DuckDuckGo is currently serving 3 billion searches per year

Jun 17, 2015 13:36 GMT  ·  By

According to DuckDuckGo CEO Gabe Weinberg, the search engine has managed to grow 600% since Edward Snowden's NSA revelations back in 2013.

Established in 2008 and run from Paoli, Pennsylvania, the search engine prides itself for not recording any information on its users or their previous searches.

Since it launched, DuckDuckGo has carved a niche for itself within the security community and gained over users that value their privacy more than what Google, Yahoo, or Bing are willing to offer.

In an interview for CNBC, which focused on the topic of online privacy, Mr. Weinberg revealed that his company greatly benefited from the NSA revelations in 2013, having grown more than 600% since then and now reaching a whopping 3 billion search queries per year.

The NSA leaks helped DuckDuckGo with new users and increased brand awareness

Citing a Pew Research study which showed that 40% of all Americans would prefer a no-tracking search engine, Mr. Weinberg estimates his company could easily grow in the future to take up more market share from the aforementioned competing search giants.

He also went on to attribute DuckDuckGo's growth to the increased role privacy started to play in the life of all Internet users, and explained that "search" services didn't actually need to track users to work properly.

Mr. Weinberg says Google, Yahoo, and Bing need to track users mainly because they also provide extra features in other related services, or they do it because they need specific user targeting features for more complex advertising offerings.

Apparently, DuckDuckGo's current search monetization and financial model, which relies on a classic keyword advertising scheme, is efficient enough to keep the company afloat, and the search provider is willing to bet on its future after users realize the amount of information other search engines are collecting on them.