Privacy, privacy, privacy, privacy, privacy and privacy. That could be the summary of the 5 reasons to forget Google as a search engine and prefer DuckDuckGo, which has already become the second most popular search engine on the Internet, but you can expand and specify a little more why this recommendation.
The DuckDuckGo search engine prioritizes the protection of user privacy by not storing any information from your searches and blocking Google, Facebook or Microsoft web activity trackers
It must be assumed that any search carried out on the Internet is associated with a follow-up this content, together with the history of other searches, makes it possible to draw up a profile of the user and offer commercial recommendations that match his or her interests, but it is not mandatory to submit to this scrutiny. And to avoid it, nothing as simple as changing search engine.
Google offers in its operation the paradigm of this method, prioritizing content related to previous searches but especially providing a preeminent place in search results to advertisersa major source of revenue for the search engine.
Among the few alternatives to Google’s primacy the most remarkable is DuckDuckGo, an alternative search engine with its own search engine, available as a web browser with its own app for iOS and Android as well as in the form of an extension for other browsers. Its main mission is to provide search results in a secure manner, prioritizing privacy. And these would be, in a somewhat more extensive way, the five reasons to choose it as default search engine instead of Google:
-Online tracking: Google’s online browsing activity tracking tools are present on 75% of web pages, with a 25% presence for Facebook’s, according to a Princeton University report analyzing web transparency.
These are tools responsible for collecting browsing data that, although they do not identify the user, do allow the elaboration of profiles based on their tastes, interests and browsing habits which, according to a joint study by Princeton and Stanford universities, could lead to the identification of Internet users when crossed with data from social networks in which the analyzed user participates. DuckDuckGo identifies and blocks all these trackers, including since May those of Microsoft, when it was discovered that this company also added them.
-Fewer ads: The first results in a Google search will almost always be paid ads, which will not be the case with DuckDuckGo. In addition, and since this search engine blocks online trackers, there will also be fewer ads of the same content that persistently appear on different web pages, something that is often exasperating when you are looking for information about a product or service and during the following web pages always appears advertising related to it, even when it has already been purchased.
-Faster loading of web pages: All the data collection work of online crawlers is eliminated, which also adds speed to the loading of web content, which is already devoid of such information and related advertising. The bandwidth is freed from irrelevant information so that the desired content, i.e. the content of the accessed website, is loaded faster.
-No browsing history is stored: The DuckDuckGo search engine does not store search history. Period. Each time you access the search engine it is as if you were accessing it for the first time so there is not the slightest trace of previous searches. The downside is that there are no search suggestions and, of course, you can’t go back to a previous search of which there is some detail that you don’t remember.
-Browsing history does not influence search results: In order to offer users results more in line with their interests, Google takes into account the online places they have previously visited, so searches will be mediated by this information. This is not the case with DuckDuckGo, which regardless of previously visited web pages will offer results referring only to the requested search without other influences. For some this may offer a lower value result since some of the first results could be irrelevant precisely because they have not taken into account those other previous queries of the user.