DuckDuckGo vs. Google - Which Search Engine is Better for You

DuckDuckGo vs. Google - Which Search Engine is Better for You
An established search giant vs. an imminent underdog, who's gonna win this search engine face off?
Akshay Kulkarni
Last Updated: Apr 4, 2019
Google on phone
Google is the world's most famous and most used search engine which fetches over 3.5 billion searches per day. It provides personally-tailored search results considering various parameters accumulated and processed from your previous searches. Google stores and uses all the information you provide during your sessions.

Launched in 2008, DuckDuckGo is a privacy-focused search engine, much smaller than Google. It garners around 35 million searches per day. DuckDuckGo's tagline - 'The search engine that doesn't track you', pretty much sums up their agenda: making the Internet private and safer for everyone, and to set a new standard of trust online.
Search results
Though 10 years younger to Google, DuckDuckGo has come a long way with its 'Search Result Quality' by providing relevant answers to users' search queries. Its results are derived from over 400 sources including Wikipedia, Yahoo, Bing, etc. and crawled through its own crawler - DuckDuckBot.

But, Google's search quality is far more superior than that of DuckDuckGo's. The primary reason being its vast database that stores all the data of the billions of searches made every day. Google utilizes that data to provide personally-tailored results to the users which are frequently more relevant than all the other search engines'.
Making money through mobile
Information is the new currency and Google is its biggest trader. Google is notorious for using the data that you provide while searching for stuff online. Google exploits that data and offers it to the advertisers so that they can target distinct and precise demographics. Your digital footprints impart certain preferences and characteristics such as your personality, choices, and your overall online behavior. With the help from Google, advertisers are using this data to target and influence us. The problem is that that data might be confidential. Now you don't want anyone to know what kind of health issues you've got, do you?

DuckDuckGo, on the other hand, stands as an answer to the privacy and security problems. It never saves any of your information, period.
A person searching online
On DuckDuckGo, you can search anonymously. Each time you search on DuckDuckGo, you have a blank search history, as if you’ve never been there before. The results provided by DuckDuckGo are purely based on the search queries or the keywords you use to search.

The search on Google is a whole another ballpark. It uses various parameters like your search history, location, preferences, gender, and more such factors. The objective is to make the search more and more personalized e.g. if you and your friend search for an exact same keyword on Google, the chances are you both end up getting different search results based on your expertize and history of search around that particular subject. So the personalized results might be more convenient for you, but the price you pay for them is 'your privacy'.
Scale
The verdict totally depends on your choice of preferences. If you consider your online privacy and security on high regards, then you should definitely opt for DuckDuckGo. However, if you are spoiled by Google's personalized and convenient search results, continue surfing with Google. And if it makes you feel any better, chances are Google already knows more about you than your significant other.