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We Hatched
DuckDuckGo began as an idea for a better search experience with more instant answers and less spam. We hatched out of a few servers in a dusty basement.
February 29, 2008
Launch!
Within the year, DuckDuckGo was announced to the Hacker News and reddit communities. We made it out with only minor troll scars.
September 25, 2008
Anonymous
We decided to make a bold move and not collect or share any of your personal information.
January 22, 2009
Duck.co
With the launch of our community site duck.co, you now had a place to flock and really make DuckDuckGo the people’s search engine.
July 21, 2010
The Billboard
We told the world “Google tracks you. We don’t” with a billboard in their backyard.
January 11, 2011
2011 Donations
We rely on a lot of great free and open-source projects to keep our wings flapping. So we decided to start giving back, donating to nginx, FreeBSD, Tor, Clamwin, Tahoe-LAFS and OpenSSH.
February 26, 2011
Employee #1
For years our founder Gabriel was the only full-timer. Caine Tighe changed all that, coming on board as our first official employee and jedi master.
November 30, 2011
Headquarters
We finally moved out of Gabriel’s basement into our fortress in Paoli, PA, USA. It really does look like a castle!
December 1, 2011
Redesign
Our first major visual overhaul introduced a new design that made you not want to close your browser the second you saw our results page.
January 16, 2012
1,000,000!
Reaching 1 million searches a day was a major milestone for us, having steadily grown from 100 to 1,000 to 10,000 to 100,000 and finally to 1,000,000. That’s more than 10 searches a second!
February 13, 2012
2012 Donations
For our second year of open-source donations we chose the theme “open data/information.” The company-directed portion went to Tor and the Wikimedia foundation. The community-directed portion went to unhosted.org, the Diaspora project, Freenet, and friendica.
March 7, 2012
DuckDuckHack
Our vision of getting you the best instant answers from the best sources finally merged with our vibrant community when we introduced DuckDuckHack: our open-source platform where anyone can suggest or create instant answers for our results.
May 1, 2012
2013 Donations
Our 3rd year of open-source donations were under the theme of “fix tracking.” The company portion went to the Open Street Map Foundation and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The community directed donations to Riseup, F-Droid, NoScript, Cryptocat, and Javascript Blocker.
February 25, 2013
2,000,000
483 days after reaching one million, we doubled our daily searches. This milestone happened days after people started sharing private alternatives (like us) in the wake of the NSA revelations.
June 10, 2013
3,000,000
Just eight days after hitting two million searches per day, we added another million. To put this in perspective, it took 1,445 days to get to one million from the day we launched.
June 17, 2013
Search & Stories
DuckDuckGo delivers an app that gives you the most interesting stories of the day packed with a convenient way to search. TIME ranked it in their, “Top 50 iPhone apps of 2013.”
June 27, 2013
4,000,000
Just over two months after hitting two million searches/day, we doubled our traffic again. People start to realize we’re not a Chinese restaurant.
August 19, 2013
5,000,000
Five million direct searches in one day. That’s 150 million a month, 1.825 billion a year!
February 26, 2014
2014 Donations
Needed more than ever, our 2014 donation theme was, “secure communications.” Our company directed portion went to SecureDrop and NoiseTor. The community directed donations went to Lavabit, Riseup, Mailpile, and I2P.
March 12, 2014
Employee #10
We have thousands of fewer employees than the big guys, but each one is part of our family and grew out of our community. Brian Stoner joined us just in time!
March 17, 2014
Reimagined
DuckDuckGo launches a reimagined and redesigned search engine with a refined look and a focus on smarter answers.
May 19, 2014
Safari
Apple begins including DuckDuckGo in Safari, with the launch of iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite. Wow, that was cool.
September 17, 2014
Firefox
Mozilla adds DuckDuckGo as a built-in option to Firefox and Firefox OS. Do you think we’ll ever get into Chrome?
November 10, 2014
2015 Donations
For our fifth year of free and open source donations, we divided $125,000 equally over five projects: SecureDrop, PrivacyBadger, GPGTools, Tails, and Girl Develop It.
March 20, 2015
9,000,000
How should we celebrate when we hit 10,000,000 searches a day? We can see the light.
March 23, 2015
10,000,000
Boom! 10 million searches in a single day (10,210,082 to be exact). To celebrate, we’re giving away 10,000 DuckDuckGo T-shirts!
June 22, 2015
2016 Donations
For our sixth year of free and open source donations, we divided $225,000 equally over nine projects: SecureDrop, Freenet, OpenBSD Foundation, CrypTech, Tor Project, Fight for the Future, VeraCrypt, LEAP, GPGTools.
May 3, 2016
About Us
Smarter search without the tracking.
Real Privacy
We don’t track you.
What you search for is your own business and we’d like to keep it that way. That’s why we don’t collect any personal information and therefore, have none to share.
Our Policy
Community
Our Extended Team.
Our search engine is more than just servers and an algorithm. Our community directly contributes to DuckDuckGo. Get involved in changing the future of search.
Get Involved
Smarter Search
Get answers quicker.
It’s our goal to get you where you want to go in fewer clicks. We do that through instant answers, themes and !bangs. We have everything you’d expect and a whole lot more.
Take a TourReady to take back your privacy?
Meet Our Global Team
Get Involved
Our community is our extended team.
Join the community and help improve DuckDuckGo.
Hack
Join the DuckDuckGo community to help people find what they're looking for in fewer clicks! Extend our search engine with better instant answers on your favorite topics.
Hack DuckDuckGo
Share
Everyone could use real privacy, but not everyone knows how to get it. Join the other DuckDuckGo users who are getting their friends and family to make the switch.
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Translate
Our users are anonymous but we know they come from all corners of the world. Improve your search experience by translating DuckDuckGo into your preferred language.
Translate DuckDuckGoIn the News
Inside DuckDuckGo, Google’s Tiniest, Fiercest Competitor
In 2008, launching a search engine seemed like a crazy idea. Here’s how Gabriel Weinberg proved the critics wrong.
Full Story
DuckDuckGo: the plucky upstart taking on Google with secure searches
Gabriel Weinberg launched DuckDuckGo as a search engine that puts privacy first, rather than collecting data for advertisers and security agencies...
Full Story
Ducking Google in search engines
Not far from Valley Forge, around the corner from Bravo Pizza, up the road from Paoli Auto Body, there is an odd-looking office building that resembles a stone castle. An eye doctor is on the first floor. On the second floor is a search engine.
Full Story
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© DuckDuckGo. The search engine that doesn't track you.