From the «bangs for the win» department:
Feed: Daring Fireball
Title: DuckDuckGo Continues to Grow
Author: John Gruber
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2021 19:10:32 -0400
Link: https://spreadprivacy.com/duckduckgrowing/

I missed this state-of-the-company update from DuckDuckGo last week:

*
DuckDuckGrowth over the last 12 months: 50M+ app downloads, 55% search
traffic increase, #2 search engine on mobile in the U.S., Canada,
Australia, the Netherlands & more.
* In the coming weeks, we’re adding new free privacy protections in beta
including a cross-platform email privacy solution & app tracker blocking
on Android devices.
* Later this year, we’ll release a beta of the first-ever DuckDuckGo desktop
app, which can be used as a primary browser.
* DuckDuckGo has been profitable since 2014 with revenues now $100M+/yr. In
late 2020, we completed a $100M+ mainly secondary investment from new &
existing investors.

#2 search engine on mobile in the U.S. is huge — that would put them ahead of
Bing, which comes from a slightly larger company than DuckDuckGo. It also puts
them ahead of Yahoo, which was at one time a very well-known company. (I swear
that’s true.)
★ [1]

Links:
[1]: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/06/24/duckduckgo-growth (link)

--
Port 80 is overrated.

On 2021-07-09 at 1:36:12 pm BST, "RS Wood" <rsw@therandymon.com> wrote:

> From the «bangs for the win» department:
> Feed: Daring Fireball
> Title: DuckDuckGo Continues to Grow
> Author: John Gruber
> Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2021 19:10:32 -0400
> Link: https://spreadprivacy.com/duckduckgrowing/
>
> I missed this state-of-the-company update from DuckDuckGo last week:
>
>
> *
> DuckDuckGrowth over the last 12 months: 50M+ app downloads, 55% search
> traffic increase, #2 search engine on mobile in the U.S., Canada,
> Australia, the Netherlands & more.
> *
> In the coming weeks, we’re adding new free privacy protections in beta
> including a cross-platform email privacy solution & app tracker blocking
> on Android devices.
> *
> Later this year, we’ll release a beta of the first-ever DuckDuckGo desktop
> app, which can be used as a primary browser.
> *
> DuckDuckGo has been profitable since 2014 with revenues now $100M+/yr. In
> late 2020, we completed a $100M+ mainly secondary investment from new &
> existing investors.
>
>
> #2 search engine on mobile in the U.S. is huge — that would put them ahead of
> Bing, which comes from a slightly larger company than DuckDuckGo. It also puts
> them ahead of Yahoo, which was at one time a very well-known company. (I swear
> that’s true.)
> ★ [1]
>
> Links:
> [1]: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/06/24/duckduckgo-growth (link)

I've been using DDG for search for several years now, and hardly ever need to
use Google nowadays.

RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> wrote:
> From the <<bangs for the win>> department:
> Feed: Daring Fireball
> Title: DuckDuckGo Continues to Grow
> Author: John Gruber
> Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2021 19:10:32 -0400
> Link: https://spreadprivacy.com/duckduckgrowing/
>
> I missed this state-of-the-company update from DuckDuckGo last week:
>
> *
> DuckDuckGrowth over the last 12 months: 50M+ app downloads, 55% search
> traffic increase, #2 search engine on mobile in the U.S., Canada,
> Australia, the Netherlands & more.
> *
> In the coming weeks, we're adding new free privacy protections in beta
> including a cross-platform email privacy solution & app tracker blocking
> on Android devices.
> *
> Later this year, we'll release a beta of the first-ever DuckDuckGo desktop
> app, which can be used as a primary browser.
> *
> DuckDuckGo has been profitable since 2014 with revenues now $100M+/yr. In
> late 2020, we completed a $100M+ mainly secondary investment from new &
> existing investors.

Referring to the rest of DDG's news post, a lot of this privacy
talk seems like marketing overreach to me. While using a search
engine that (you trust) doesn't track you is certainly part of a
privacy mix, it obviously does nothing to prevent any web server
admin seeing your IP address in their own connection logs. With web
infrastructure becomming more centralised by services such as AWS
and Cloudflare, those services also get that capacity to trace
connections to a significant percentage of websites overall.

Besides the promises about not tracking me (which, like with VPN
services, I don't really trust without a way to prove them), I
really like the "lite" interface and the customisation that's
available with URL Parameters (particularly disabling ads). I
hope those things don't get lost amongst this obvious facination
with being the next Google - you know, getting into email,
launching a browser, you can see where this is going...

I think they should put their money into matching search features.
Eg. I went over to Google yesterday to use their feature of
searching for images similar to an image you upload (after checking
in DDG's non-lite site that they still don't have an equivalent).
Granted the results that Google spat back were completely useless,
but still...

--
__ __
#_ < |\| |< _#

On 7/9/2021 9:57 PM, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
> RS Wood<rsw@therandymon.com> wrote:
>> From the<<bangs for the win>> department:
>> Feed: Daring Fireball
>> Title: DuckDuckGo Continues to Grow
>> Author: John Gruber
>> Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2021 19:10:32 -0400
>> Link: https://spreadprivacy.com/duckduckgrowing/
>>
>> I missed this state-of-the-company update from DuckDuckGo last week:
>>
>> *
>> DuckDuckGrowth over the last 12 months: 50M+ app downloads, 55% search
>> traffic increase, #2 search engine on mobile in the U.S., Canada,
>> Australia, the Netherlands& more.
>> *
>> In the coming weeks, we're adding new free privacy protections in beta
>> including a cross-platform email privacy solution& app tracker blocking
>> on Android devices.
>> *
>> Later this year, we'll release a beta of the first-ever DuckDuckGo desktop
>> app, which can be used as a primary browser.
>> *
>> DuckDuckGo has been profitable since 2014 with revenues now $100M+/yr. In
>> late 2020, we completed a $100M+ mainly secondary investment from new&
>> existing investors.
>
> Referring to the rest of DDG's news post, a lot of this privacy
> talk seems like marketing overreach to me. While using a search
> engine that (you trust) doesn't track you is certainly part of a
> privacy mix, it obviously does nothing to prevent any web server
> admin seeing your IP address in their own connection logs. With web
> infrastructure becomming more centralised by services such as AWS
> and Cloudflare, those services also get that capacity to trace
> connections to a significant percentage of websites overall.
>
> Besides the promises about not tracking me (which, like with VPN
> services, I don't really trust without a way to prove them), I
> really like the "lite" interface and the customisation that's
> available with URL Parameters (particularly disabling ads). I
> hope those things don't get lost amongst this obvious facination
> with being the next Google - you know, getting into email,
> launching a browser, you can see where this is going...
>
> I think they should put their money into matching search features.
> Eg. I went over to Google yesterday to use their feature of
> searching for images similar to an image you upload (after checking
> in DDG's non-lite site that they still don't have an equivalent).
> Granted the results that Google spat back were completely useless,
> but still...
>

I think it's worth it to be out of Google's clutches. Those targeted
"tracking" ads that follow you around... they've basically entirely
stopped since I've disassociated myself with Google a few years ago.

On Fri, 9 Jul 2021, RS Wood wrote:

> DuckDuckGrowth over the last 12 months: 50M+ app downloads, 55% search
> traffic increase, #2 search engine on mobile in the U.S., Canada,
> Australia, the Netherlands & more.
> *
> In the coming weeks, we’re adding new free privacy protections in beta
> including a cross-platform email privacy solution & app tracker blocking
> on Android devices.
> *
> Later this year, we’ll release a beta of the first-ever DuckDuckGo desktop
> app, which can be used as a primary browser.

DDG is not what it says it is. Doesn't respect your privacy and is known
to have shady connections ...

https://freedomoutpost.com/duck-duck-gos-far-left-political-donations-and-abuse-of-user-data-have-users-fuming/

https://ydraft.com/ethical-hacker-claims-duckduckgo-tracks-user-data-history/

https://stillnessinthestorm.com/2020/11/duckduckgo-selling-data-to-google/

--
₪ BUD ₪

Michael Trew <mt999999@ymail.com> wrote:
> On 7/9/2021 9:57 PM, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
>>
>> Besides the promises about not tracking me (which, like with VPN
>> services, I don't really trust without a way to prove them), I
>> really like the "lite" interface and the customisation that's
>> available with URL Parameters (particularly disabling ads). I
>> hope those things don't get lost amongst this obvious facination
>> with being the next Google - you know, getting into email,
>> launching a browser, you can see where this is going...
>>
>> I think they should put their money into matching search features.
>> Eg. I went over to Google yesterday to use their feature of
>> searching for images similar to an image you upload (after checking
>> in DDG's non-lite site that they still don't have an equivalent).
>> Granted the results that Google spat back were completely useless,
>> but still...
>
> I think it's worth it to be out of Google's clutches. Those targeted
> "tracking" ads that follow you around... they've basically entirely
> stopped since I've disassociated myself with Google a few years ago.

Browsing with Dillo, or NoScript in Firefox, does that for me
regardless of how I do my searches.

--
__ __
#_ < |\| |< _#

Computer Nerd Kev <not@telling.you.invalid> wrote:
> Referring to the rest of DDG's news post, a lot of this privacy
> talk seems like marketing overreach to me.

DDG has an onion address for searching over TOR, Google tends to ban exit
nodes “for abuse” and requires captchas which of course use all kinds of
fingerprinting JS to uniquely ID your computer. And of course Google, an
In-Q-Tel proprietary, does NOT support onion addresses.

DDG is demonstrably more private.