DuckDuckGo Search Engine Grows 46 Percent In 2021

Privacy focused search engine DuckDuckGo has enjoyed a great year of growth in 2021 after it reportedly averaged over 100 million daily search queries and grew by almost 47 percent in 2021.

According to Bleepingcomputer.com, in 2020 DuckDuckGo received 23.6 billion total search queries and achieved a daily average of 79 million search queries by the end of December 2020.

But in 2021, DuckDuckGo has received 34.6 billion total search queries so far and currently has an average of 100 million search queries per day, showing a 46.4 percent growth for the year.

No tracking

It should be noted that the popularity of the DuckDuckGo mobile app could also be responsible for some of that growth.

Nevertheless, this is a remarkable growth, but it has a long way to go, as DuckDuckGo in reality only has 2.53 percent of the total market share.

Competitors such as Yahoo are at 3.3 percent, Bing at 6.43 percent, and Google of course enjoys a 87.33 percent of search engine traffic in the United States.

But DuckDuckGo believes its central principle (privacy) will continue to help drive its growth.

It comes after ongoing scandals from the likes of Meta (Facebook) and Google and others over how these tech giants are using, gathering and tracking people’s online browsing habits and personal data.

Some may question how DuckDuckGo makes its money,. but it earns revenue from private ads on its search engine.

On other search engines, ads are based on profiles compiled about the user, using their personal data such as search, browsing, and purchase history.

However DuckDuckGo never collects that data, so its search ads are based on the search results page the user is viewing, not a personal profile of a person.

For example, if a user searches for cars, DuckDuckGo will show ads about cars.

And none of this data is stored or sold to third parties. Nor is any browsing habits of a user actively tracked, as they surf from one website to another.

Google domination

Google’s domination of the search engine market, has long been a source of uneasy for industry regulators and governments.

In June 2020, investigators at the US Department of Justice (DoJ) reportedly approached DuckDuckGo about their investigation, as state and federal investigators probe Google’s Android dominance, digital advertising and other issues.

Regulatory concerns were not eased in October this year, when Google told a European Court that the top search on Microsoft’s Bing search engine was “Google”.

“We have submitted evidence showing that the most common search query on Bing is by far ‘Google’,” Google lawyer Alfonso Lamadrid told the EU’s General Court in Luxembourg,

“People use Google because they choose to, not because they are forced to,” Lamadrid said at the time. “Google’s market share in general search is consistent with consumer surveys showing that 95 percent of users prefer Google to rival search engines.”

Google meanwhile is seeking to overturn a record 4.3bn euro ($5bn, £4bn) fine and an antitrust order that found Google unfairly forced Android mobile phone makers to use its search app.

The European Commission alleged that Google made a strategic decision to leverage its Android OS to ensure its dominance in search.