According to DuckDuckGo Gabe Weinberg, the service has managed to increase its traffic by 600% since the NSA's actions were revealed by Edward Snowden (2013).
The search engine was founded in 2008 and is based in Paoli, Pennsylvania. It prides itself on not logging any information from its users.
Since its launch, DuckDuckGo has announced its commitment to protecting its users' personal data.
This has helped it gain a large percentage of privacy-conscious users, who have chosen a company that values them more than Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
In an interview he gave to CNBC, which focused on the issue of online privacy, Mr. Weinberg revealed that his company has benefited greatly from the revelations of the NSA's actions in 2013. According to Weinberg, traffic has increased by more than 600% and has reached 3 billion search queries per year since then.
Citing a Pew Research study that showed that 40% of Americans prefer a search engine that doesn't track them, Mr. Weinberg estimates that his company could easily increase the numbers we cited above in the future, and gain a larger market share than the current search giants.
Weinberg said that DuckDuckGo doesn't need to track its users for the search engine to function properly. In fact, it doesn't even need to.
Mr. Weinberg said that Google, Yahoo, and Bing track their users, mainly because they offer additional features to other related services, or because they need the information for more complex advertising offers.
DuckDuckGo's search engine profits are based on a classic keyword advertising system. The system is reportedly effective enough to keep the company afloat.
