In this chapter I want to tell you about an alternative to Google and Yandex, which I recommend to take into account. This is DuckDuckGo, i.e. a search engine with an open source code.

The basis of this search engine is the principle of no recording and no storing any information about users and no selling users' data to advertisers. DuckDuckGo does not store history of queries, IP addresses (with the exception of logging on server level), user information, it also does not use cookies to track further user activity. 

Cookies allow you to track your queries and link them to one profile, even if you are not logged in to the search engine site. This technology is used by all search engines from Google to Yandex but not by DuckDuckGo.

But if you are logged in, most of the search engines allow you to look through the query history in profile settings. This is used by computer forensics, when they examine the device, they check not only the browser history, but also the history of search queries. For this reason, Panic Button's emergency data destruction system, when activated, deletes browser history, cookies, and saved passwords.

However, even using Panic Button will not delete the history on the company's servers. Companies are obliged to issue a history of search queries if there is a court decision and even deleting data using personal account tools does not delete data on servers.

DuckDuckGo collects information from various sources, search engines, and, moreover, has its own search robot. One of the principles of DuckDuckGo is the refusal to use the “bubble filters”, a system whereby the search engine shows you what it claims to be necessary based on the information about you.

Over the past decade search algorithms have changed a lot, search engines try to individualize the issue as much as possible taking into account gender, age, interests, region, and even previous queries. The principle of DuckDuckGo is to give access to all information and not to decide for the user what they might need.

The main purpose of collecting user data is not to provide a high-quality search, but to display targeted advertising. Google, Yandex, Yahoo earn on the sale of advertising, to be more precise, on your clicks on the ads. The more targeted ads will be shown to the user, the more likely they will go to one of them bringing the company revenue.

If the search engine knows that the user lives in Moscow, this is a man and he is interested in buying a BMW car, it will show him the offers of BMW car showrooms located in Moscow. Such offers will be much more interesting to the user than, for example, offers to buy clothes for pregnant women in Omsk.

Coming back to the bubble filters, DuckDuckGo has one external filter “Safe search”, which excludes undesirable materials, mainly materials for adults. This filter can be disabled in the settings at https://duckduckgo.com/settings.

How to make DuckDuckGo the default search engine

DuckDuckGo gives hits about it on the main page, we will only show how to do it in the Mozilla Firefox browser.

To make DuckDuckGo a home page go to settings by typing about:preferences in the address bar and then specify https://duckduckgo.com as your homepage.

Nevertheless, DuckDuckGo has one drawback, which we cannot skip, the service is owned by an American company located in Valley Forge (Pennsylvania, USA). Unfortunately, there is no alternative to DuckDuckGo located in another jurisdiction.