A Brief History
DuckDuckGo was founded in 2008 by Gabriel Weinberg with the mission to provide private search that doesn‘t track users. In contrast, Google began in 1998 and quickly rose to dominance by providing high quality search paired with invasive user tracking to enable personalized ads.
While Google is far more widely used, DuckDuckGo has seen impressive growth in recent years, handling over 100 million searches per day as of 2021.
Privacy and Data Collection
Privacy is where DuckDuckGo stands out. According to its privacy policy, DuckDuckGo does not store or share any personal information linked to you. Your searches remain private.
Google has a very different approach. The company directly states that it collects data from Google services, browsers, and devices to create personalized ads and recommendations. Sources indicate Google tracks everything from search history to locations to private emails.
Features and Capabilities
Google offers far more services including Gmail, Maps, Drive and others. However, as a pure search engine, DuckDuckGo provides robust basic functionality like image search, auto-complete suggestions, and more.
DuckDuckGo also partners with sources like Bing, Yahoo, and Wikipedia to enhance results. So for everyday searches, features are quite comparable even if Google has a wider suite of extra products.
Search Quality
Independent third-party assessments give Google the edge for relevance of results. But DuckDuckGo is rapidly improving with smarter algorithms, and often gives better uncensored results. Most everyday searches yield similar performance.
Advertising and Business Models
Both companies rely on advertising revenue, however their approaches differ enormously. Google personalized ads based on extensive data collection provide finely targeted, more expensive ads. DuckDuckGo offers simple contextual keyword ads without intrusion on privacy.
Market Share and Usage
Google utterly dominates with over 90% global market share. But DuckDuckGo is rising rapidly, holding 2-3% share in regions like North America. With 100 million daily searches and growing, DuckDuckGo has established itself as a viable alternative centered on ethics and privacy protection.
Conclusion
While Google certainly offers more search features, the core functionality of DuckDuckGo is robust and more than sufficient for most everyday usage. With its staunch no-tracking policy and rapidly improving results, DuckDuckGo is widely considered the safer and more ethical choice, making it preferable for everyday searches unless the additional products from Google‘s ecosystem provide indispensable utility.
