After escaping legal action in the US, Google are under intense European pressure to amend their recently consolidated privacy policy. One search engine with no such problems is DuckDuckGo, a project solo-founded by Gabriel Weinberg which, crucially, does not collect any personal information from its users.

Having previously founded NamesDatabase - which was sold to Classmates.com in 2006 - Pennsylvania-based Mr Weinberg moved into the search engine arena in 2008. The venture was self-funded up to October 2011, at which point Union Square Ventures and a handful of angel investors stepped in.

The company, which now has some full-time staff, many part-time contributors and several open-source contributors, gets around 50 million direct searches each month.
To put that in context, Google claimed last year to receive 100 billion searches per month. But has Google become too big for its digital boots? By tying together its services (search, Gmail, YouTube and others) the Californian giant has irked many of its users and alerted US and European authorities to its ‘high risk’ privacy policies. As users wake up to Google’s targeted adverts and skewed results, alternatives such as DuckDuckGo have made clear they will be ready to pick up the pieces.

Do you think that the majority of people using search engines are aware that their personal information is being shared to such an extent?

Most users are not aware of the extent to which their personal information is being collected, aggregated and analysed to target ads at them across multiple sites and even offline. Regular users also do not understand the legal implications of such privacy leaks, for example that their data can be subpoenaed and used against them.

Are they unaware of alternatives or have they grown too reliant on services such as Google?

Both. Google is the default in Andorid, iOs, and all the major browsers expect Internet Explorer. In addition, Google is synonymous with search. People are slowly waking up to the reality that there are good alternatives, and that Google is a data collection machine gathering personal information and usage patterns irrespective of a user being logged into a Google service or not.


How is the user experience with DuckDuckGo different?

Our grand vision is to get information  to users faster with less mental effort.
We do this via more and better instant answers (home-grown and via partners), less spam and clutter (for example, one advert instead of multiple adverts on Google) and real privacy - we do not collect or share personal information by default.

Do you collect any data at all from users?

We do not collect any personal information from our users by default, for example IP address, full user agent, per our readable privacy policy. To improve search relevancy we do collect the search query anonymously.

Google was cleared of search bias by US authorities last month (although it also agreed to make changes to the way it presents results) because it was deemed that bias improved user experience. Why is it important that users escape the ‘filter bubble’?

In a nutshell, users end up seeing more and more of what they already agree with and miss out on articles Google thinks they may not agree with, which is dangerous specifically for things like political information. In other words, what is good for Google’s business is not always good for Google’s users. We explain the filter bubble further on our microsite.

How will DuckDuckGo compete with search engines that are able to provide relevant and targeted search results based on shared data?

We can still provide relevant search results without tracking you. We can also provide answers based on your location without storing that information, which is often the kind of targeting that is wanted, like local restaurants.
More generally, we’ve focused on things the bigger search engines don't do well for a variety of reasons including legal issues, business and culture. For example, we showcase more and better instant answers, so you get relevant information with zero clicks. On other search engines users typically see ads at the top - on DuckDuckGo they see these instant answers based on their query. Developers can build their own instant answers based on open data sets via our open source platform. No other search engine allows developers to contribute answers.

You experienced a spike in daily searches around this time last year. What was the cause?

It was a combination of our first visual refresh, data privacy day and Google changing its privacy policy to combine personal information across all of its services.

Google went on to directly name you as a competitor. Has this validated DuckDuckGo’s place in the search engine arena?

Our validation comes from users, which is the only validation that matters to us. Google’s mention is a bit of hyperbole given how small we are in comparison, though it is appreciated.