Worth it Stage 1
DuckDuckGo’s pitch is user-aligned: less profiling on the SERP, straightforward settings. Trade-offs include smaller index quirks and revenue from ads that aren’t personalized the same way—not utopia, but the default stance still skews toward user surplus versus surveillance maximization. Stage 1 with eyes open about sustainability.
- Since
- 2008
- Category
- Search
- VC-backed
- Yes
- Public
- No
- Website
- duckduckgo.com
The promise
Its first promise, and how much is kept · Scoring
100% kept
“DuckDuckGo does not collect or share personal information.”
Why it’s rated 1
The criteria it meets, with sources · Method
- Alignment 1 of 3
-
- A1 Paid for without surveillance
- Lock-in 0 of 4
- None
- Extraction 0 of 7
- None
- Decline 0 of 3
- None
Result An alignment criterion, no lock-in, and at most one extraction criterion, so stage 1.
News signals
Sourced reporting, tagged by strategy