An alternative to Google

For the past year I have been using the DuckDuckGo search engine as an alternative to Google.

Don't be put off by the idiotic name, it is a pretty good search engine.  It does not have all the services offered by Google. There is no translation and DDG's image search is not as good.

However, it works well for web searching and its privacy policies are much better.  Whenever you use Google it collects information about you and uses it to build up a profile which it can sell to advertisers.  DDG claims that it does not do that and does not track its users. It also filters out dross from 'content mills'.

"DuckDuckGo's results are a compilation of many sources, including Yahoo! Search BOSS, Wikipedia, Wolfram Alpha and its own Web crawler, the DuckDuckBot. 

DuckDuckGo positions itself as a search engine that puts privacy first and as such it does not store IP addresses, does not log user information and uses cookies only when needed. Weinberg states "By default, DuckDuckGo does not collect or share personal information. 


Weinberg has refined the quality of his search engine results by deleting search results for companies he believes are content mills, like Demand Media's eHow, which publishes 4000 articles per day produced by paid freelance writers, which Weinberg says is, "...low-quality content designed specifically to rank highly in Google's search index." DuckDuckGo also filters pages with substantial advertising."


Read more about it at

Wikipedia

Washington Post

PCWorld

New York Times