DuckDuckGo Is Shaking Things Up With A New Privacy-Focused Web Browser

For years, people who wanted solid search results without the intense tracking that often accompanies them turned to DuckDuckGo. Soon those same privacy-minded folks will be able to a full-blown DuckDuckGo browser to surf the web.

In a new post on the DuckDuckGo blog today, CEO and founder Gabriel Weinberg noted that the company will not be building its browser the way Microsoft rebuilt Edge.

“Instead of forking Chromium or anything we’re building our desktop app around the OS-provided rendering engines,” he said. The DuckDuckGo browser will be a sort of wrapper around the built-in browsing functionality that Microsoft and Apple already provide in Windows and macOS.

It may sound a little strange, but that’s how pretty much every third-party browser you can install on your phone is created — whether it’s an iPhone or Android device.

That will allow DuckDuckGo to focus on what the company is best at: building privacy-first experiences for its users. Weinberg states that there will be “no complicated settings, no misleading warnings, no “levels” of privacy protection – just robust privacy protection that works by default, across search, browsing, email, and more.”

The jump from desktop search to a full-on browser isn’t as big as it might seem. So much of the browsing experience centers around search. Heck, there a lot of computer users out there who search for a particular website every time they need to get to it rather than using a bookmark or shortcut.

This is also how DuckDuckGo got rolling on mobile, starting out as a search app and evolving it into a tabbed experience that’s similar enough to a browser that a lot of users wouldn’t notice the difference.

Once you can install the app, you’ll be greeted by an uncomplicated interface that lets you “just browse.” You’ll be browsing faster than you would in Chrome, too, says Weinberg because DuckDuckGo’s browser isn’t bogged down by “unnecessary cruft and clutter.”

DuckDuckGo currently has a group of users testing the Mac version of its desktop browser. It’s a closed beta, so you may still have a while to wait before you can try it out yourself.

A Windows version is also on the way, though all that’s known for now is that Weinberg says the company is “working on it.”

DuckDuckGo currently handles around 100 million searches a day. It’s used by more 27 million people in the U.S. alone and is the #2 browsing app on iOS behind Google Chrome.