DuckDuckGo: the plucky upstart taking on Google with secure searches; Guardian, 4/4/14

Alex Hern, Guardian; DuckDuckGo: the plucky upstart taking on Google with secure searches:

"DuckDuckGo bills itself as "the search engine that doesn't track you". After the revelations in the US National Security Agency files, that sounds tempting.

Named after the playground game duck duck goose, the site is not just banking on the support of people paranoid about GCHQ and the NSA. Its founder, Gabriel Weinberg, argues that privacy makes the web search better, not worse. Since it doesn't store your previous searches, it does not and cannot present personalised search results. That frees users from the filter bubble – the fear that, as search results are increasingly personalised, they are less likely to be presented with information that challenges their existing ideas.

It also means that DuckDuckGo is forced to keep its focus purely on search. With no stores or data to tap, it cannot become an advertising behemoth, it has no motivation to start trying to build a social network and it doesn't get anything out of scanning your emails to create a personal profile.

Having answered one billion queries in 2013 alone, DuckDuckGo is on the rise. We asked Weinberg about his website's journey."