Google alternative DuckDuckGo hit 3.1M queries yesterday, up 50% in 8 days as PRISM fears rise

[onehandle]

Last edited Wed Jun 19, 2013, 07:50 AM - Edit history (3)

Source: TNW

Just over a week after passing a record 2 million searches in a single day, DuckDuckGo has announced a new milestone: the company processed 3,095,907 searches yesterday. DuckDuckGo made it clear that this stat does not include yesterday’s 18.9 million searches via its API and approximately half a million bot searches.

It’s no coincidence that DuckDuckGo’s stats are climbing as the PRISM and larger NSA surveillance controversy grows. The startup has received considerable attention as a Google alternative — remember, Google was cited as a main data source for PRISM. After facing severe criticism for its involvement, Google appealed to the US government in hopes of sharing more about the data requests it receives.

Following the PRISM controversy, we reached out to DuckDuckGo CEO and founder Gabriel Weinberg, who clarified that he believes DuckDuckGo could never be of use to PRISM:

…if the NSA were to come to us and ask for all our data, it would not be useful to them because our data is truly anonymous (as opposed to psudo-anonymous, which is never really anonymous).

Read more: http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/06/18/anonymous-search-engine-duckduckgo-hit-nearly-3-1-million-searches-yesterday-as-surveillance-fears-grow

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How to install a DuckDuckGo button in Safari:
http://help.duckduckgo.com/customer/portal/articles/216447-safari

Other browsers:
http://help.duckduckgo.com/customer/portal/topics/292237-desktop/articles

[Spitfire of ATJ]

1. How many remember when the #1 search engine was webcrawler?

[JimDandy]

7. I remember webcrawler when google wasn't even a

glint in Page's eye. And one of my email addys is from yahoo's earliest days.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

8. One of mine goes back to the days of netscape navigator.

[JimDandy]

9. I really loved netscape navigator. I still have

disks for installing it. That's how old I'm getting, darn it!

[Spitfire of ATJ]

41. You know you're old when you have 5.25 disks of Windows Version 1.

[Politicub]

46. And when altavista was the shiznit!

I could write a mean Altavista query back in the day.

Then all the sudden it turned into crap.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

47. Then there was Excite...

Oh hell, let's just look at the old bookmarks...

http://alltheweb.com/
http://www.altavista.com/
http://www.ask.com/
http://www.excite.com/
http://www.google.com/
http://www.hotbot.com/
http://www.kartoo.com/
http://www.lycos.com/
http://home.netscape.com/bookmark/4_79/netscapesearch.html
http://www.webcrawler.com/

[Politicub]

48. And before all that - gopher search. Yeah, I said it.

Wish I had my old bookmarks from back in the day!

[sofa king]

51. I remember when the #1 answer was always, "porno."

I remember when half of the top twenty answers to ANY query would be pornography websites. Eventually I moved to meta-search engines like Dogpile so that I could better wade through the porno swamp. Webcrawler's S&M cosplay jungle was always well represented in Dogpile.

I remember reading an article in Scientific American, before it jumped the shark, by the founders of Google, explaining how their search algorithms tested a website for authority by noting how many other sites cited them, which wound up temporarily excluding most of the porno sites from the top search results.

There were only a handful of search engines that made any impression on me. Before Google, the advanced queries of Northern Lights seemed like a miracle compared to Altavista, and Altavista's own Boolean modifiers were much superior to any of the other crap out there.

That damned spider showed me nothing but porn for second half of the 1990s. Mostly bad porn, too, because hell yes, I looked anyway!

Edit: By the way, Google averages five billion--with a B--search queries a day. DDG's popularity will have to increase by an order of magnitude in order to threaten to steal one percent of Google's volume.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

53. You are right about Webcrawler and bad porn sites...

That's why everyone went to Excite for the good stuff,...and why it got it's name.

It says a lot about humanity that the ability to unite the species globally was used first to masturbate.

[KT2000]

2. because it was posted here

I am using it. Like it too.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

3. Who owns duck? The NSA? Yes I'm cynical.

Cut out the middle man, I say.

[Nictuku]

35. I admit it, I wondered that as well.

[PatrynXX]

4. preferred ask jeeves till they fired him..

but like the idiots on the right thinking their ammo is going bye bye. I'm hardly going to care. Like hello hows the porn biz. seriously.. X_X do they give a shit I'm looking for a good quality video of Rammstein's Pussy?

[alp227]

5. Thom Hartmann mentions this site on his show. Credit him for popularizing DDG. n/t

[xtraxritical]

31. There's another search engine that does not send your ipo it's ixquick.com it's good.

ixquick.com

[Nedsdag]

52. I use ixquick as well

It is very good.

Does anyone remember Scroogle.org? That was mine before they had to cease business.

[DeSwiss]

6. TY! I have it now. :-) - K&R n/t

[randr]

10. Why is DU still defering to Google as its search engine?

[onehandle]

11. $. nt

[tridim]

21. That is one hell of an accusation against DU. Wow!

[RandiFan1290]

13. Same reason the republican trolls are allowed to stay

$$$$$$$

[panzerfaust]

49. Why believe one Search Engine CEO over another ... ?!?

My own belief is that everything is tracked anyway. For a few years I used things like Tor - but have finally just given up.

However there are search engines which give more useful (at least to me) results than Google

My favorite for the past few years is Carrot - which groups results by logical clusters (such as general sub-topic, web-address etc) as this allows faster weeding out of irrelevant results:
http://search.carrot2.org/stable/search

The first clustering engine I tried underwent a variety of name changes and is now called "clusty.com" and is, I believe, owned by RW nutters and so now stay away. The reason I think this is that several times when searching, the terms are rejected with a big "Not On MY Web you don't!!" This occurred when I was looking for sources for a talk on obstetrical complications and, most amusingly, when I was looking for drivers for a video-card which apparently had an unacceptable to Clusty name.

The most innovative, but disappointing, search engine (which is called a "computational knowledge engine&quot which I continue to try every few months (and which has NEVER - in well over a hundred trys - returned a useful result) is:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/

In the past have used both DogPile and DuckDuckGo - mostly because of the names - but they do not offer clustering and return fewer results than G. Heck, have even tried Bing - again it has no advantage.


Try carrot - I think you will appreciate the presorting.

[madokie]

12. I use ixquick

How to the two compare?

[onehandle]

14. I think duckduckgo's results are better and presented in an easier format to parse.

Also, Google in a response to being accused of being a monopoly, named duckduckgo as a 'competitor.'

Additionally duckduckgo is an American company, ixquick is an overseas company.

But either is fine, as long as you use Google less to none.

[madokie]

15. thanks

[tridim]

16. How is this post not an advertisement for duckduckgo?

[MannyGoldstein]

18. Only an ad for people who have something to hide

People with nothing to hide have nothing to be concerned about. Our government spies don't make mistakes.

[tridim]

19. So it is an advertisement IYO?

Are you going to alert it, or should I?

[MannyGoldstein]

20. Go get 'em, sport.

All yours.

Good luck.

[tridim]

22. Now, I do the opposite...

Because as you know you're wrong 100% of the time. Thanks pal!

[MannyGoldstein]

23. Ha Ha! My plot succeeded!

I knew that by agreeing with you I could change your mind and save this advertisement for a Hater site.

[ozone_man]

25. Truly, you have a dizzying intellect. n/t

[rhett o rick]

38. I will go as far as the "dizzying" part. nm

[rhett o rick]

39. I sent one in and signed your name.

I'm kidding. Go ahead.

[panzerfaust]

50. The OP is information, not advertising. God.

What the DU really needs if fewer self-appointed censors.

[Dreamer Tatum]

34. In fairness to the OP, it's really anti-serious-Apple-competitors.

Not so much an ad for a boutique search engine.

Because the OP is almost certainly a paid Apple shill.

[MannyGoldstein]

17. I just set it to my home page

I'm tired of all Spy-on-Everyone™ programs, both government and corporate.

[CountAllVotes]

24. http://www.dogpile.com/

http://www.dogpile.com/

An oldie but a goody!

& recommend.

[Gormy Cuss]

32. I used dogpile just because of its name.

It was pretty good. Maybe I should add it to my search engine list again.

[CountAllVotes]

33. It's kind of cool

It tells you the source for each link it *barfs* up.

You can opt to NOT click on one that says "Google" for where the link is from.

I hated that name when I first heard of it some 15+ years ago but I never forgot it! Kind of hard to forget the name of a search engine named "dogpile" I'd say.

If you opt to use it, it has a little paw print that you see. Kinda cool eh?

[onehandle]

37. I remember when dogpile was my main search.

Google was just a glimmer in some ad executive's eye.

[Buzz Clik]

26. LOL!

We is stupid people.

[treestar]

27. I hate the you have nothing to hide argument as much as anyone

but it never occurred to me to fear using Google on the idea the government would look at my emails.

[onehandle]

28. Google looks at every bit of your 'free' Google services activity to target you for ads.

It's a treasure trove of cached information, so why not the government?

I know I tell people not to use Google at all, but at the least, we need to diversify our Internet usage.

[treestar]

29. Exactly, they want to target ads

and get me to spend money. The government on the other hand - what would they get out of it.

[onehandle]

30. Good question.

Only time will tell.

[rhett o rick]

40. I agree with you. The government would never want to spy on citizens. nm

[Luminous Animal]

36. That's my new search engine. Both at work and at home.

[rhett o rick]

42. I started yesterday and I like it so far. nm

[toddaa]

43. It's been my go to search engine quite some time

Beyond the privacy factor, it returns better results when I'm searching for tech related info.

[Delphinus]

44. I used

Scroogle.org for years until it had to go out of business. Since then, Startpage.com.

[ramapo]

45. Out of the bubble

I had not heard about this search engine. Gave it a brief try and like what I see so far. I was surprised to learn it has been around for awhile.