DuckDuckGo exceeds 100 million daily search queries for the first time

Privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo took a major milestone in its 12-year history this week, recording its very first day on Monday with more than 100 million user search queries.

This feat comes after a period of sustained growth the company has been enjoying for two years, and especially since August 2020, when the search engine started seeing over 2 billion search queries per month on a regular basis.

The popularity of DuckDuckGo comes after the search engine expanded beyond its own site and now offers mobile apps for Android and iOS, as well as a dedicated Chrome extension.

More than 4 million users have installed these apps and extensions, the company said in a tweet in September 2020.

But the growing popularity of the search engine is also due to its stated goal of not collecting user data and providing the same search results to all users.

As he pointed out last year, this lack of granular data sometimes makes it difficult for the company to estimate even the size of its own user base.

But this dedication to privacy has also helped the company gain a following among the privacy-conscious crowd. DuckDuckGo has been selected as the default search engine in Tor browser and is often the default search engine in incognito modes of several other browsers.

Historic week for privacy apps

DuckDuckGo’s historic milestone comes a week from now when Signal and Telegram, two other privacy-centric apps, also announced major growth periods.

Telegram said on Monday it had reached 500 million registered users, while Signal’s servers shut down on Friday after seeing “millions and millions of new users” in a sudden influx, the company said, even surpassing its predictions. more optimistic.

We added new servers and additional capacity at an all time high every day this week without disruption, but today we have exceeded even our most optimistic forecasts. Millions upon millions of new users send a message that privacy is important. We appreciate your patience.

– Signal (@signalapp) January 15, 2021

The two new user spikes for Signal and Telegram are a direct result of a major public relations snafu on Facebook after the company announced last week that it would block access to WhatsApp accounts unless users do. agree to a new privacy policy granting Facebook access to more WhatsApp user data.

Yesterday, Friday, Facebook delayed the new privacy policy for three months, but by then the damage was done, and hundreds of millions of users were reminded of their right to privacy, flocking to Signal. and Telegram – but it wouldn’t. It would be an exaggeration to think that many users have been advised to use DuckDuckGo instead of Google.