Ditch Google, Date DuckDuckGo

My Favorite Search Engine

Privacy under attack! The Data Science job has become the "sexiest job" of 2016 (as announced by Harvard University). Do you know the reason? The reason is that companies, like Google, are collecting huge amounts of information from you and to figure out the meaning of that much data, they need Data Scientists. This article is not about the most lucrative job of 2016, it's about protecting your privacy. Must read, if you value your privacy.

Google, the most used search engine. May be you love it so much that whenever you need a solution you just ask Google Uncle. All that is completely fine. But do you know that Google is putting your privacy on risk? Everything you search is being stored? What can be the consequence if Google gets hacked? Although chances are less, but is Google more secure than NSA?

What Actually Google Is Doing?

 

To improve your search experience and to make their services better Google collects a large amount of data about its users. From your searching habits to your messages, everything is being watched over.

What is bad about it? The bad thing is that Google is a for-profit company. It will use that data as it likes. Even staying within the laws of most country, Google can do things you may not like. And what happens if a malicious Google employee, concerned with the data collection processes, knows you and uses your data against you? The possibilities are quiet large. Let alone that it would a pride for any hacker to hack into Google.

If you still think you don't care about your privacy, I will just classify you as one of those ignorant people!

What Can You Do About It?

 

From Google Search to Google Allo, and everything in between, all services offered by Google collect data; Google is one of the largest employers of Data Scientists. Go and search Google for the last time about "Google Flu Trends".

The society today is highly dependent on Google. The best you can do is use Google as less as possible and recommend your friends to do the same. Use alternatives like DuckDuckGo!

What is DuckDuckGo?

 

DuckDuckGo is a search engine just like Google Search except some differences. The first and the most important one being that it doesn't collect data. The second which I like, but don't use, is that you can disable ads. The reason I don't disable ads is to support DuckDuckGo.

P.S.: Please don't disable ads on DuckDuckGo. They are not as rich as Google, plus are sweet hearted enough to give you the option of disabling ads.

Main Features of DuckDuckGo

Here I will try to list some of the main features of DuckDuckGo which makes it the best search engine in my eyes:

• It has all the features Google has, plus some more. Web searches, Images, Videos, News, Maps and Places, Definitions, Answers and a lot more.
• It respects our privacy.
• One really nice feature is Instant Answers. You can find all your answers without letting that cute Duck Go.
• Highly customizable. From search locations to themes, and did I tell you that you can even customize the theme colors. My favorite theme is Terminal; makes me feel like a computer wizard.
• One feature that beats Google is bangs. Bangs allow you to directly search other websites like Wikipedia, Amazon, YouTube, etc. from within DuckDuckGo.
• It's soooo good that people start liking it instantly.

Cons of DuckDuckGo

 

Only one, and that too very small. DuckDuckGo indexes the web itself, plus with the help of Bing, Yahoo! and over four hundred other partners. So, DuckDuckGo is sufficiently complete. However, many blogs created using Google's Blogger service are registered only to Google. In those cases DuckDuckGo won't find them. Fortunately, most bloggers are aware of DuckDuckGo and are submitting their blogs to DuckDuckGo as well.

DuckDuckGo is ready to take on the world. All it needs is our support. It's my humble request that you share this post as much as possible and become a part of this Revolution.