- Oct 23, 2012
- 12,527
DuckDuckGo, the search engine that focuses on user privacy, is facing some issues in China. The service has been blocked for users in the country.
The company confirmed for Tech in Asia about the troubles the search engine is facing. Gabriel Weiberg, DuckDuckGo CEO, confirmed the news over Twitter.
While he is aware of the fact that the site is no longer accessible in China, he doesn’t know for sure when it happened. GreatFire index of blocked sites indicates that the site may have been banned on September 4, but there’s been no official confirmation of the news.
DuckDuckGo has been working just fine for Chinese users since it was created. In the past year, it has seen an increase in traffic, mostly due to all the bad press Google, Bing and Yahoo were getting due to the NSA mass surveillance scandal. This is most likely what put DuckDuckGo on the radar of the Chinese authorities charged with keeping the Internet censored.
Baidu dominates the area
The private search engine joins Google and many others online services that have been censored in China. While some are able to bypass the blockade by using VPN services and various proxy servers, most don’t even bother.
Baidu dominates the local market with an estimated 64.4 percent market share in August. 360 search follows next with 17.5 percent market share, while Soguo Search ranks third with 10.54 percent market share.
Bing comes up fourth with 2.92 percent market share, while Google follows next with 2.32 percent. Considering that the latter is blocked in the country, the result is impressive. Of course, it should be noted that in Hong Kong, which is a special administrative region in China, access to the site is allowed, so traffic from this area accounts for at least part of the market share Google managed to grab.
It’s unlikely that DuckDuckGo’s business will suffer too much following the blockade, but it’s another hit for freedom of speech nonetheless.
DuckDuckGo announced last year that it hit 1 billion searches following the NSA revelations. The spike in traffic is quite commendable. For comparison’s sake, Google handles about 3.5 billion searches every day.
DuckDuckGo doesn’t offer personalized search results because it does not profile its users. Everyone gets the same search results when looking for a certain term, focusing on getting info from the best sources, choosing quality over quantity.
The company confirmed for Tech in Asia about the troubles the search engine is facing. Gabriel Weiberg, DuckDuckGo CEO, confirmed the news over Twitter.
While he is aware of the fact that the site is no longer accessible in China, he doesn’t know for sure when it happened. GreatFire index of blocked sites indicates that the site may have been banned on September 4, but there’s been no official confirmation of the news.
DuckDuckGo has been working just fine for Chinese users since it was created. In the past year, it has seen an increase in traffic, mostly due to all the bad press Google, Bing and Yahoo were getting due to the NSA mass surveillance scandal. This is most likely what put DuckDuckGo on the radar of the Chinese authorities charged with keeping the Internet censored.
Baidu dominates the area
The private search engine joins Google and many others online services that have been censored in China. While some are able to bypass the blockade by using VPN services and various proxy servers, most don’t even bother.
Baidu dominates the local market with an estimated 64.4 percent market share in August. 360 search follows next with 17.5 percent market share, while Soguo Search ranks third with 10.54 percent market share.
Bing comes up fourth with 2.92 percent market share, while Google follows next with 2.32 percent. Considering that the latter is blocked in the country, the result is impressive. Of course, it should be noted that in Hong Kong, which is a special administrative region in China, access to the site is allowed, so traffic from this area accounts for at least part of the market share Google managed to grab.
It’s unlikely that DuckDuckGo’s business will suffer too much following the blockade, but it’s another hit for freedom of speech nonetheless.
DuckDuckGo announced last year that it hit 1 billion searches following the NSA revelations. The spike in traffic is quite commendable. For comparison’s sake, Google handles about 3.5 billion searches every day.
DuckDuckGo doesn’t offer personalized search results because it does not profile its users. Everyone gets the same search results when looking for a certain term, focusing on getting info from the best sources, choosing quality over quantity.
