DuckDuckGo

A few weeks ago, I switched from Google to DuckDuckGo as my search engine. Google has been tone-deaf for a while now towards privacy issues in general and I was wondering if I could wean myself of Google’s services. I thought I’d start with search.

DuckDuckGo’s main selling point is that it is not tracking you. Even though they’ve been around for a long time, it’s refreshing to see a company who doesn’t track you. Apparently they’ve been cash flow positive for a long time. Clearly, you don’t need to track people to build a viable business in search.

I’ve tried DuckDuckGo in the past though and I wasn’t impressed with the search results, but that was a long time ago.

Today is different and I can report it’s good enough. I’ve switched over my iPhone, iPad and laptops to use DuckDuckGo by default.

It took me a while to get used to the results of DuckDuckGo. I can’t really quantify what it was, but I found myself reverting back to Google for 1 out of 2 searches. DuckDuckGo makes it real easy, just add !g to your search and it refers your browser to Google. It might have been a confidence thing, but in the second week I found myself reverting to Google less and less. This week I’ve barely touched Google’s search at all.

Next up is Google Maps. Let’s see if Apple Maps has improved since the embarrassing introduction back in 2012.