DuckDuckGo is an American software company founded in 2008 by Gabriel Weinberg. Its flagship product is a search engine that does not store IP addresses or user information used for micro-targeting, according to its Wikipedia entry. The company also offers browser extensions, a private browser and a paid subscription.
History of DuckDuckGo
Creator: Gabriel Weinberg. Year: 2008.
DuckDuckGo is an American software company. Gabriel Weinberg founded it in 2008. Weinberg had the idea to improve search. He had it in a 2007 stained glass class. He tried several search start-up companies. They failed. Then he launched DuckDuckGo. Earlier, he launched Names Database. It was a social network. It no longer runs.
Weinberg paid for it himself until October 2011. Its series A round was its first outside investment. Union Square Ventures led it. DuckDuckGo gets results from several providers. Each offers an application programming interface (API). They include Bing and Yahoo. DuckDuckGo also uses Wolfram Alpha. It uses its own web crawler too, called DuckDuckBot. TechCrunch called the service a hybrid search engine. The reason was its mix of sources.
In 2010, it began to stress privacy. Privacy was its main difference from competitors. By 2011, Linux Mint and the Midori browser made it their default search engine. They chose it. Apple announced this at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) keynote. The keynote was on June 2, 2014. DuckDuckGo would be a search option in Safari. The option would be on iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite. Mozilla added it as a search option. It was in Firefox 33.1 on November 10, 2014.
The Edward Snowden leaks came in 2013. They raised public awareness of surveillance. The number of users grew. In December 2018 Google moved the duck.com domain to DuckDuckGo. Google had owned the domain since 2010. That was when it bought On2 Technologies, a video codec company. In March 2019 Google added DuckDuckGo to the default search engine list in Chrome.
In 2022 it released its own browser. It is the DuckDuckGo Private Browser for desktop. In April 2024 it offered a paid subscription. It includes a virtual private network (VPN). It also includes identity theft restoration. It gives access to AI models. It first launched for users in the United States.
Changelog and latest update
DuckDuckGo put out a new search site on May 21, 2014. The new site added images. It also added local search, auto-suggest, weather and recipe answers. In July 2016 it extended its partnership with Yahoo. The change added date filtering. It also added more site links to results.
In July 2021 it added Email Protection. This is a forwarding service for @duck.com addresses. It removes data trackers from incoming email. It then sends the mail to the user's private address. All customers had the feature by August 2022.
In April 2022 it said it would show the original publisher page. It would do this in place of the Google Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) version. In September 2022, Debian package maintainers made DuckDuckGo the default search engine in Chromium. They did it for privacy reasons.
Starting in 2025, it added Easter eggs1. Easter eggs are hidden features. When users search for some pop culture characters, the logo shows Dax, its mascot, in costume. Dax is dressed as that character. The company said a design team works on the images with AI tools.
Latest update: Fifteenth year of donations report, 2025-09-30
The company timeline lists a donation report dated September 30, 2025. For its fifteenth year of donations, DuckDuckGo gave $1.1 million to 29 organizations. They share its goal of raising the standard of trust online. The timeline gives a total of $8 million in donations to date.
Usage examples
DuckDuckGo uses a web address for each search. A website can link to a search. A browser user can type a bang shortcut. A script can call the lite page. The examples below show each pattern. The q parameter holds the search text. A plus sign stands for a space in the address.
<a href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=dns"
rel="nofollow">Search DNS</a>This link opens a DuckDuckGo search for the word DNS. The q parameter carries the search text. The rel attribute tells search engines not to follow the link. That suits a link from one site to a search page on another site.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=!w+DNSA bang is a shortcut that sends the search to another site. The !w bang sends the words DNS to Wikipedia. Each bang starts with an exclamation mark. It is followed by the short code of the target site and the search words.
curl -s \
"https://html.duckduckgo.com/html/\
?q=cpanel" -o results.htmlThe lite version returns HTML without JavaScript. A script can read the results. This command saves the results page for the search term cpanel. It saves to a file named results.html on the local disk.
<?php
$term = $_GET['term'] ?? '';
header('Location: '
. 'https://duckduckgo.com/?q='
. urlencode($term));
exit;This PHP script reads a term from the address. It encodes the term for a URL. It sends the visitor to a DuckDuckGo search. The urlencode function converts spaces and symbols. So the search address stays valid for any input.
References
These sources are outside Websnoogie and were checked on 2026-10-12.
DuckDuckGo
Wikipedia
Encyclopedia entry on the company founded by Gabriel Weinberg. It covers the history from 2008, the search results partners, the browser products, the subscription and the donation program, with a list of sources for each claim. Its sources include TechCrunch and The Washington Post reports.
About DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo
The company's own about page. It holds a timeline of product launches, privacy commitments and donation reports, including the September 2025 entry used for the latest update in this article. Each report is listed by date.
Spread Privacy
DuckDuckGo
The company blog for privacy education, tips and original research. It also reports news about DuckDuckGo products, including the search engine, the browser and the email protection service.
DuckDuckGo Help Pages
DuckDuckGo
The official help center for the search engine, the browser and the subscription. It explains search settings, bang shortcuts and the privacy features that apply to each product.
DuckDuckGo Privacy Policy
DuckDuckGo
The company privacy policy. It sets out which information the search service and the related products collect and what they do not collect, which is the basis of the privacy claims in this article.
Private search still needs a clear page
A site that DuckDuckGo skips usually has one simple problem. The page does not say what the business does. DuckDuckGo gathers results from many sources and shows the pages whose words match the search. Without clear words on the page, your business does not appear for the searches your customers type.
We fix that first. We write a plain title and a short description for each page. We use one main heading that names the service in words a customer would use. We also check that the page loads fast on a phone. The page itself has to do the explaining, because a search box cannot describe your work for you.
Pricing stays simple. The domain runs $24.99, and hosting on WordPress is $149 each year. Keeping the words current after launch is $190 a month. A new site is ready in three to five days, so the fix does not sit for long.
Send us the words your customers search for. Our line, 402-813-4034, is staffed from 7 am to 10 pm every day. We will show you where the gap sits and what it takes to close it.
