Privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo recently announced the addition of several new Instant Answers to help you find more of what you need a lot faster. The search engine's Instant Answer that is pretty similar to Google's quick answers, provide what searchers are looking for immediately without having to click through to another site.
Here is an overview of the three new types of Instant Answers:
- Parking: Search for "parking near your destination", and DuckDuckGo will return a selection of the nearest lots and their corresponding prices, sorted by location.
- Online Courses: Search for the subject of your choice, followed by "online courses", and DuckDuckGo will get direct links to sign up for them.
- UV Risk Factor: Search for "UV index" and DuckDuckGo will get the UV risk factor for your location.
This past month, the company has released many new Instant Answers developed by its community. DuckDuckGo is encouraging everyone to get involved at duckduckhack.com to contribute their ideas and/or coding expertise.
DuckDuckGo is also proudly announcing that they've made their 2015 open-source donation to five projects chosen by staffs and community. The sum of $125,000 were distributed between SecureDrop, PrivacyBadger, GPG Tools, Tails, and Girl Develop It.
DuckDuckGo is growing stronger by each and every new feature the company introduces. Google that is still undoubtedly the most popular search engine, commanded one billion monthly unique visitors back in 2010. In 2014, the company served over a trillion searches. DuckDuckGo that managed to see two billion for the first time, has its popularity increase each time there are new revelations about government tracking.
Unique With Drawbacks
Keeping privacy a privacy is what makes DuckDuckGo unique and different that most other internet companies. DuckDuckGo localizes search results, but only by request. The search engine also shows ads, but there are only two presented with your search query, while Google serves a lot more ads. As an affiliate to e-commerce sites, DuckDuckGo's is also depending on it to get income.
However, no matter how good DuckDuckGo has become, or will become, it won't succeed in the way Google does. It's unique approach is also what creates its own limitations. Search results from DuckDuckGo aren't as great as Google's by a long mile.
The reason for this is because DuckDuckGo isn't personalizing and does automatic localization. With the benefit of those two, searching can involve extra steps when compared to Google's efficiency and relevance. Without the benefit of personalization and automatic localization searching can involve extra steps when compared to the efficiency and relevance of Google.
Google's results also rely on a lot more personal information to populate its results, from IP address to personal information taken from Google+ and history.
But DuckDuckGo doesn't want be a straight competitor with Google, it never wanted to. It just wants to be an alternative to the many search engines that harvest people's data. It may have the drawbacks, but it shines because it's unique.
