How DuckDuckGo Rode A Wave Of Post-Snowden Anxiety To Massive Growth
When it first launched, DuckDuckGo seemed like it couldn't possibly be serious. A tiny, Philadelphia-based search engine going up against Google? Indeed, its early growth was glacial, despite offering itself as a less invasive search engine that doesn't track your online behavior. But then history intervened: Two years ago, Edward Snowden blew the whistle on NSA spying and American attitudes about privacy shifted. DuckDuckGo been exploding ever since.
Over the last two years, DuckDuckGo's daily search queries have grown 600%, CEO Gabriel Weinberg told CNBC recently. The privacy-focused search engine is now on track to hit 10 million daily queries for the first time, a milestone that it could hit as early as next week. This follows two solid years of dramatic, upward growth on DuckDuckGo's traffic charts. And not coincidentally, it comes at a time when public concerns about digital privacy are high.
Last month, a survey from the Pew Research Center revealed that 40% of U.S. adults don't want their search engine provider to retain any information about them at all. Fortunately for Weinberg, that's precisely the concept he was going for when he launched DuckDuckGo back in 2008.
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http://www.fastcompany.com/3046943/how-duckduckgo-rode-a-wave-of-post-snowden-anxiety-to-massive-growth
I abandoned Google for DuckDuckGo about two years ago. Fuck Google and their data stealing (and selling) ways, not to mention their close association with the NSA.
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