What I don't get is that DuckDuckGo is a search engine that relies on content and publishers for its own product. When are they going to create value for publishers rather than attack how they frame what "trackers" do? Most people sit on their iphones and androids all day long where everything is tracked and a lot of websites force mobile users to use mobile apps where everything is tracked. Seems disingenuous at best to attack "trackers" without building a viable search/publisher monetization relationship - as seeking out how to monetize search traffic is what created the market for trackers to begin with.

really complicated to compete with Google in their core market. But now that we feel we can handle that

Really?
How many searches happen on G vs DDG?

Whatever it does, DDG has to do something different. There's no way its pockets are deep enough to just do the same as G.
Whether this privacy direction is strong enough, who knows. I think it's a way away right now as people are very happy to continue to share their privacy with search, and even more so with social.

From the article:

“Literally any site you visit you’re likely to have Facebook, Google watching you there. That’s the piece that I think people are starting to wake up to now.”

The other problem that he argues is exacerbated by mass surveillance ad-targeting online business models is filter bubbles — aka the strategy of platforms using people’s own biases as a tactic to keep them clicking by reductively feeding them more of the same stuff.

So there does seem to be a method to their madness. People are waking up to these facts and in some cases, reacting.

the problem they've got is that no one has heard of them. unless you're in the business of knowing them, like we are, then how are the public going to find out? i've never seen an advert for them anywhere. it beats me why rival search engines never advertise

i've never seen an advert for them anywhere

I have. In recent weeks my browser has shown a flurry of DDG popups* on the theme of “They track you. We don’t.” Whether this message is most appropriately conveyed by an unexpected browser message is, of course, a question of its own.


* Not literally popups, since those are blocked categorically. Ads taking up part of the browser window, mysteriously immune to AdBlock.

I've been meaning to use them more, problem I found was that searches sometimes took 2-3 seconds, too long.

How many searches happen on G vs DDG?

IIRC the ratio is about 200:1. Also [duckduckgo.com...] ... maybe closer to 100:1 nowadays

I like DDG and have their search extension installed as an alternate SE for Chrome & Chrome mobile.

Looks they they are making changes to set themselves apart. I support competition in the SE market. The more the better IMO.

DDG is one of the SE options built into FF 57x. Makes it handy.

I've used DDG for ages for principally checking US stuff however in my widget niche I find their UK results has too many US links, sometimes as many as 50%. Don't get me wrong, at least the results are mostly valid unlike G's spam infestation.

I do like their easy country selector and that mostly seems to work well.

One HUGE plus point, a nice clean interface not overloaded with ads.

I think doing something to distinguish themselves is the key to getting enough market share to survive against competitors who are behemoths.

Privacy is a key factor that the competition thinks they are too big to worry about - whereas there are many people who still value it a little. This is especially true in the younger generation - see the trend for instant messaging with end to end encryption and message delete after read functionality.

DDG's SERP utilizes a site's favicon as an icon next to each listing.

A couple years ago I was irritated their bot was retrieving this file from my server so I blocked it, however later I changed my mind and now think it is a nice touch adding a personal distinction for each site... another way DDG sets itself apart from other SEs.

DDG's SERP utilizes a site's favicon as an icon next to each listing.

So does Yandex. But unlike DDG they don't find it necesssary to re-fetch it every time.

This reminds me that some sites may need to poke a hole in access controls, because the DDG favicon request is always preceded by a root request, and both come with an auto-referer:

107.21.1.8 - - [19/Jan/2018:07:36:50 -0800] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 2808 "http://example.com/" "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; DuckDuckGo-Favicons-Bot/1.0; +http://duckduckgo.com)" 
107.21.1.8 - - [19/Jan/2018:07:36:51 -0800] "GET /favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 200 661 "http://example.com/favicon.ico" "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; DuckDuckGo-Favicons-Bot/1.0; +http://duckduckgo.com)" 

(They vary between 107.21 and 54.208.) If the root is blocked, they don't request the favicon--unlike, say, Google's old faviconbot which went ahead either way. So if you want to look nice in DDG's SERP, you have to allow auto-referers.

@RedBAr similar my experience. Good results, not good at UK only, and I like their interface.

The privacy Policy becomes important more and more ,What a hot problem is the security of personal information .The collector of the information must be higely Professional quality。