UnGoogle yourself

For the past few weeks, I am running a project. The aim is to be Google free in the next 3-4 weeks, that is to stop using every service that Google provides, breakaway from the shackles of the big brother of the internet. In this quest for freedom, I started at the most obvious starting point: the search. I replaced Google search with duckduckgo.com and not only on my laptop but also on my mobile, I have set the default search engine to duckduckgo.com and guess what? I haven't missed Google at all. I have used Google only once in the past 3 weeks when I had to use an advanced dork. There are few features in duckduckgo.com which are actually better than Google.

Let me illustrate this with an example. Suppose we want to search about "iPhone 6s issues" in the site stackoverflow.com. Here the Google search string or aka Google dork will be "site:stackoverflow.com iPhone 6s issues" and this search query will yield results as shown below:

This is where duckduckgo.com differs in a pleasant way. It has a feature called Bangs.Using bangs, your search string will be "!stackoverflow iPhone 6s issues". When we click on search, the results are not on duckduckgo page but on the destination site itself. Have a look below:

These are pre-defined bangs, like for example !a is for amazon.com, you can find more about bangs below.

But the greatest feature of duckduckgo.com is not about bangs, it is about privacy. It doesn't store your search history at all and since it does not store your search history, your search results are like stateless, what I mean is your search results are unaffected by your earlier searches, personal preferences or prejudices.

If you have a look at their privacy policy, this is what it says

Search Leakage:

DuckDuckGo prevents search leakage by default. Instead, when you click on a link on our site, we route (redirect) that request in such a way so that it does not send your search terms to other sites. The other sites will still know that you visited them, but they will not know what search you entered beforehand.
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Search History:

Other search engines save your search history. Usually your searches are saved along with the date and time of the search, some information about your computer (e.g. your IP address, User agent and often a unique identifier stored in a browser cookie), and if you are logged in, your account information (e.g. name and email address).

With only the timestamp and computer information, your searches can often be traced directly to you. With the additional account information, they are associated directly with you.
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DuckDuckGo takes the approach to not collect any personal information. The decisions of whether and how to comply with law enforcement requests, whether and how to anonymize data, and how to best protect your information from hackers are out of our hands. Your search history is safe with us because it cannot be tied to you in any way.

Information Not Collected:


When you search at DuckDuckGo, we don't know who you are and there is no way to tie your searches together.

When you access DuckDuckGo (or any Web site), your Web browser automatically sends information about your computer, e.g. your User agent and IP address.

Because this information could be used to link you to your searches, we do not log (store) it at all. This is a very unusual practice, but we feel it is an important step to protect your privacy.     

Have a look at the complete privacy policy

Apart from the usual tools that Google provide like online conversion, getting weather updates, using stopwatch etc, duckduckgo also has a password generator, if you require a 12-digit strong password, then just type "password 12 strong" and you will have a complex 12 character password, if you do not like it then just refresh the page and it will give you another one. Pretty nifty eh ?

After not using Google search for this long, I am certain that I won't be going back to it again.

In my next article, we will pick up another Google service and see which alternate we can use in its place.

Keywords: #privacy #tracking #privacymatters #duckduckgo #googletracking