111,703,299 daily searches was set on January 17, 2022.

162During the year of 2022, DuckDuckGo experienced stagnation and a slight decline in the number of searches per month.

163At the end of the year 2022, they removed their traffic stats page.

164Internal surveys by DuckDuckGo found that users of DuckDuckGo had a wide variety of political leanings.

165This was the English Wikipedia article about DuckDuckGo as of December 4, 2024, narrated by AI-generated voice via the open-source software Sony Translate.