PAOLI, PA. , Gabriel Weinberg is creator of duckduckgo.com, a search engine that does not track ... [+]
DuckDuckGo is proving privacy matters.
The Paoli, PA-based Google search alternative, which prides itself on its privacy policy, hit 102,251,307 total queries on Monday, the first time it has exceeded the 100 million mark.
In November 2019, DuckDuckGo reached the 50 million searches per day milestone. So it took a little more than a year to hit the 100 million mark.
It reached the 30 million mark in October of 2018.
DuckDuckGo is not an immediate threat to Google. Though exact figures aren’t available, Google gets many billions of queries per day.
And DuckDuckGo isn’t the only rival to Google. Both Microsoft’s Bing and Baidu (China) have about a 10 percent share of search results, according to SmartInsights.
Privacy as core principle
DuckDuckGo says it doesn’t collect or share any personal information.
As a result, DuckDuckGo has no personal data to sell and says it won’t follow you around with ads like Google since it’s not storing your search history.
Privacy concerns are also behind the growth of encrypted messaging services like Signal and Telegram amid concerns about Facebook-owned WhatsApp and its announcement about delaying its new privacy policy.
Over the past week, users have flocked to Signal and Telegram, making them “the two hottest apps in the world,” according to the New York Times.
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