DuckDuckGo just put out a post criticizing Google for personalizing search results. They're a small company without many resources, and privacy has been their primary selling point from the get-go. Yes, DuckDuckGo could also be personalizing their own results, but if they were and people found out, there's risk of a significant outcry. Until I see evidence to the contrary, I'm inclined to assume good faith.
See also: discussions around "but how do we know for sure that Apple has better data privacy than Google?"
They are VC-funded and make money selling ads. Stop idolising DDG as the true and only fighter for privacy. Sooner or later they will bow down to Ad Cash or fuck up otherwise.
It's not about company size or profitability, it's about words + past actions. As I mentioned, I made a similar argument recently about Apple.
If you assume all organizations are equally ready to ignore user privacy, what do you use? Do you program your own everything or do you only use FSF-approved software whose source code you have personally examined and compiled?
They sell ads based on your current search terms, not your search and browsing history. Your browsing history is easier for Google to summarize based on all your searches, and URLs you click which get redirected from google.com to other sites with a unique hash.
The funny thing is that what DuckDuckGo is doing is actually working... By limiting ads to the search words they manage to provide relevant ads (insofar any ads are ever relevant). It turns out that when I search for "office chair" I'm actually not shopping for the Macbook Pro I was looking at a month ago... :O
Do you mean personalizing search results? IF so, that's incredibly easy to check: run the same searches on computers in separate physical locations and compare results.
The article mentioned Google tracking users even inside browser sessions. So I'm not sure how to replicate this individually without a significant amount of effort.
