I Use Duck Duck Go and I'm Proud of It

There are several things I like about DuckDuckGo, a search engine competing with Google. For one thing, there needs to be an alternative to Google. I think everybody realizes that an absolute monopoly is not a good thing. However, I don't like my web sites getting hit by a thousand different bots from a thousand different search engines, either. It is obviously more efficient for just a handful of bots to patrol the web looking for new sites and evaluating their rankings and relationships. To that end, DuckDuckGo doesn't send out its own bots, but purchases search data from Bing and Yahoo and repackages it using its own filtering algorithms. DuckDuckGo bans content mills and may offer superior results to Google, which seems to be the #1 target of all SEO scum.

Another thing I like about DuckDuckGo is what I call the silly factor. I like the name and I like the quacking duck, all right? Is there anything wrong with that? I didn't think so. A ducky on my browser is a necessity. The ducky protects against dragonflies.

Another cool thing about DuckDuckGo is that it is Linux-friendly. Apparently some money trickles down to Linux Mint and various other Linux distros in exchange for making DuckDuckGo the default search engine in Firefox in those distros. I think that is fair, considering that these distros are provided free of charge to the end user, although donations are requested (but not often enough provided).

Google, like all companies, runs the risk of getting too big for its britches and becoming another unresponsive, uncaring, ambivalent corporate behemoth. I'm not actually a critic of Google. I like Google and I like a lot of the things that Google does. I can't think of anything I disapprove of in relation to Google. But almost by instinct I tend to gravitate toward the underdog, and the sillier, fiercer and feistier, the better, in my book.

I'm not a fan of Yahoo, because Yahoo serves up too many ads and toolbars. I believe Yahoo is lacking in ethics. Bing on the other hand suffers from the connection to Microsoft. It's just too smooth and too non-innovative, offering no new features, intent upon dwelling in the shadow of Google.