Will This Online Duck fly?

This is in the context of DuckDuckGo(DDG) – A search engine geared toward users’ privacy. Google, the de facto standard for search, has been challenged by a small but promising search engine, DDG. DDG differentiates itself based on the promise of privacy that it wants to offer when searching the web. You might be a housewife searching for answers for your daily chores or a research scientist that tries to find more profound answers to her thesis. All these activities are monitored closely by Google and build a filter-bubble around you over time. It knows your interest and personality and continues to offer search results, content, products, and services based on who you are.

DDG is the opposite; it does NOT track you or your search queries to manipulate the results. Unbiased and unpolarized search results are delivered to you, which you can trust and navigate.

Quick test – visit this site to see what Google has been tracking for you https://google.com/history

In this Internet age, there are thousands of companies interested in you to track, create a profile and start using you as a product to sell services, ads, and other products. And most of it begins with a search query. Google has been there for 20+ years now, and people use it daily to get their work done. Google search is excellent and offers what a user is looking for. However, Google has more to offer than just search results, ads, and promoting content that drives their business. The more Google knows about you as a user, they can offer relevant content, products, and ads to drive profits for them ultimately. There is a filter-bubble around you to shield all unwanted content (according to Google). Maintaining you in the bubble and providing only those contents is in the high interest of Google and their profits. This filter-bubble is the problem that DDG is solving for you!

What is DuckDuckGo (DDG)?

DuckDuckGo is a search engine that is focused on user’s privacy. It does not track you, does not stores your searches, and does not alter any search results based on your prior history of searches or page visits. DDG is a hybrid search engine that uses search results from bing and other engines and its own intelligence. DDG was founded in Feb 2008 by Gabriel Weinberg and expanded over the years to add more privacy-focused products.

Why DuckDuckGo?

We constantly input private queries into Google search to get answers to our problems. It can be your medical conditions, research, or anything in your daily life. People have started to acknowledge that they are giving away a lot of personal info online, and it is collected over time to define who they are. DDG saw this trend and built a privacy-focused search engine to give users an alternative to searching for what they want without worrying that it’s getting recorded. People want privacy for search – And DDG delivers it!

Business model

Show relevant ads on the search page based on the current search query. A good writeup by the CEO here.
DDG has been a profit-making company since 2014, demonstrating success without compromising user’s privacy.
DuckDuckGo also earns revenue by participating in Amazon’s and eBay’s affiliate programs.
Based on the calculations, it is estimated that $64M business in 2020.

Three Products from DDG that you should start using right now!

Product #1 – DDG Search Engine

URL – https://duckduckgo.com

Product #2 – Chrome and Firefox Browser Extension

More than 7.5 Million users have installed this to improve their privacy. It rated as 4.4 on Chrome and Firefox extention platforms. Extention blocks all the tracker domains to improve your privacy.

Product #3 – DuckDuckGo Mobile Browser for iOS and Android

DDG Browser is rated as 4.6+ out of 5 on iOS and Android. Replacing the default browser gives you excellent privacy benefits, and it’s highly recommended.

What’s the strategy of DDG?

Provide a mechanism for users to keep their search and web browsing private
Show Ads based on the current search query rather than any historical searches
Educate users about increasing privacy concerns and drive them to use DDG

How many searches are made on DDG daily?

Around 100M searches have been made daily as of April 2022.

Competition? Google, Bing & Yahoo!

To become a popularly used search engine, it has to be the default search engine on major platforms like Apple, Windows, Android & Chromebook. Google Chrome Browser, Chromebook & Android set Google Search as the default search. Google pays Apple $15B to keep Google as a default search engine in Safari on iOS and Mac; similarly, it pays $450M to Firefox. Microsoft defaults to the Bing search engine on Windows.

No major platform has DDG as the default search engine, which is the biggest concern for DDG. And no doubt, it can’t pay any of the platforms a big sum to be the default search engine as its revenue is around $63M/year.

DuckDuckGo Journey

DDG launched in 2008
In 2012 DDG attracted 1.5M searches every day
In 2014 Firefox added DDG as a search option
In 2016, it partnered with Yahoo, Bing, Yandex, Wikipedia to extend the search offering
In 2018 launched the browser extension to go beyond search and block ad-tracking networks.
In 2022 DDG handles 100M searches every day
Around 149 employees as of Oct 2021.

My Experience With DDG

I switched to the DDG search engine a couple of years back and am sticking to it. It provides almost the same results that Google provides and solves my core problem of finding the solution. I search on Google to rule out anything important that I miss out on in rare instances. I am 95% on DDG and 5% on Google.

DDG Essentials – Chrome & Firefox extension is the default on all of my office and personal devices. They are blocking all the web trackers behind the scene.

The DDG browser has been my default browser on my mobile device for 3+ years. All works perfectly. I highly recommend this setup to improve your online privacy in the long run.

What more would I do as a Product Manager?

Build, Buy, or Partner with a VPN solution to integrate into a browser extension. Pro-Privacy users will switch to it and add revenue to DDG

Financial analysts say Apple should buy DuckDuckGo to fight against Google and improve its user’s privacy.

Apple and DDG share a similar vision of providing max privacy to their users. Many of Apple’s recent features have demonstrated the focus on privacy. It’s a natural choice for Apple to acquire DDG and integrate it into Safari and Siri. Here is a great article on the same.

Summary

DDG is differentiating against big competition like Google by providing a privacy-focused product. DDG has shown us that they can do business without monitoring users and maintaining their data. Privacy awareness is growing fast with the next generation, and products like DDG will lead the space and grab a good percentage of market share. This online Duck is already flying high enough to make its mark.