Lukáš Čambala
DuckDuckGo CEO Gabe Weinberg revealed in an interview with CNBC that their search service has grown by a whopping 600% over the past two years. A myriad of factors contributed to this growth, but the biggest credit probably goes to Apple, who introduced this search engine as an alternative to Google and others in iOS 8 and Safari 7.1 on the Mac.
Weinberg says that Apple's decision, along with the company's increased emphasis on security and privacy, has had an incredible impact on DuckDuckGo that they never imagined. In the new iOS 8, DuckDuckGo became one of the other possible search engines alongside big players like Google, Yahoo and Bing.
Undoubtedly, the reason for using DuckDuckGo is also the fear of users about their privacy. DuckDuckGo presents itself as a service that does not track user information and is very focused on preserving privacy. This is the exact opposite of Google, which is accused of collecting too much data about its users.
Weinberg revealed in the interview that DuckDuckGo currently covers 3 billion searches per year. When asked how the company makes money when it doesn't provide "tailored" search — which Google, for example, does, which anonymously sells data to advertisers — he says it's based on keyword advertising.
For example, if you type the word "auto" into the search engine, you will be shown ads related to the automotive industry. But by its own admission, it doesn't make much difference to DuckDuckGo in terms of profits if it uses user-tracking ads, as other search engines do, or keyword-based ads.
In addition, DuckDuckGo is clear about this - it does not want to be another service that will spy on users, which is its main competitive advantage.
I've been using it for over a year now and I can't even imagine going back to Google again from a practical point of view :D