In 2013, Edward Snowden leaked classified documents proving that the NSA was conducting online surveillance at a massive scale.
Later on, people became more and more aware of their privacy and many sought security by using various services to prevent their digital footprint to fall to unwanted hands.
One of the popular services is DuckDuckGo. The search engine skyrocketed in popularity, replacing Google for many people.
In 2017, DuckDuckGo broke into the top 400 popular websites while it sat in the top 800 sites a year ago. Doubling its popularity in just a year, the search engine has become more popular than other privacy oriented search engines such as Ixquick or Searx.
In September 1st, the search engine announced that it had processed 500 million anonymous search queries in August 2017
While the figure is impressive, DuckDuckGo is still far in comparison to Google that handled more than two trillion searches per year.
DuckDuckGo's appeal is its privacy-oriented search engine that promises to not store personal information, nor track its users with ads or others. And with its many features, it mimics Google in many ways, making it a handy tool for internet power users.
