Gabriel Weinberg, the founder of privacy search engine DuckDuckGo, said in an exclusive interview with Techradar Pro that the success of a private web service depends on its ability to find a new path of least resistance for users.
In other words, Gabriel Weinberg believes that online privacy should be easily accessible, and the complicated twists and turns are actually unnecessary.
While most people say they care about privacy, only half actually take action. Even so, that percentage will continue to rise as consumers become more aware of the dangers of privacy,” he said.
It is reported that since the early 2010s, many organizations have spontaneously provided users with privacy protection tools to defend against the unscrupulous tracking technology of technology (advertising) giants such as Google and Facebook.
DuckDuckGo, which focuses on private search experience, ProtonMail, a private email service provider, and Brave, a private browser developer, all belong to such companies.
Unfortunately, such companies have the relatively limited financial strength and influence in their field. Today, many people have still used to the default “privacy settings”, and companies with vested interests have no incentive to improve themselves.
In search, for example, Google throws back billions of dollars every year to make sure it can become Apple the default search engine in web browsers such
At the same time, Google Chrome’s dominance of the web browser market means that most Internet users use Google’s search service by default.
What’s more, there is Google Android, which accounts for half of the mobile operating system market and is chosen by the majority of smartphone/tablet computer manufacturers.
To counteract these negative effects on users, Gabriel Weinberg believes that we need to give everyone more types of service providers, as well as easier “one-click privacy switching” options (including web browser/search services).
Taking Android as an example, the user needs to click more than 15 times to change the default search engine.
But we sincerely believe that this thing should have been done at the touch of a button. If we can implement this mechanism, our current scale can easily expand five to ten times.
This openness is also crucial for related industries. The answer to this question is obviously inseparable from policy supervision.
That’s why we’ve been working hard to work with institutions around the world and look forward to finally making that happen.