Enter DuckDuckGo, a search engine challenger to the big guys that aims to burst the bubble, offering a disruptive paradigm worth $3 million in recently raised first round VC funding, which also allows for DuckDuckGo's physical expansion, from self-funded, home-based business to offices in Paoli, Chester County, by next month. The company now has two full time employees and four contractors, with plans to double staff by the end of 2012.
MIT-educated Gabriel Weinberg is the mind behind the engine. He launched his company in 2008, garnering national press. “I was well aware of Google's domination but it didn't phase me,” says Weinberg. “It's not my goal to make a dent. One of my reasons for starting DuckDuckGo was the feeling that Google was too cluttered with ads and commercial results.”
Ad clutter's not the only thing DuckDuckGoes after. Another feature is Zero Click, aka goodies, which are all free and open source. Type your query into the search box to get instant results for complex calculations, recipes, and statistics, rather than just links to web pages with answers. Weinberg and team are adding new features constantly, with growing contributions via open source channels.
To get the eye of the tech elite, DuckDuckGo rented a high traffic billboard in the SF Bay area at a cost of $7000 for two weeks. Weinberg, who grew up in Atlanta and went to school in Boston, strategically chose the Philadelphia area, and specifically Valley Forge, to raise a family and grow the business.
Weinberg attributes the surge of interest in DuckDuckGo as “a bunch of threads coming together,” citing an increase in people looking for alternatives and growing concern about spam and privacy.
On privacy, and its increasing lack thereof, Weinberg says, “A large percentage of people would like their privacy reasonably protected if they had real choices and were educated on the issues.”
Source: Gabriel Weinberg, DuckDuckGo
Writer: Sue Spolan
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