Your personal data is nobody's business.
For everyone who’s had enough of online tracking, DuckDuckGo lets you take back your online privacy now.
Every day millions of people rely on our free all-in-one privacy solution. Our mobile browser and desktop extension come with private search and seamless protection from trackers as you browse. We deliver privacy, simplified.
Trusted for Over a Decade
Same Internet, more privacy.
Our mission is to show the world that protecting privacy is simple. For over a decade, we've created new technology and worked with policymakers to make online privacy simple and accessible for all.
Our Story
Since 2008, we’ve expanded what we do to protect you no matter where you go on the Internet. Check out our story.
We Hatched
DuckDuckGo began as an idea for a better search engine experience. We hatched out of a few servers in a dusty basement.
February 29, 2008
Launch!
Within the year, DuckDuckGo was announced to the Hacker News and reddit communities. We made it out with only minor troll scars.
September 25, 2008
Anonymous
We decided to make a bold move and not track your search history. Tracking is creepy.
March 15, 2010
The Billboard
We told the world “Google tracks you. We don’t.” with a billboard in their backyard. Hello, World!
January 11, 2011
2011 Donations
We rely on a lot of great projects to keep our wings flapping. So we decided to start giving back, donating to nginx, FreeBSD, Tor Project, Clamwin, Tahoe-LAFS and OpenSSH.
February 26, 2011
Employee #1
For years our founder Gabriel was the only full-timer. Caine Tighe changed all that, coming on board as our first official employee.
November 30, 2011
Headquarters
We finally moved out of Gabriel’s basement into our fortress in Paoli, PA. It really looks like a castle!
December 1, 2011
Redesign
Our first major visual overhaul introduced a new design that made you not want to close your browser the second you saw our results page.
January 16, 2012
1,000,000!
Reaching 1 million searches a day was a major milestone for us, having steadily grown from 100 to 1,000 to 10,000 to 100,000 and finally to 1,000,000. That’s more than 10 searches a second!
February 13, 2012
2012 Donations
For our second year of donations we chose the theme “open data/information,” donating to Tor, The Wikimedia Foundation, unhosted.org, Diaspora, Freenet, and friendica.
March 7, 2012
2013 Donations
The theme for our third year of donations was “fix tracking,” with donations to OpenStreetMap, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Riseup, F-Droid, NoScript, Cryptocat, and Javascript Blocker.
February 25, 2013
2,000,000
483 days after reaching one million, we doubled our daily searches. This milestone happened days after people started sharing private alternatives (like us) in the wake of the NSA revelations.
June 10, 2013
3,000,000
Just eight days after hitting two million searches per day, we added another million. To put this in perspective, it took 1,445 days to get to one million from the day we launched.
June 17, 2013
2014 Donations
Needed more than ever, our 2014 donation theme was “secure communications,” donating to SecureDrop, NoiseTor, Lavabit, Riseup, Mailpile, and the Invisible Internet Project.
March 12, 2014
Employee #10
The big guys have thousands more employees than us, and so everyone at DuckDuckGo is an essential member of the team. Welcome Brian Stoner!
March 17, 2014
Reimagined
DuckDuckGo launches a redesigned search engine with a refined look and a focus on smarter answers. And, of course, we still don't track you.
May 19, 2014
Safari
Apple begins including DuckDuckGo in Safari, with the launch of iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite. Wow, cool!
September 17, 2014
Firefox
Mozilla adds DuckDuckGo as a built-in search option to Firefox. Thank you! Do you think we’ll ever get into Chrome?
November 10, 2014
2015 Donations
In our fifth donation year, we divided $125,000 equally over five projects: SecureDrop, Privacy Badger, GPGTools, Tails, and Girl Develop It.
March 20, 2015
10,000,000
Boom! 10 million searches in a single day (10,210,082 to be exact). To celebrate, we gave away a ton of DuckDuckGo T-shirts!
June 22, 2015
2016 Donations
We divided $225,000 equally over nine projects: SecureDrop, Freenet, OpenBSD Foundation, CrypTech, Tor Project, Fight for the Future, VeraCrypt, LEAP, GPGTools.
May 3, 2016
10 Billion Searches!
We concluded 2016 with over four billion anonymous searches served, surpassing a cumulative count of ten billion!
December 31, 2016
2017 Donations
We divided $400,000 over sixteen projects including: Freedom of the Press Foundation, World Privacy Forum, Open Whisper Systems, Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, Tor Project and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
February 10, 2017
20,000,000
Over 20 million searches in a single day. Privacy is mainstream and more and more privacy conscious people have #ComeToTheDuckSide.
November 13, 2017
Privacy Beyond Search
We extended our privacy protection beyond the search box with the launch of our new mobile app & browser extension, available on all major platforms.
January 23, 2018
2018 Donations
For our eighth year of donations, we organized and donated to a privacy crowdfunding campaign that benefited 21 organizations that share our vision of raising the standard of trust online.
April 10th, 2018
Apple Maps
DuckDuckGo map and local searches are now anonymously enhanced by Apple Maps, providing a valuable combination of mapping and privacy.
January 15, 2019
1 Billion Monthly Searches!
2019 also saw us break 1 billion searches a month for the first time!
February 1, 2019
50 Billion Searches!
In the last two years, we've flown from 25 billion searches to a whopping 50 billion!
June 20, 2020
2021 Donations
For our eleventh year of donations, we donated $1M to benefit 22 organizations that share our vision of raising the standard of trust online.
Sept 30th, 2021
From Our Blog
At SpreadPrivacy.com, we publish privacy education, tips, and original research, along with DuckDuckGo news.
DuckDuckGo in 2021: Building the Privacy Super App
DuckDuckGo News
Introducing App Tracking Protection for Android: The easiest way to block trackers lurking in your apps
DuckDuckGo News
2021 DuckDuckGo Charitable Donations: $1,000,000 to Privacy and Competition Organizations Around the World
DuckDuckGo News
