According to her CEO DuckDuckGo Mr. Gabe Weinberg, the service managed to increase its 600% traffic since the NSA actions were revealed by Edward Snowden (2013).
The search engine was founded in 2008 and is run by Paoli, Pennsylvania. It is proud of the non-recording of information by its users.
Since its inception, DuckDuckGo has announced its commitment to protecting its users' personal data.
So it has managed to win a large percentage of users who are particularly careful about their private lives, and have chosen a company that appreciates it more than Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
In an interview with CNBC, which focused on e-privacy, Mr. Weinberg revealed that his company has benefited greatly from the revelations of NSA's actions at 2013. According to Weinberg the traffic has grown more than 600% and since then 3 has grown by billions of search queries per year.
Referring to a Pew Research study which showed that 40% of Americans prefer a search engine that does not track them, Mr. Weinberg estimates that his company could easily increase the numbers we listed above in the future and gain a larger market share of today's search giants.
Weinberg said DuckDuckGo does not need to monitor its users for the search engine to work properly. In fact, it does not even have to.
Weinberg has reported that Google, Yahoo, and Bing are monitoring users, mainly because they offer additional functionality to other related services, or because they need information for more complex advertising offers.
DuckDuckGo's search engine profits are based on a classic advertising system that uses a keyword. The system is reported to be effective enough to keep the company alive.