New setting: hide AI-generated images in DuckDuckGo

Our philosophy about AI features is “private, useful, and optional.” Our goal is to help you find what you’re looking for. You should decide for yourself how much AI you want in your life – or if you want any at all. (1/4) To that end, we’ve added a new setting to hide AI-generated images in your results when you’re searching for images on DuckDuckGo.

Try it by making a search on DuckDuckGo and heading to the Images tab. You’ll see a new drop-down option: AI images: show or AI images: hide. (2/4)

Our approach to AI is to provide private, useful, and optional AI features – including chat and search instant answers – to people who want the productivity benefits of AI without the privacy risks.

Don't want to use AI? No problem, we've made it optional by design. (1/6) Now out of beta: Get free, anonymized access to popular chatbots at Duck.ai. Easily move from traditional search results – which now include more AI-assisted answers – to Duck.ai to continue your conversation. spreadprivacy.com/ai-feature-upg… (2/6)

For everyone who's tired of having their personal data harvested and sold, here are 7 easy ways you can take back your privacy online. 👇 #DataPrivacyDay 1. Private Search

Your searches are anonymous and we never track you. duckduckgo.com

NEW: Meet DuckAssist (beta), an AI-assisted search Instant Answer that uses Wikipedia to answer questions. 🪄

DuckAssist is:
✔️ Free (no sign-up required!)
✔️ Completely anonymous and private
✔️ Available now in our browsers and extensions

Learn more 👇 spreadprivacy.com/duckassist-lau… DuckAssist is live in our search results from within our DuckDuckGo browsing apps (iOS, Android, Mac, Windows) and browser extensions (Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Edge). If this trial period goes well, we expect to roll it out to all search results (outside our apps) soon.

We believe online privacy should be simple and accessible to everyone. Period. Our Founder and CEO @yegg wrote about all the progress we made in 2021 making it easy for people to take back their privacy now with one download.

spreadprivacy.com/duckduckgo-202… From improvements to search, tracker blocking, and our mobile app, to new features like Email Protection and App Tracking Protection, we're building a simple privacy layer for how people use the Internet today, without any tradeoffs. It’s privacy, simplified.

To fend off antitrust complaints, Google has often claimed search competition is “only one click away.” Nope.

In reality, it takes 15+ clicks to make DuckDuckGo Search (or any other alternative) the default on Android devices.

spreadprivacy.com/one-click-away/ Google does this on purpose to block competition. There is no reason it should take 15+ clicks to set a new default search engine on Android. It is actually possible in 1 click with a properly designed search preference menu.

The Q4 2020 results of Google’s search preference menu auction have been released and, as we predicted, DuckDuckGo has been eliminated in most countries.

spreadprivacy.com/search-prefere… This EU antitrust remedy is rigged by Google, with its mobile market share still 97%. By contrast, our proposal could move its marketshare more than 20%.

spreadprivacy.com/search-prefere…

Google says search competition is a click away, but that's not true. On Android & elsewhere are many barriers to switching. Our new research shows that if competition is really a click away, Google's mobile market share would immediately drop by 20%.

spreadprivacy.com/search-prefere… This is the first large-scale live testing of search preference menus in the U.S., U.K., and Australia. With Google's mobile market share above 95%, search preference menus would finally bring some real competition and allow people to easily search privately.

How is Google still able to delay competition regulation and extract money from competitors at the same time? Let's talk about today's results from the EU Android search preference menu auction: android.com/choicescreen-w… What we predicted would happen is happening (with this pay-to-play auction format):
- Search competitors ⬇️ by 33% (w/ no Qwant in France, no Yandex in Eastern EU)
- Prices ⬆️ (now extracting even more money from remaining competitors)

Google's search preference menu for Android in the EU is an auction with only 4 options. This creates false scarcity to boost its revenue and depress competition. A much better way to give consumers choice is to allow unlimited options, for free. (1/6)

spreadprivacy.com/search-prefere… We've gathered data showing that with unlimited options (available by scrolling) and better design (e.g. descriptions shown by default), 24% of people select Google alternatives, 8x the current 3% combined mobile market share of these alternatives. (2/6)

gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-…

Google’s search preference menu for Android in the EU goes live soon. Sadly, search options are decided by a Google-designed pay-to-play auction, prioritizing their profits over your choices.

Here's why the auction model should be thrown out:

spreadprivacy.com/search-prefere… In particular, an auction model disadvantages search engines that:

• Put user experience over monetization and so show fewer ads
• Put privacy before profit and so make less money per ad shown
• Give away a substantial portion of their profits to good causes

We do all three.

With the importance of blocking trackers, we're pleased to push this technology forward with the release of Tracker Radar, a best-in-class data set which can be used to make better tracker blockers (and powers our own) as well as research tracking:
spreadprivacy.com/duckduckgo-tra… This data improves upon existing tracker data that often contains stale entries and lead to broken websites. This allows our tracker blocking to go well beyond what most major browsers do in that we can block network connections to trackers (as opposed to just blocking cookies).

Google’s search preference menu for the EU is designed in a way that undercuts the very reason it was created, making it harder than necessary for people to choose a non-Google search engine alternative. We propose user-tested design improvements:
spreadprivacy.com/search-prefere… Google has artificially limited the number of search engine choices, ignoring the obvious fact that screens can scroll. This restriction is surely tied to the underlying pay-to-play auction model for these artificially-limited slots, which we believe is fundamentally wrong.

Today, we're proud to share more on DuckDuckGo Smarter Encryption:
-How it can make 80% of website connections encrypted (HTTPS)
-How Pinterest is using it on their site
-How the code behind it is open source
-How it works!

spreadprivacy.com/duckduckgo-sma… Smarter Encryption is a key component of our mobile app (DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser) and desktop browser extension (DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials) duckduckgo.com/app

It makes sure when you type a website URL or click on a link that you use the encrypted version if possible.

Desktop Safari users: we're delighted to announce that our DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials browser extension is now available again for you! (Requires Safari 13 and macOS Catalina.)

spreadprivacy.com/duckduckgo-for… Enjoy protection from third-party trackers as you browse the web with the built-in content blocker, and see its benefits thanks to the privacy dashboard, including privacy grades for every website.

In Europe, US, & Australia, we found people presented with a search preference menu selected engines other than Google at a rate that would increase their collective market share by 300-800%, & overall mobile search market share would immediately jump 10%.
spreadprivacy.com/search-engine-… This data shows strong pent-up consumer demand for search alternatives to Google, but competitors' market share is suppressed by difficulties that users face in changing their search defaults.

In addition to our DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser app and DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials extension, we've been improving DuckDuckGo Private Search and are happy to announce:
* Past year date filter
* Refined dark theme
* Faster speeds in India

spreadprivacy.com/duckduckgo-sea… You've been waiting patiently and here it is - a "past year" filter for DuckDuckGo search results! Previously the maximum time length was one month - we've now upped that to 12 😃

Privacy continues to get widespread media coverage but is the message getting through? We conducted research to find out, and discovered a groundswell of people taking action to reclaim their online privacy.

Full survey results here:
spreadprivacy.com/people-taking-… In the past year, 79.2% (± 2.3) of Americans adjusted privacy-related settings on social media accounts or reduced social media usage.

Earlier this year we announced that maps on DuckDuckGo Search are powered by Apple Maps. Today we're excited to show you some new improvements to further enhance map and address-related searches.

spreadprivacy.com/duckduckgo-app… You can now refine searches within the map view, saving time and restricting results to the region displayed. Autocomplete suggestions will now also be specific to the local area selected.
duckduckgo.com/?q=coffee+shop…

We welcome the EU cracking down on Google's anti-competitive search behavior. We have felt its effects first hand for many years and has led directly to us having less market share on Android vs iOS and in general mobile vs desktop. A couple examples...

bloomberg.com/news/articles/… Up until just last year, it was impossible to add DuckDuckGo to Chrome on Android, and it is still impossible on Chrome on iOS. We are also not included in the default list of search options like we are in Safari, even though we are among the top search engines in many countries.

Let's kick off a countdown to a Google-free New Year, following some of the tips in our list of Google alternatives.
spreadprivacy.com/how-to-remove-…
#GoogleFree2018 Starting with alternatives to Gmail, check out @FastMail, an independent, paid service that includes calendar and contacts.

Even more private email alternatives are @ProtonMail and @TutanotaTeam, both of which offer end-to-end encryption by default.
#GoogleFree2018