In addition to being great at displaying the most relevant search results, Google is also great at eliminating competing search engines. With a market share of 60 to 90 percent since 2009, it has maintained its dominance for more than two decades. But being continually confronted with privacy and antitrust cases could soon slow you down. On the other hand, Google’s string of lawsuits could be an opportunity for some of the privacy search engine pioneers to get rid of (unfair) competition, carve out a niche for themselves, and hit the tech giant where it hurts.
Early last year, a massive class-action lawsuit against Google alleged that the Silicon Valley company tracked the personal identities of users browsing in private mode. That wordpress web design agency was followed by antitrust lawsuits filed by the Justice Department and some state attorneys general. Part of the most recent complaint against Google concerned how the company leveraged its strong leadership in search and digital advertising to the detriment of others.
But some of these “other players” simply won’t be excluded from the outcome of a potentially lengthy legal battle. DuckDuckGo , one of the top alternative search engines for privacy and a vocal critic of Google, is gearing up for growth. It passed 100 million daily mobile searches in January and has now surpassed Bing’s share of that segment (0.48% versus 0.42% globally). With research showing that consumers want control over their digital data and are looking for transparency from search engines, companies like DuckDuckGo are poised to fill some of the gaps left by Google’s business model.
In this blog post, we look at this possibility and more.
Privacy-Focused Google Alternatives
The rise of privacy-conscious Google competitors is a response to one of the biggest perceived shortcomings of search engines: tracking user data without consent. In this sense, it’s tech-savvy users who are turning to these Google alternatives because they’re likely to have privacy concerns.
We can see that online privacy search engines serve a segment of the overall search market. They have distinctive features that attract a cult following. Let’s look at each Google alternative and how their business model differs from Google’s.
DuckDuckGo Privacy First Search Engine
DuckDuckGo (DDG) is arguably the best search engine that web advocates can count on to compete with Google. While still considered a niche competitor, DDG is quickly becoming part of the conversation. The Pennsylvania-based internet company is highlighting in particular the violation of private browsing, which is the subject of the Google class action lawsuit, also known as the Google Incognito lawsuit. It also insists that if Google were serious about privacy, it should have already abandoned its “surveillance business model.”
So how is Privacy First search engine different from DuckDuckGo? We know that it doesn’t collect user data for profiling and personalization purposes. Instead, it pulls information from over 400 sources, including Bing (but not Google!), WolframAlpha, DuckDuckBot, and crowdsourcing sites like Wikipedia.
People can choose it as their default search engine on desktop and mobile browsers. They can also add the DuckDuckGo browser extension to Google Chrome.
But a savvy DuckDuckGo browser might ask, “How does this private browsing company make money?” The company says its main source of revenue is the most obvious: keyword-based advertising. But unlike Google, it doesn’t track your personal information to deliver results. It says it doesn’t need to because search ad auctions are based on “keywords, not people.”
Brave search engine
Brave It was first introduced as a free and open source private web browser. Today, it is preparing to be recognized as one of the best alternatives to privacy search engines with the acquisition of the open search engine Tailcat. The resulting Brave search engine promises to provide independent, high-quality, privacy-focused indexing.
Banking on the rise of online privacy, Brave has launched a series of privacy-focused products. It expects 2021 to be a year of growth, with its browser recently gaining 25 million monthly active users.
To earn revenue, it offers Brave Ads, an opt-in advertising platform that rewards you for viewing non-invasive ads. The rewards come in the form of Basic Attention Tokens, or BATs, which you can cash out or use to tip websites and content creators at the end of each month. There’s no tracking of personal information, only control is given back to consumers.