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For the first time ever, DuckDuckGo is now getting more than 100 million searches per day

For people looking for privacy, it is a solid option.

The privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo reached a historic milestone of 100-million user search queries on Monday.

Two decades ago, AltaVista was the most popular search engine in the world. Soon, its reign was cut short by a promising new search engine called Google. Today Google is at the top of the world, and it is a synonym for a search engine. However, it seems that we are again at a crossroads, and new trends favor other search engines.

And by trends, we mean the newly found taste for privacy-focused services such as DuckDuckGo. Privacy is at the very core of DuckDuckGo and their main selling point, something that holds great value recently.

READ MORE: DuckDuckGo’s private web browser is now available on Mac

The thing that distinguishes DuckDuckGo from other search engines such as Google and Bing is that its users do not need to worry that the search engine is collecting their personal information and selling it to online advertisers.

In its 12 years of existence, DuckDuckGo has never experienced growth like now. For comparison, in January 2002, DuckDuckGo averaged approximately 52 million daily searches. The numbers from this month suggest an increase of 73% yearly.

READ MORE: DuckDuckGo is planning to launch its own desktop browser

But while we are at it, we also need to acknowledge that DuckDuckGo’s success didn’t come overnight. A big part of their growth has been in the making for many years.

For example, from January 2019 to January 2020, they experienced a 52% increase. From January 2018 to January 2019, they recorded an increase of 62%. A similar increase in average daily searches was recorded in the same period between 2017 and 2018.

It’s even more impressive that their growth is not limited to their web app. The DuckDuckGo mobile app is also gaining strong momentum.

Last week, the DuckDuckGo app hit the #7 position in the iOS App Store in the all free apps category, whereas in the utility category, it ranked #1. Due to all that, DuckDuckGo is officially the second most popular search engine on mobile and fourth on desktop, behind Yahoo and Bing.

It has also been assisted by the fact iOS users can now set it as their primary search engine.

READ MORE: DuckDuckGo is tracking you even though it is a ‘private’ browser

DuckDuckGo’s 100 million daily searches might not seem much compared to Google’s 5 billion daily search queries, but the gap could shrink further if the current trends persist.

Other privacy centered apps are also riding the same wave as DuckDuckGo and have seen a massive influx of new users.

Telegram and Signal are two messaging apps centered around encrypted messaging and privacy. These apps also experienced exponential growth that is beyond their wildest expectations according to them. Consequently, this week Signal was ranking #1 on the US App Store, whereas Telegram occupied the second position.

This trend is propelled by the awareness of people about companies using their data to make a profit. These users are making a conscious choice to switch to other services. Whether this trend will reshape the current search engine and app landscape, only time can tell. For now, things are bright for online services and apps that value the privacy of their users.

Have any thoughts on this? Are you still using Google for search or are you considering using something else? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

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