The audience of the DuckDuckGo search engine has grown 7 times thanks to Snowden

The DuckDuckGo search engine, which has the main goal of protecting the privacy of users, has been running for six years. But the most significant jump in attendance at the DDG came in the last two years, after the publication of Edward Snowden's documents on NSA spying. At this point, the audience began to increase dramatically, which is still happening.

Since that time, the number of searches increased by 600% , that is, seven times.

This was told by executive director Gabe Weinberg (Gabe Weinberg) in an interview with CNBC.


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According to DDG statistics, 3 billion search queries are processed annually. One of the best days of 2013 was Friday immediately after the publication of the first Snowden documents on the PRISM surveillance program with the participation of Google, when DDG processed 2.54 million requests in 24 hours. Since then, growth has continued. Now the search engine for the first time is approaching the mark of 10 million searches per day.



Such an increase in popularity should not be surprising. Judging by polls, most users are annoyed by the fact that they are being watched by the search engine. For example, a Pew survey showed that 40% of Americans do not want a search engine to keep search history, and even more so use it for advertising purposes. DuckDuckGo does not do this, unlike Google.

“It's a myth that you need to keep track of your users' history in order to show ads to them,” says Weinberg. - We use keywords. If you wrote "car" in the search box, then you will be shown advertising cars. "

At the same time, it is known that users very slowly change their habits regarding the protection of confidential data. But in the case of DuckDuckGo, the search engine takes care of them: “If the FBI or the NSA comes to us, then we have no information related to you,” said Weinberg.

Well, the growing popularity of DuckDuckGo led to the fact that the company doubled its staff: up to 28 people. Their success even caused rumors of the imminent acquisition of a search engine by some large corporation. The most likely candidate to buy is Apple. Then, with an anonymous search, it will probably be over.