DuckDuckGo has captured my attention for a few weeks now, and it’s been a great experience so far. It’s not just about switching search engines, ditching Google completely, or anything like that. It’s about control.

The most obvious advantages for switching to DuckDuckGo are related to privacy, tracking, and filter bubbles, the main reasons for which DuckDuckGo is advertised. These reasons are compelling if you’re concerned about your privacy online (you should be), and they’ve become specially popular in the recent months (I wonder why).

However, a search engine, no matter how respectful of privacy it might be, is not worth trying if it’s not good at finding what you want. And DuckDuckGo stands really close to what Google, Bing, or any other mainstream search engine can offer you, in my opinion. It’s not 100% the same (obviously), and there’s no universally available metric to determine which is best or worse, so the ultimate metric is trying it for a while, and make up your own mind about how good or bad it is for you.

Also, DuckDuckGo goes beyond mere online searching, by providing a set of nifty little goodies and bangs. In my case these have been fundamental in my decision to finally switch completely, and I encourage you to try them too, see what are they all about.

To sum it up, DuckDuckGo has done a great job so far, considering how young the project is (will be reaching its 5th birthday next September 25th). I’ve heard they’re already working on image search, and who knows what other improvements and features may come in the future.

And if you’re a coder, and you feel like it, you can probably step in and contribute to the project yourself. Perhaps that next feature can be your idea, or you can be instrumental in the implementation. Who knows?