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Privacy-focussed search engine DuckDuckGo has crossed 100 million daily search queries for the first time in 12 years.
According to DuckDuckGo’s public traffic data, the company achieved the milestone on January 11 when it recorded 102,251,307 search queries.
A week later, it surpassed the nine-figure mark again with 102,179,263 daily search queries.
The milestone may seem small when compared to Google’s growth. The search giant processes five billion requests a day and commands 70% market share in search business. But DuckDuckGo’s surge can be seen as a sign that users are trying alternatives.
DuckDuckGo reached the 50 million searches per day milestone for the first time in November 2019. And took a little over an year to double its daily search queries. Since August, it has seen sustained growth, crossing 2 billion search queries monthly.
The company, apart from search service, offers mobile apps for both iOS and Android users, and provides extension in web browsers. More than 4 million users have availed its services, the company tweet in September.
DuckDuckGo has touted itself as a search engine that does not collect or share any personal information. It says it wont follow Google’s model of selling data for targeted ads as it does not store users’ search histories data.
DuckDuckGo poses itself as a tough competitor to Microsoft’s Bing browser.
Lately, privacy-focused apps are seeing a new dawn. Users’ concerns over their privacy has helped the encrypted messaging services like Signal and Telegram grow. These alternatives have recorded a never-before-seen growth after WhatsApp’s new privacy policy update.
Published - January 20, 2021 05:15 pm IST
