SP’s: DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg takes a dig at Google in his AMA session saying, “It is a myth you need to track people to make money in Web search”.
There are less evil ways to make money and the self-proclaimed privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo abides by the ethics.
Its CEO Gabriel Weinberg, in his latest AMA (ask me anything) at the Hacker News platform on October 7, reassured a concerned user saying that DuckDuckGo is not sinking and is actually profitable.
Taking a dig at Google, Weiner further said,
“It is a myth you need to track people to make money in Web search. Most of the money is still made without tracking people by showing you ads based on your keyword, i.e. type in car and get a car ad. These ads are lucrative because people have buying intent. All that tracking is for the rest of the Internet without this search intent, and that’s why you’re tracked across the Internet with those same ads.”
DuckDuckGo search engine was launched seven years back but got a massive user base and an exponential 600% increase in traffic after ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s revelations and he warned the public to avoid Google and Facebook.
Despite all the efforts from the DuckDuckGo team, the search engine is still unheard by most of the users. Weinberg has also promised to improve content search efficiency in non-English languages as well for the users around the globe who have to sacrifice their privacy for better search results.
According to a recent survey by Pew Research Center, almost over 40% US adults don’t want any kind of surveillance done on them by their search engine provider.
As there are genuine concerns among the masses for their privacy, DuckDuckGo seems to have a huge opportunity ahead and can give a real competition to Google which for more than a decade now had exerted monopoly in the industry.
Which search engine do you prefer, Google or DuckDuckGo? Tell us in comments below.