He said of the origin of the name: 'Really it just popped in my head one day and I just liked it. Weinberg explained the beginnings of the name with respect to the children's game duck, duck, goose. Because of this, TechCrunch characterized the service as a 'hybrid' search engine. DuckDuckGo is built primarily upon search APIs from various vendors. The search engine is written in Perl and runs on nginx, FreeBSD, and Linux. DuckDuckGo gains revenue via advertisements and affiliate programs. Initially self-funded by Weinberg until October 2011, it was then 'backed by Union Square Ventures and a handful of angel investors.' Union Square partner Brad Burnham stated, 'We invested in DuckDuckGo because we became convinced that it was not only possible to change the basis of competition in search, it was time to do it.' In addition, Trisquel, Linux Mint, and the Midori web browser switched to use DuckDuckGo as their default search engine. Weinberg is an entrepreneur who previously launched Names Database, a now-defunct social network. History ĭuckDuckGo was founded by Gabriel Weinberg and launched on February 29, 2008, in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. The company name is a reference to the children's game duck, duck, goose. The company is based in Paoli, Pennsylvania, in Greater Philadelphia and had 200 employees as of November 2022. The company operates without tracking user data, emphasizing privacy and anonymity in part to avoid the filter bubble of personalized search results. DuckDuckGo offers a number of products oriented towards helping people protect their privacy online, most notably, a private search engine, a browser and browser extension, email protection, and app tracking protection for Android. September 25, 2008 14 years ago ( ) ĭuckDuckGo ( DDG) is an internet privacy company.

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