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“It’s quite hard to isolate your search engine as opposed to all the other things you do online.”ĭuckDuckGo is expanding beyond the search engine. “It can feel a bit futile as an individual,” said Liz Coll, the head of digital change at Consumers International, a consumer advocacy group. In online reviews at sites like Reddit and Quora, users praising DuckDuckGo’s little features - like shortcuts for searching specific websites, known as bangs - are roughly equal in number to those who find its search results inferior.ĭuckDuckGo is also up against another hard reality of the online world: If you call up DuckDuckGo on the Chrome browser, for example, Google is still logging your search queries. “We don’t think privacy is stopping getting good search results for anybody,” Mr. While DuckDuckGo does not keep data on its users, it can pull the geographic location from each query and serve local results for things like restaurants and news.

Weinberg said the site was designed to make it feel similar to Google, to ease the transition for new users. Type in a question and up pops a list of links that looks like what you’d get from Google, with definitions from Wikipedia at the top and maps supplied through a partnership with Apple Maps. And Google Maps users can switch to OpenStreetMap.ĭuckDuckGo’s search site looks similar to Google, with the G replaced by a playful cartoon head of a duck, who goes by the name Dax. The Firefox and Brave browsers are more focused on privacy than Chrome. Proton Technologies, a Swiss start-up, is taking on Gmail with an alternative email service. “There is a lot of inertia drawing people back to the existing system.”ĭuckDuckGo is not the only upstart that is trying to capitalize on privacy concerns. Weinberg said while sitting in his office in jeans, red sneakers and a black short-sleeve shirt. “It’s not as easy to switch as we’d like it to be,” Mr. It also has to contend with the fact that most people don’t seem willing to give up much to recover their privacy, and are easily overwhelmed when they decide to try to make a change. But unlike others, it does not track the online behavior of its users to personalize the ads.ĭuckDuckGo constantly bumps into Google’s business, which stretches far beyond search. Like other search companies, DuckDuckGo displays ads at the top of each search page. But the challenges faced by DuckDuckGo reflect just how difficult it is to take on the giants and build an internet business that is focused on the privacy of its users.Īfter a decade, the private company’s modest success is an indication that, even as regulators around the world consider tougher rules for the data-tracking methods of big tech companies, selling consumers on privacy-focused services is still an uphill battle.