When I went from 'Google it' to 'Duck it' !

When I first heard of the phrase "Duck Duck Go" I thought its something to do with ducks. If someone else would've told me that Duck Duck Go was a search engine I would have thought it was a pretty lame joke on me.  Well, actually the joke is on me now! To my utter surprise, Duck Duck Go is in reality a fairly popular search engine! Yes, after the initial shock of such a ridiculous name for a search engine subsided I looked up about what Duck Duck Go really is. And this time for a change I used Duck Duck Go, not Google. :)

theDuck!

For a person like me who treats the words "search" and "Google" analogously, to think of a search engine other than Google was close to impossible.  Oh please, until 2 months ago my homepage was set to Google. I'm pretty sure that most of you navigate to "www.google.com" which redirects you to "www.google.co.in"  to check if your network is working or not. Well, I used to do the same thing some days ago, so nothing to be weary about! Now that I've found other efficient ways to check if the net's on or not, I can't really forget my roots can I ! ;-)

The site

Moving further, what is this DuckDuckGo?
In three words, its Google's best competitor. In more words, DuckDuckGo is an Internet search engine that uses information from many sources from Yahoo, Bing, etc to fetch results. Straight from the Wiki! Well we've all seen that Bing and Yahoo haven't been very popular. So another search engine which combines all these results? "Oh please, who's gonna look at that!" was my initial reaction.
Well, there's more to it.

When I told about how "www.google.com" redirects your browser to "www.google.co.in", I forgot to mention an important fact. The re-direction happens because Google knows where you are from! That means whenever you visit a Google site, it keeps track of you. Follows you.(like a "Hutch" pug) Suggests to you. Manipulates you. Isn't that something to be apprehensive about? You log onto a search engine to look up for something you need and in the process, you sell out information about yourself! Now its up to you to decide who's the smarter of you both.
where does DuckDuckGo come in?

This says it all. Quoted from their own site, "DuckDuckGo does not collect or share personal information. That is our privacy policy in a nutshell. "  Other search engines feed on the searches you make. Based on your searches, they identify you, mold you and make an identity for you. For example, you'll no longer be buying the things you need, but the things suggested to you. At DuckDuckGo, you can be completely anonymous. No one tracks you, nor does anyone interferes with your choice-selection. All users, irrespective of the fact that they are from India or Uganda, will be shown the same search results for a given search term.

Just Duck it!

I have changed my homepage to "www.duckduckgo.com". When are you going to change?
Remember, your privacy is your freedom. Use it well! ;)