Private search engine gets boost from Apple
Apple has given us plenty to talk about with its latest Worldwide Developer Conference -- iOS 8, Yosemite, HomeKit. But there's one bit of Apple news that caught my attention that could be big for online search privacy.
Apple's Safari web browser will now allow users of its new iOS 8 and Mac OS X Yosemite platforms to switch their default search engine from Google to DuckDuckGo, a relatively tiny search engine that markets itself as "the search engine that doesn't track you."
DuckDuckGo got its first major user surge thanks to privacy concerns related to the revelations of the NSA's Internet data collection program. Now, with the help of Apple, it should expect even more growth.
But at this point, Google shouldn't be too concerned by the growth of DuckDuckGo. While the startup search engine has seen major growth in the last year, and is nearing an average of 6 million daily search queries. Google, on the other hand, averaged nearly 6 billion daily search queries last year.
But with the news that Apple is also integrating Microsoft's Bing search engine into its Spotlight search and the announcement last year that Bing would be the default search engine for Siri, Apple is making Google's position at the top of the search engine world a bit uneasy, while pushing for a little more privacy.
Image: DuckDuckGo
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- Apple's next push into your home
- Online privacy is becoming big business
- DuckDuckGo brings anonymous searching to mobile devices
- Why privacy fears are driving people to DuckDuckGo
This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com