DuckDuckGo was founded by Gabriel Weinberg,
[14][15] an entrepreneur whose last venture,
The Names Database, was acquired by
United Online in 2006 for $10 million.
[16] Initially self-funded by Weinberg, DuckDuckGo is now advertising-supported.
[17] The search engine is written in
Perl and runs on
nginx,
FreeBSD and
Linux.
[1][18][19]
DuckDuckGo is built primarily upon search
APIs from various vendors. Because of this,
TechCrunch characterized the service as a “hybrid” search engine.
[20][21] At the same time, it produces its own content pages, and thus is similar to
Mahalo,
Kosmix and
SearchMe.
[22]
The name of the search engine has been called “silly” by Frederic Lardinois of
Read Write Web.
[23] Weinberg explained the beginnings of the name with respect to the children’s game
duck, duck, goose.
He said of the origin of the name, “Really it just popped in my head
one day and I just liked it. It is certainly influenced/derived from
duck duck goose, but other than that there is no relation, e.g., a
metaphor.”
[24] DuckDuckGo has been featured on
TechCrunch‘s Elevator Pitch Friday
[20] and it was a finalist in the
BOSS Mashable Challenge.
[25]
We didn’t invest in it because we thought it would beat Google. We
invested in it because there is a need for a private search engine. We
did it for the Internet anarchists, people that hang out on
Reddit and
Hacker News.
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.
In September 2011 DuckDuckGo hired its first employee, Caine Tighe.[28] The next month, 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.”[29] In addition, Trisquel and the Midori web browser switched to use DuckDuckGo as their default search engine.[30]
By May 2012, the search engine was attracting 1.5 million searches a day. Weinberg reported that it had earned US$115,000 in revenue in 2011 and had three employees, plus a small number of contractors.[31] Compete.com estimated 277,512 monthly visitors to the site in August 2012.[32] On April 12, 2011, Alexa reported a 3-month growth rate of 51%.[33]
DuckDuckGo’s own traffic statistics show that in August 2012 there were
1,393,644 visits per day, up from an average of 39,406 visits per day
in April 2010 (the earliest data available).[34]
In a lengthy profile in November 2012, the Washington Post
indicated that searches on DuckDuckGo numbered up to 45,000,000 per
month in October 2012. The article concluded “Weinberg’s non-ambitious
goals make him a particularly odd and dangerous competitor online. He
can do almost everything that Google or Bing
can’t because it could damage their business models, and if users
figure out that they like the DuckDuckGo way better, Weinberg could
damage the big boys without even really trying. It’s asymmetrical
digital warfare, and his backers at Union Square Ventures say Google is
vulnerable.”[7]
GNOME replaced Google Search with DuckDuckGo as the default search engine in Web, the default GNOME web browser, starting with version 3.10, which was released on September 26, 2013.[35][36] At its keynote at WWDC 2014, Apple announced that DuckDuckGo would be included as an option for search on both iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite.[37]
On March 10, 2014 the Pale Moon web browser, starting with version 24.4.0, included DuckDuckGo as its default search engine as at its homepage.[citation needed]
May 2014 redesign
In May 2014, DuckDuckGo released a redesigned version to beta testers through DuckDuckHack.[38]
On 21 May 2014, DuckDuckGo officially released the redesigned version
that focused on smarter answers and a more refined look. The new version
added many new features such as images, local search, auto-suggest,
weather, recipes and more.[10]
Overview
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This section requires expansion. (November 2014) |
DuckDuckGo’s results are a compilation of “about 50” sources,[39] including Yahoo! Search BOSS; Wikipedia; Wolfram Alpha; Bing; its own Web crawler, the DuckDuckBot; and others.[1][39][40] It also uses data from crowdsourced
sites, including Wikipedia, to populate “Zero-click Info” boxes – grey
boxes above the results that display topic summaries and related topics.[41] DuckDuckGo offers the ability to show mostly shopping sites or mostly info (non-shopping) websites via search buttons on its home page.
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.” However, they do maintain logs of
all search terms used.[42]
Weinberg has refined the quality of his search engine results by deleting search results for companies he believes are content mills, like Demand Media‘s eHow,
which publishes 4000 articles per day produced by paid freelance
writers, which Weinberg says is, “…low-quality content designed
specifically to rank highly in Google’s search index.” DuckDuckGo also
filters pages with substantial advertising.[43]
Tor hidden service
In August 2010, DuckDuckGo introduced anonymous searching, including an exit enclave, for its search engine traffic using Tor network and enabling access through a Tor hidden service.[44][45]
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.”[46]
Voice search
In 2011, DuckDuckGo introduced voice search for users of the Google Chrome‘s voice search extension.[47] DuckDuckGo includes “!Bang” commands, which give users the ability to redirect a search to specific websites.[48]
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 DuckDuckGo…is really good at bringing
back useful sites. It all feels meaty and straightforward and
filler-free…”[49] McCracken also included the site in the Time list of “50 Best Websites of 2011”.[50]
Thom Holwerda, who reviewed the search engine for OSNews,
praised its privacy features and shortcuts to site-specific searches as
well as criticizing Google for, “…track[ing] pretty much everything
you do”, particularly because of the risk of such information being
subject to a U.S. government subpoena.[51] In 2012, in response to accusations that it was a monopoly, Google identified DuckDuckGo as a competitor. Weinberg was reportedly “pleased and entertained” by that acknowledgment.[7]
In June 2013, DuckDuckGo indicated that it had seen a significant
traffic increase; according to the website’s Twitter account, on Monday
June 17, 2013, it had three million daily direct searches. In all of May
2013 it had 1.8 million direct searches. Some[55] relate this claim to the exposure of PRISM and to the fact that other programs operated by the National Security Agency (NSA) were leaked by Edward Snowden. Danny Sullivan wrote on Search Engine Land
that despite the search engine’s growth “it’s not grown anywhere near
the amount to reflect any substantial or even mildly notable switching
by the searching public” for reasons due to privacy, and he concluded
“No One Cares About “Private” Search”.[56] In response, Caleb Garling of the San Francisco Chronicle
argued “I think this thesis suffers from a few key failures in logic”
because a traffic increase had occurred and because there was a lack of
widespread awareness of the existence of DuckDuckGo.[57] Later in September 2013, the search engine hit 4 million searches per day.[58][59][60] On November 11 of 2014, more than 8 million searches were performed in a single day.
Jon Hammond Show Broadcast 03/14/2015 MNN Channel 1- (Mikell’s circa 1989) – Blues In Mikell’s Night – Jon Hammond Late Rent Session Men
Blues In Mikell’s Night – vintage gig in NYC’s premier nightspot Mikell’s at 760 Columbus Avenue – The Musicians: Leslie J. Carter Chuggy Carter percussion
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at the famous studios of SoundCheck Nashville- Pocket Funk as seen on Jon’s TV show Jon Hammond Show 34 years on Manhattan Neighborhood Network channel 1 – special thanks to Hammond Organ USA Gregory Gronowski & Scott May, Ray Gerlich long-time Hammond Technical Supervisor since 1976! also Mark Prentice M.D. for the evening, known as “Sound Soul Summit V” fine players all night long on the new org – Thanks to my friend Chuck Rainey the great studio bassist for coming and hanging with us all night long! And the Suzuki Musical Instruments Team makers of Hammond Organs and Leslie Speakers *from Hamamatsu-shi, Shizuoka, Japan http://www.HammondCast.com #XK5 #NAMMShow #Nashville #SummerNAMM #HammondOrgan
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