DuckDuckGo, Google Search’s Privacy Focussed Competitor, Get’s A Design Overhaul

When DuckDuckGo launched as a search engine in 2008 by Gabriel Weinberg, many people thought they were completely insane and out of their minds. How could DuckDuckGo, a tiny, Philadelphia-based startup, go up against Google? One way, was by respecting user privacy.

According to a blog post from DuckDuckGo chief executive Gabriel Weinberg, the search engine will relaunch next month with much-requested features such as image search, place search, and auto-suggest. Users can try out the new service here.

“This next version of DuckDuckGo focuses on smarter answers and a more refined look. We’ve also added many new features you’ve been requesting like images, auto-suggest, places and more. Of course, your privacy is protected as well!” Says Gabriel.

The new features with small changes makes DuckDuckGo far more appealing to new visitors. However the major improvements are for the search results page which is awesome.

DuckDuckGo is growing at an impressive rate so far. DuckDuckGo has more than 5 million queries on a average per day which is very impressive.

“Every year, we’ve grown 200-500%,” Weinberg says. “The numbers keep getting bigger.” As of February, DuckDuckGo was seeing more than 4 million search queries per day.

Given the fact that DuckDuckGo has a huge giant competitor Google in front of them, what might be the secret weapon of DuckDuckGo? Well, DuckDuckGo is hardcore on privacy. Simply put when you search for something on DuckDuckGo’s search engine  it doesn’t know who you are. There are no user accounts. Your IP address isn’t logged by default. The site doesn’t use search cookies to keep track of what you do over time or where else you go online. It doesn’t save your search history.

A small company going up against a giant, listening to the people, giving them what they want, working collaboratively,quietly making a difference! They’ve got my vote! I guess it’s time to change our search engine to DuckDuckGo!