DuckDuckGo's Independence Comes into Question

DuckDuckGo (DDG), a popular privacy-focused search engine, has found itself at the center of controversy over its actual independence from Bing. A heated debate has broken out on social media, involving users and prominent figures in the tech industry, including Brave co-founder and javascript creator Brendan Eich.

Eich claimed that DuckDuckGo is entirely dependent on Bing’s index and lacks a fully independent search index of its own. In response, DDG supporters argued otherwise, asserting that the search engine employs its own crawler and supplements results with data from other sources such as Wikipedia and Apple Maps.

However, critics countered with concrete examples showing that DDG’s search results are nearly identical to Bing’s, aside from minor formatting differences. They also pointed out that, under its agreement with Microsoft, DDG is required to make exceptions for the company’s ad trackers—casting doubt on its reputation as a privacy-focused search engine.

Further criticism arose from DuckDuckGo’s reliance on Microsoft’s WebView2 browser engine, which can transmit diagnostic data based on Windows settings. Additionally, independent investigations revealed that whenever Bing enforced censorship, similar restrictions appeared in DDG’s search results as well.

Amid these discussions, trust in DuckDuckGo has been shaken. Despite the company’s claims of independence, the presented evidence suggests that the search engine remains closely tied to Microsoft and is not a fully autonomous alternative.