I think a lot of the people here raving about how great duckduckgo is do not understand that it's just a layer on top of Bing results. You could run Bing (or Google for that matter) in an incognito window and get the same effect.
What I'd like to see is an ad-free search engine that is open-source or subscription-based. DDG doesn't solve any of the fundamental problems with the search ecosystem.
"DuckDuckGo's results are a compilation of "over 400" sources,[45] including Yahoo! Search BOSS; Wikipedia; Wolfram Alpha; Bing; its own Web crawler (the DuckDuckBot); and others.[3][45][46] It also uses data from crowdsourced sites, including Wikipedia, to populate "Zero-click Info" boxes – grey boxes above the results that display topic summaries and related topics.[10]"
> In fact, DuckDuckGo gets its results from over four hundred sources. These include hundreds of vertical sources delivering niche Instant Answers, DuckDuckBot (our crawler) and crowd-sourced sites (like Wikipedia, stored in our answer indexes). We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we also source from a variety of partners, including Oath (formerly Yahoo) and Bing.
So in other words all the traditional link results are from Bing and Yahoo. The other 400 sources and their own crawler are only for things like Instant Answer boxes at the top (which are great btw).
> You could run Bing (or Google for that matter) in an incognito window and get the same effect.
That is incorrect information. Generally speaking, incognito windows limit the retention of information on your computer; they do not prevent others from collecting information about you. As a simple example, Google and Bing still could track you by your IP address.
From DuckDuckGo:[0]
Think “Incognito” mode blocks Google from watching what you’re doing? Think again. Private browsing modes are marketed to make you think that if it's not in your device’s browser history, it never happened. Sadly, that couldn't be further from the truth.[1]
Or just read their article, "Is Private Browsing Really Private?"[1]
What I'd like to see is an ad-free search engine that is open-source or subscription-based. DDG doesn't solve any of the fundamental problems with the search ecosystem.