On April 12, 2021, Consumer Reports reported that DuckDuckGo updated its Chrome extension to block Google’s experimental Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), which grouped Chrome users by interests and demographics for ad targeting. Founder and CEO Gabriel Weinberg said FLoC was behavioral tracking imposed without consent and therefore not respectful of privacy.
DuckDuckGo, a company that makes privacy-focused tools for consumers, has released an update to its existing Google Chrome browser extension. It says the update will counteract a new tracking technology in the browser.
In an Associated Press report published September 21, 2023, founder Gabriel Weinberg said DuckDuckGo promises not to track users’ searches or locations. The company still sells ads, but bases them on users’ current search queries, rather than profiles built from their activity. Weinberg said people dislike ads that follow them around.
The MIT graduate started DuckDuckGo in his basement in Pennsylvania in 2008, plucking its name from a children’s game. After a couple years, the company began positioning itself as a search engine that respects people’s privacy by promising not to track what users search for or where they have been. Such tracking results can be used to create detailed user profiles and “creepy ads,’' Weinberg said.
In March 2025, DuckDuckGo moved some AI features out of beta, offering free, optional AI answers and Duck.ai chats it said were anonymized and not used for training. In a separate 2026 report, the company promoted its search service to schools amid criticism of Google’s AI policy; Google said schools had more choice and its tools would be off by default.
Known for protecting users from personal data collection, DuckDuckGo has moved some new AI features out of beta, including straightforward AI-assisted answers and an AI chatbot called Duck.ai. These features are now free, anonymized, and most importantly, optional for all users.
However, unlike Google, it provides options to disable these features in both its search and browser settings, the company says. It also offers a dedicated website, noai.duckduckgo.com, where AI-assisted answers, AI-generated images, and AI feature suggestions are all turned off.
On March 10, 2022, founder and CEO Gabriel Weinberg said DuckDuckGo was rolling out search updates to down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The company cited state-sponsored media such as RT and Sputnik, describing ranking changes—not removal—as a quality signal. Some users criticized the move as censorship.
The search engine DuckDuckGo will be down-ranking sites that spread Russian propaganda and disinformation. In a tweet, founder and CEO Gabriel Weinberg wrote that the privacy-focused search engine would be releasing updates that would ensure Russian disinformation sites rank further down in search results. Earlier this month, DuckDuckGo announced it would pause its relationship with Russian-state owned search engine Yandex.
In October 2019, DuckDuckGo said it had received a civil investigative demand from Texas as part of a multi-state antitrust investigation of Google and intended to cooperate. The company said the request concerned its experience competing in search, including syndication contracts and default-search deals; it said it collects or stores no personal information.
DuckDuckGo acknowledged the CID it received in a statement to CNN on Wednesday, saying that it intends to cooperate with the investigation of Google.
In January 2025, Judge Rita Lin allowed search users’ antitrust lawsuit against Google to proceed, saying their allegations could support an inference that Google’s distribution deals hindered privacy-protective alternatives such as DuckDuckGo. The users alleged harm from reduced choice; Google argued DuckDuckGo remained available. The ruling did not establish those allegations as fact.
Mehta's ruling flagged the privacy implications of Google's monopoly, characterizing DuckDuckGo as a privacy-protective search engine that is hindered by Google's search distribution deals, and a lack of access to data. (DuckDuckGo says it doesn't save users' IP address or any unique identifiers alongside searches.)
In a court filing described in reporting, Google argued that DuckDuckGo distributed most of its $10 million 2018 fundraising to shareholders and returned an undisclosed share of its $100 million 2020 round, rather than investing it in search. The filing also noted that one-third of DuckDuckGo’s 50 employees in 2018 worked on improving search.
The filing reveals some details we already knew about DuckDuckGo -- for example, that it's been profitable since 2014 and that its source of operating revenue is currently search advertising, namely search ads provided by Microsoft in the U.S. However, Google's proposal also attempts to paint a picture of a startup that didn't invest in search innovation but instead focused on returning investment to its shareholders.
The filing reveals some details we already knew about DuckDuckGo — for example, that it’s been profitable since 2014 and that its source of operating revenue is currently search advertising, namely search ads provided by Microsoft in the U.S. However, Google’s proposal also attempts to paint a picture of a startup that didn’t invest in search innovation but instead focused on returning investment to its shareholders.
On March 8, 2023, DuckDuckGo introduced DuckAssist, a free beta feature in its apps and browser extension. It uses ChatGPT and Anthropic language technology to generate answers from Wikipedia and related sources, appearing for some straightforward queries rather than acting as a chatbot. DuckDuckGo said it would not collect personal information or require a login.
DuckDuckGo launched a beta version of an AI search tool powered by ChatGPT Wednesday called DuckAssist. The addition to the company’s privacy-focused search engine uses ChatGPT and Anthropic’s language parsing capability to generate answers scraped from Wikipedia and related sources like the Encyclopedia Britannica. The tool is free and available on the DuckDuckGo web browsing apps for phones and computers as well as the company’s browser extension starting today.
During Google’s questioning in court on September 21, 2023, DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg said much of the company’s search capability came from Microsoft’s Bing. He also said DuckDuckGo had allowed Microsoft to track some users until a researcher flagged the practice in 2022; Weinberg apologized, and the company expanded tracker blocking to cover Microsoft.
Under questioning from Google, Weinberg said much of DuckDuckGo’s search capability originated with Microsoft’s Bing search engine and was not homegrown. The company had allowed Microsoft to track some DuckDuckGo users until a security researcher flagged the practice in 2022.