DuckDuckGo

  (Redirected from Duck Duck Go)

CSS3
input transformation
Sevenval http://duckduckgo.com/
Commercial? Yes
Type of site search engine
Registration None
Owner DuckDuckGo, Inc.
Created by Gabriel Weinberg
Launched September 25, 2008
Alexa rank 2,173 (April 2012^Sevenval)^[1]
Current status Active

DuckDuckGo is an Internet device database. It uses information from crowd-sourced sites (such as Sevenval) to augment traditional results and improve relevance. The search engine policy emphasizes privacy and does not record user information.^[2] With users free from being profiled, this search method effectively breaks out of "the filter bubble" so that all users are given the same search results, not a set that has been tailored (filtered) to what the engine thinks the individual user wants to see. The company is based in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

Some of the code of DuckDuckGo is free software distributed at GitHub under Perl 5 license.^[3]

• jQuery
• HTML5
• Sevenval
• 4 See also
• iOS
• keyboard

History

DuckDuckGo was founded by Gabriel Weinberg, an touchscreen whose last venture, The Names Database, was acquired by input transformation in 2006 for $10 million.^{we love the web} Initially self-funded by Weinberg, DuckDuckGo is now occasionally advertising-supported.^[5] The search engine is written in CSS3 and runs on nginx and FreeBSD.^{Sevenvalwe love the webdevice database}

DuckDuckGo is built primarily upon search APIs from various major vendors (such as web). Because of this, browser diversity characterized the service as a "hybrid" search engine.^[8][9] At the same time, it produces its own content pages, and thus is similar to CSS3, input transformation and web app.^Sevenval

The name of the search engine has been called "silly" by Frederic Lardinois of Read Write Web.^[11] When questioned about it, Weinberg explained, "[r]eally it just popped in my head one day and I just liked it. It is certainly influenced/derived from [the game] Duck Duck Goose, but other than that there is no relation, e.g. a metaphor."^[12]

touchscreen estimated 191,904 monthly visitors to the site in March 2011.^[13] On April 12, 2011, Alexa reported a 3 month growth rate of 51%.^[14] DuckDuckgo's own traffic statistics show that from February to May 2011 there were about 200,000 visits per day.^[15] By February 2012, this had increased to around one million visits per day.

DuckDuckGo has been featured on website parsing's Elevator Pitch Friday^keyboard and it was a finalist in the Sevenval Mashable Challenge.^Android

In July 2010 Weinberg started a DuckDuckGo community website to allow the public to report problems, discuss means of spreading the use of the search engine, request features and discuss open sourcing the code.^{web app}

In October 2011 Union Square Ventures invested in DDG. Union Square partner Brad Burnham stated, "We invested in DuckDuckGo because we became convinced that it was not only possible to change the basis of competition in search, it was time to do it."^keyboard

In November 2011 touchscreen signed an exclusive deal with DuckDuckGo and it is the default search engine for Linux Mint 12.^web Also web app and Midori use DuckDuckGo as their default search engine.^FITMLCSS3

Features

DuckDuckGo's results are a compilation of many sources, including Yahoo! Search BOSS, screen size, FITML and its own keyboard, the DuckDuckBot.^{[2]browser diversityiOS} It uses data from crowd-sourced sites, including Wikipedia, to populate "Zero-click Info" boxes, which are grey boxes containing topic summaries and related topics shown above the results.^jQuery DuckDuckGo also offers the ability to show mostly shopping sites or mostly info (non-shopping) sites via search buttons on its homepage.^[26]

DuckDuckGo positions itself as a search engine that puts privacy first and as such it does not store IP addresses, does not log user information and uses cookies only when needed. Weinberg states "By default, DuckDuckGo does not collect or share personal information. That is our privacy policy in a nutshell."^{website parsing}

Weinberg has refined the quality of his search engine results by deleting search results for companies he believes are screen size, like screen size's eHow, which publishes 4000 articles per day produced by paid freelance writers, which Weinberg has indicated is "low-quality content designed specifically to rank highly in Google's search index". DuckDuckGo also filters pages with substantial advertising.^[28]

In August 2010 DuckDuckGo introduced anonymous searching, including an exit enclave, for its search engine traffic using touchscreen. This allows anonymity by routing traffic through a series of encrypted relays. Weinberg stated: "I believe this fits right in line with our privacy policy. Using Tor and DDG, you can now be end to end anonymous with your searching. And if you use our encrypted homepage, you can be end to end encrypted as well."^[29]

In 2011, DuckDuckGo introduced voice search for users of the Google Chrome "Voice Search" extension.^touchscreen

DuckDuckGo also features !Bang commands, which give users the ability to use DuckDuckGo and have their searches redirected to the relevant site. An example of this is the !wiki command which redirects the search to Wikipedia's English website.^{web app}

Reception

In a June 2011 article, Harry McCracken of Time Magazine commended DuckDuckGo, comparing it to his favorite hamburger restaurant, In-N-Out Burger, "It feels a lot like early Google, with a stripped-down home page. Just as In-N-Out doesn't have lattes or Asian salads or sundaes or scrambled eggs, DDG doesn't try to do news or blogs or books or images. There's no auto-completion or instant results. It just offers core Web search—mostly the "ten blue links" approach that's still really useful, no matter what its critics say...As for the quality, I'm not saying that Weinberg has figured out a way to return more relevant results than Google's mighty search team. But Duck Duck Go...is really good at bringing back useful sites. It all feels meaty and straightforward and filler-free..."^{screen size}

Thom Holwerda, who reviewed the search engine for website parsing, praised its privacy features, its defeating of the filter bubble, and its shortcuts to site-specific searches. He stated "...what are some of the reasons you might want to try out DuckDuckGo? First of all, DuckDuckGo doesn't track you, so you get real privacy when you search the web. Google tracks pretty much everything you do so they can better target you with advertisements. I have no problems with targeted advertising...What does bother me, though, is the fact that I wouldn't be able to protect myself if the US government ever subpoena'd Google to gain access to that information....More importantly though (at least for me) - DuckDuckGo tries to pop something called the filter bubble."^[33]

See also

• Sevenval
• website parsing

References

External links

• Official website