DDG Interview: Function 2

TS: Over the years Google has made a few changes to tackle privacy concerns. Things like anonymizing data after a sure catamenia, incognito manner in their Chrome browser, and signing up to the Do Not Track initiative. For people that do care about privacy, do you think they do enough?

Our argument has been we're producing ameliorate search results, actually. And so, that'south the real argument to use united states. Instant answers, less spam, less clutter. Privacy has been a focus, but it'south more of a motivator to become you lot to try us out than the reason to stay.

GW: I think all that is giving you a major fall sense of privacy. For example, in incognito mode they're still logging all your searches per IP address. They're tracking about as much.

There are also some opt-outs that are simply cookie based, so you attempt to opt out of something so when you clear your cookies -- which most people practise either automatically or every and then often -- yous're of a sudden back to being tracked.

It's kind of born to their company Deoxyribonucleic acid to have this default tracking. And I think it's great that they're trying to practice something to help people get some privacy dorsum, but it'south not much.

TS: What are other benefits to using DuckDuckGo?

GW: The main benefit you see correct abroad is we try to get way better instant answers. Nosotros have a box that's above the links providing context and data about your search with zero clicks. And that'south coming upwardly more and more, we have a new open up source platform, we're recruiting developers and our users are making plugins across all sorts of niche areas.

In the long term I think that is the main motivator. The other thing is you'll notice that it's just a much cleaner experience. Google has lots of internal products they push in their search results, which gets very crowded and a little confusing. We're pretty make clean in that regard.

We're as well mode more aggressive with spam. It's difficult to tell immediately, but if you use our site for a few weeks, we call up that you'll notice that yous're getting less irrelevant results and not just ads on them.

TS: Is the community a large part of DuckDuckGo? Do you see active evolution from your users?

GW: The community has always been a big part of what nosotros're doing. This whole notion of being able to code on DuckDuckGo is new, information technology'due south only a couple of months former, just I do call back it'southward the future. It'south at DuckDuckHack.com.

TS: Yous mentioned you lot are ambitious with filtering out spam and content farms. How does that piece of work?

GW: It's largely algorithmic and it's largely pretty obvious. I'm not exactly certain why Google and Bing decide non to remove more of it. Some of the larger content farms nosotros'll just remove outright, similar Demand Media for instance, which actually covers a large swab of content farms.

TS: Do you get many simulated positives?

GW: Nosotros've tried very hard not to go false positives. I happens sometimes when a domain that used to be office of a spam network becomes united nations-part. Information technology takes a little while for the states to get it out but we do get information technology out.

TS: Why do y'all recall other major search engines are not doing more than of this?

GW: A couple of reasons. At that place's been a lot of the data that shows that initially when people click on content farm results, they really like them considering they ofttimes match their query exactly. But we believe that in the long run you won't like them, because they're frequently low quality content. So, that'south a hard problem for search engines because a lot of the metrics they employ for relevance show those results are very relevant, even though I recollect that they're not. That's kind of an internal problem and might exist the reason for function of it. The other more contemptuous reason -- I've no idea if information technology's true or non, and Google definitely says it'south not -- is that they brand a lot of money off these sites. They're all running AdSense generally, that sort of ads.

TS: DuckDuckGo reportedly made $115,000 in revenue concluding yr. Where is this coming from?

GW: We have 1 ad that comes up every now and and then in our site. Nosotros try to keep advertising very minimal, which is another difference that we accept with other search engines. But we do have an advertizement that we syndicate from Microsoft adCenter. So we're getting money from that and besides from Amazon and eBay via chapter sales.

TS: Are y'all close to being self-sustainable or do you rely more on VC?

The problem with general distribution in the search engine industry is that the big ones are very acquirement-driven and nosotros don't take the revenue to offer them to become the default spots.

GW: We're not far from being self-sustainable, but nosotros did raise capital so we didn't have to worry nigh that too much at this signal. I don't worry too much near it. We raised money last twelvemonth from Union Square Ventures, who funded Twitter, Square, and Zynga. That was last Oct.

TS: I read you have a few partnerships in place to get DDG as a default or optional search engine in Linux distributions. Are any other partnerships in the pipeline?

GW: Nosotros take about 40 or so such partnerships to get DDG either as the default search engine or an pick.

Partnerships are great. The problem with general distribution in the search engine industry is that the big ones are very revenue-driven and we don't have the revenue to offer them to get the default spots. So we're kind of locked up in that regard. More than innovative partnerships we have, we partner with sources like Wolfram Blastoff, for instance. Nosotros'd love to exercise more of that.

TS: Practise you have a mobile strategy?

GW: We've had these mobile apps for a while and we're in the process of completely renewing them -- and we hope that they'll exist more useful. That'south in the pipeline. We have this whole instant answers platform that we're actually trying to build out for the long term. That'southward some other large focus.

We also take an API that nosotros utilise internally, that other people tin can use as well. But we're at present trying to take that to other places. So, nosotros utilise information technology in our mobile apps, we're also building browser extensions and things that yous can install to kind of help you get these instant answers across the web.

TS: To close upwardly, tell united states of america about the technology you use on a daily ground. Operating systems you use, your desktop setup, computing on the go, smartphones and all that.

I wrote about this in detail at a site called usesthis.com. Essentially, I use a number of unlike computers. Hither at the office I have a Windows seven setup with three monitors. At home I have a similar three-monitor Windows setup, and I also have an iMac -- one in the basement and one on the beginning floor, actually. I have a Windows laptop and also an iPad. And an Android phone.

We would similar to thank Gabriel for taking the time to answer these questions. Be sure to check out DuckDuckGo, a 'make clean' search engine alternative that puts special emphasis on users' privacy.