Gabriel Weinberg’s DuckDuckGo is taking aim at the desktop browser market, betting that default privacy-centric settings will provide safer alternatives to Google’s Chrome and Microsoft’s Chromium-based Edge browsers.
The upstart search engine company says it is building a desktop browser from scratch with the same privacy-enhancing defaults that makes the DuckDuckGo search engine popular with privacy advocates.
Weinberg, who co-founded DuckDuckGo in 2008 and expanded beyond search into email protection and mobile app tracking, said the new desktop browser will attempt to make things simple for confused web surfers.
“No complicated settings, no misleading warnings, no ‘levels’ of privacy protection – just robust privacy protection that works by default, across search, browsing [and] email,” Weinberg declared.
[ READ: Google Confirms Sixth Zero-Day Chrome Attack in 2021 ]
Instead of forking the open-source Chromium, Weinberg said the company is building its browser around the OS-provided rendering engine. “This lets us strip away a lot of the unnecessary cruft and clutter that’s accumulated over the years in major browsers,” he added.
“It’s not a ‘privacy browser’; it’s an everyday browsing app that respects your privacy because there’s never a bad time to stop companies from spying on your search and browsing history,” Weinberg added.
The move into the desktop market comes as DuckDuckGo sees growth in the mobile space with app downloads on both Android and iOS surging to power more than 100 million searches per day.
The company did not provide any technical details on the new browser or say when it would be available for desktop computers.
Related: Mozilla Launches Privacy-Focused Browsing Data Sharing Platform
Related: Google Chrome Zero-Day Under Attack, Again
Related: Web Browsing Security Firm Guardio Raises $47 Million
Ryan Naraine is Editor-at-Large at SecurityWeek and host of the popular Security Conversations podcast series. He is a security community engagement expert who has built programs at major global brands, including Intel Corp., Bishop Fox and GReAT. Ryan is a founding-director of the Security Tinkerers non-profit, an advisor to early-stage entrepreneurs, and a regular speaker at security conferences around the world.
More from Ryan Naraine
- Backslash Snags $8M Seed Financing for AppSec Tech
- Oleria Scores $8M Seed Funding for ID Authentication Technology
- Aembit Scores $16.6M Seed Funding for Workload IAM Technology
- Project Zero: Samsung Mobile Chipsets Vulnerable to Baseband Code Execution Exploits
- Rapid7 Buys Anti-Ransomware Firm Minerva Labs for $38 Million
- Microsoft Pins Outlook Zero-Day Attacks on Russian Actor, Offers Detection Script
- Microsoft Warns of Outlook Zero-Day Exploitation, Patches 80 Security Vulns
- Adobe Warns of ‘Very Limited Attacks’ Exploiting ColdFusion Zero-Day
Latest News
- Backslash Snags $8M Seed Financing for AppSec Tech
- ‘Badsecrets’ Open Source Tool Detects Secrets in Many Web Frameworks
- High-Severity Vulnerabilities Found in WellinTech Industrial Data Historian
- Chrome 111 Update Patches High-Severity Vulnerabilities
- BreachForums Shut Down Over Law Enforcement Takeover Concerns
- CISA Expands Cybersecurity Committee, Updates Baseline Security Goals
- Malware Trends: What’s Old Is Still New
- Burnout in Cybersecurity – Can It Be Prevented?
