“It’s a myth you need to track people to make money in web search”

Myth: you absolutely must track people's online activities to make money. Take a look at how one pro-privacy search engine is shaking things up: Written by Anthony Cuthbertson for International Business Times The CEO and founder of DuckDuckGo has revealed that the privacy-focused search engine is making a profit despite not tracking its users' online activity and search history. Gabriel Weinberg took to YCombinator's Hacker News to conduct an AMA (ask me anything) on 7 October, making a dig at Google and other major search engines by claiming that privacy does not need to be sacrificed for profitability.

Myth: you absolutely must track people's online activities to make money. Take a look at how one pro-privacy search engine is shaking things up:

Written by Anthony Cuthbertson for International Business Times

The CEO and founder of DuckDuckGo has revealed that the privacy-focused search engine is making a profit despite not tracking its users' online activity and search history. Gabriel Weinberg took to YCombinator's Hacker News to conduct an AMA (ask me anything) on 7 October, making a dig at Google and other major search engines by claiming that privacy does not need to be sacrificed for profitability.

"DuckDuckGo is actually profitable. It is a myth you need to track people to make money in web search," Weinberg said during the AMA session. "Most of the money is still made without tracking people by showing you ads based on your keyword, i.e. type in 'car' and get a car ad.

"These ads are lucrative because people have buying intent. All that tracking is for the rest of the internet without this search intent, and that's why you're tracked across the internet with these same ads."

Weinberg also revealed that the traffic coming from the anonymous web browser Tor was "not significant" yet but that he would like it to be a lot more.

Privacy awareness post-Snowden

One of the key factors to DuckDuckGo's recent growth, according to Weinberg, was the mass surveillance revelations from former NSA contract worker Edward Snowden. Another factor cited for causing a spike in adoption rates included Google's 2012 decision to change its privacy policy to allow tracking across all of its services.

Read more at International Business Times