When comparing DuckDuckGo vs Google Chrome, the Slant community recommends Google Chrome for most people. In the question“What are the most private and secure web browsers?” Google Chrome is ranked 3rd while DuckDuckGo is ranked 12th.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Very protective of user privacy
DuckDuckGo does not collect or share any personal information. Their privacy page has a great rundown on why privacy is important. The most important repercussion of this is that DDG doesn't use the data collected to tailor results, avoiding exposure to the "Filter Bubble".
Pro Infinite scroll of search results
DuckDuckGo results page is an infinite scrolling page, so you don't need to be clicking through pages.
Pro Ads are non-obstructive and don't track you
The ads are clearly labelled as ads and are non-obstructive. The ads are based on the searched keywords and there's no tracking involved on their visibility. You just need to remember that the site the ad links to might track you.
Pro Can disable advertisements
The search engine allows freely disabling ads.
Pro Allows searching from specific sites using bangs
Bangs are commands that allow searching via a different website's local search engine, using keywords or abbreviations with an exclamation mark (!). For example searching "world war ii !wiki" will automatically redirect to Wikipedia.org and show results for the query "world war ii" there, instead of DuckDuckGo, using Wikipedia's search engine.
The more common sites have shortened alternatives for these commands. Such as !g for Google, !i for images and !yt Youtube.
The whole list of bangs can be found by typing "!bang" in DuckDuckGo.
Pro Has a wide spectrum of instant answers
For select queries DDG pops up a box that supplies the exact answer. For example, searching "stopwatch" will pop up a stopwatch, asking for "words like..." will show a list of related words, typing "password" will generate a password, etc.
Pro Many customization options for appearance
DDG allows customizing almost any aspect of the search engine's appearance including fonts, page width, alignment, header behavior, site icons, etc and has a selection of premade themes available as well.
Pro Lets you watch YouTube videos from the site
Duckduckgo lets you watch videos right from their site, so you can have more privacy than watching on youtube.com.
Pro Has a .onion site
Only accessible from Tor.
Pro Sometimes results are better than Google
Sometimes the search results are better. Most of the times, they're at least as good as.
Pro Has many fun features
For example, if you search "Color Picker" , you see a color picker.
Pro Can function without JavaScript
Of course, it's nicer when enabled, but it's not required. Some browsers are too limited (mobile, terminal) or turn it off for security reasons (tor, etc.), and DDG still works.
Pro Good for Linux users
DuckDuckGo has an API with some websites. With the help of this API, if you search for a fix of a problem in Linux, you can easily find an answer to the problem. For example, if you search for "How to update linux", you will get a message like this:
How to install updates via command line
Try this:
sudo apt-get update # Fetches the list of available updates
sudo apt-get upgrade # Strictly upgrades the current packages
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade # Installs updates (new ones)
--SirCharlo
Pro No filter bubble
DuckDuckGo does not filter your search’s with the data that they have. You get to see everything the Internet has to offer in a safe, private way.
Pro It's mainstream
This is the biggest private search engine there is
Pro Lets you go to other sites
You can go to the Wikipedia page for pigs by doing !w pig.
Pro Excellent HTML 5 feature support
Pro Syncs between devices
By logging into Chrome using a Google account it's possible to sync history, extensions, passwords, bookmarks and other settings between devices. This makes it great for anyone working with multiple devices as it allows experiencing consistent context when in the browser.
Pro Simple user interface
For example, the address bar is also the search bar. Google calls it Omnibox.
Pro Great built-in developer tools
Chrome comes with built-in developer tools, making testing and enhancing web pages simpler for those of us involved in working with such technologies. As well as being beneficial to developers, this also has some benefit to non-technical users; in that by making testing simpler for developers those developers are more likely to use Chrome for their tests, and can spend more time making improvements over investigating underlying causes of issues.
Pro Plenty of extensions
There are far more available on this browser than any other, and that may matter for some.
Pro Good performance
According to TopTen Reviews, Chrome is currently one of the best performing browsers for initial (cold) startup, average startup, and navigation times. Works very well with the uBlock Origin adblocker.
Pro Automatically updates
Chrome updates in the background ensuring you're always on the latest version. This makes it much more likely that sites will work on your browser, since (almost) all Chrome users will be running exactly the same version.
Pro Multiple account login
You can have multiple Chromes with different accounts logged at the same time. And it is really easy to manage different accounts.
Pro Works great with many extensions
Unlike Firefox, Google Chrome can keep its fast performance regardless of how many extensions are installed. With more than 10 extensions Firefox gets slower and slower in a geometric progression rate. Google Chrome doesn't care how many extensions the user has installed - 3 or 133 it still performs great.
Pro Customizable by user
Each of the managed users can have their own configuration (themes, extensions, ...)
Pro Can translate text directly
Pro Uses Blink
It uses the blink rendering engine which has removed many legacy khtml/webkit code to be much lighter and faster.
Pro Only one distributor
Unlike those various unofficial Chromium builds, there is only one distributor, so all Chrome releases follow the same standards.
Pro Sandboxed Tabs
Every tab runs as their own process, so if one crashes or becomes unresponsive, the whole browser isn't affected.
Pro Chrome is faster than Firefox
Pro Simple interface
Pro Data collection
Chrome uses online services to collect our data and improve our browser experience. But this also means it spies on you.
Pro Engine is open-source
Chromium is open source, except the proprietary media codecs like AAC, H.264, MP3 and Adobe Flash, that can't be legally open-sourced.
Pro Popular
As of March 2015, Chrome is the most popular browser on the internet, with a 43.9% - 63.7% market share, Its rendering engine Blink is also the most used rendering engine and used in many products including: Opera, Vivaldi, Qt, Brave, Steam or Electron meaning most developers will be testing their sites against this browser to ensure compatibility.
Pro Backed and supported by Google
Whilst Chrome is based on the open source browser Chromium, Google reviews this code and build on top of it. This means it takes (and contributes to) a number of the benefits of the open source model whilst having the resources, support and investment of a major company.
Pro Plays more media formats than any open source browser
Includes support for many licensed unfree media formats.
Pro Multimedia Plugins and Codecs included
Google Chrome comes with its own flashplayer and the most common multimedia codecs so you don't have to worry that they are outdated nor do you need to install them as a third party package.
Cons
Con No date information in search results
In search results, there are no dates when the pages were published, which doesn't allow you to immediately know if the page is outdated.
Con Downranks misinformation results
Company announced that they are downranking misinformation results about the war by Russia media, after Russian's invasion of Ukraine.
Con Irrelevant search results
They store no information about you (theoretically a pro) but this results in absolutely awful search results, and having to modify your search terms 4-5 times to get what you are looking for.
Con Owner would compromise his service/customer privacy
In a question to Weinberg, “if you were served an NSL or were commanded to compromise your service/customer privacy in any way, would you and could you just pull the plug like Lavabit did or would you run into opposition from shareholders/investors that would prevent you from doing so?” Gabriel Weinberg said: “No one is preventing me from doing that.”
Con Still not better than Google
Results are quite often not as good. They just lack resources to do it, for now.
Con Based in US, so they cannot guarantee there is no backdoor
Con DuckDuckGo has no 3rd party certifications
Con Activism censorship
They started to block results based on activism.
Con Search using language other than English is not so great
Korean would never use it.
Con Referrers
A referrer is an HTTP header field that identifies the address of the webpage (i.e. the URI or IRI) that linked to the resource being requested. By checking the referrer, the new webpage can see where the request originated.” Basically it tells a website where you came from. DDG does give this out.
Con Bing = DuckDuckGo
Duckduckgo depends on Bing for the query.
Con Search results are often unrelated and limited
Common conversions do not work, i.e. searching for 15F to C does not give you the conversion but just a bunch of conversion websites. Very frustrating. It's a simple thing but makes a huge difference to the browsing/searching experience. Also location based only works for the country you're in. Searching for, say, McDonalds only gives country results for McDonalds and no local results such as where a local restaurant may be. Not very helpful.
Con DuckDuckGo has many 'Owners'
DuckDuckGo is owned by Gabriel Weinberg who is is the founder, current CEO and controlling shareholder. Investors/shareholders include Union Square Ventures and several others. DuckDuckGo generates its income from advertising (Bing Ads) and collects affiliate revenue (Amazon, eBay).
Con Needs a clearer vision of the future
What's duck's goal or quest?
Con Shows too few images
When searching for images only, it shows too few of them and only a handful are related to the search terms.
Con Hosted on Amazon servers (EC2)
Con Bangs do not protect user privacy and can be misleading
Using these bangs will instantly connect you to the service you requested. For example typing “!g white cat with green eyes” and hitting return, drops you off on the Google website to display your results (thus logging your IP, search term and browser info immediately). It does not get you Google results inside DuckDuckGo. It is reasonable for DDG users to assume and expect a private search engine warns if there is a risk to that privacy being lost, like it does with Youtube videos but in the case of Bangs this does not happen.
Con Saving settings in Duckduckgo's Cloud still needs improvement
Cloud save and the ability to pull up your settings on any device is a nice idea but the implementation needs work.
Con Doesn't do personalized searches
Since they don't track you the results are not tailored to your interests.
Con Form over function (overall search experience is poor)
It's nice to adjust the settings and all but after a couple of days you will want to go back to a more functional search engine.
Sure DDG looks shiny and !bangs are great but many wouldn't consider it as a viable alternative. Better results for search queries is more important than fancy looking CSS.
Con Online tracking by default
Chrome allows opting out of tracking by going to Settings > Advanced > Privacy and un-checking any unwanted services. Alternatively Chromium can be used to get a similar browser experience without Google's services on top of it.
Con Huge memory hog
Each tab and extension in the browser uses significant chunks of RAM, giving the browser poor performance on machines without enough RAM to supply.
Con Bad for battery life
Drains battery life on both Windows laptops and Macs much quicker than the alternatives. It can shave hours off the battery life of any non Chromebook laptop.
Con Not fully open-source
While most of Chrome is open source: Chrome does have some closed-source components to make it possible to play some closed media formats.
Con Increasingly slow
When Chrome first came out, it was known for being lightweight and very speedy. Over the years, more and more features have been added to Chrome. Because of this, crashes, errors, and general laggy-ness has increased noticeably.
Con It's Google
Data collection!
Con No mobile extensions
Chrome on Android and iOS does not support extensions.
Con Not as customizable as Firefox or Vivaldi
Con Big target for hackers
Chrome is the most popular browser in the world. That makes it the most targeted browser in the world by hackers.
Con Hard/impossible to transfer passwords to a different machine without uploading them to Google
Con Bad quality control on extensions
Some just plain don't work while a few actually break the browser.
Con Basic
Unlike Brave and Vivaldi which are more stable and have more features, Chrome is pretty basic.
Con Blurred fonts on Windows
Fonts on Windows are blurred, that is especially noticeable in light fonts on dark background. Small italic text is hard to read.
Con No menu bar on Windows
There's no menu bar, except on Mac OS or Linux appmenu.
Con Does not hardware accelerate HTML5 video correctly
Chrome is unable to hardware accelerate HTML5 video correctly which makes playing 4k video on laptops a poor experience filled with lag.
Though there is a workaround for YouTube in that a plugin can be installed to force Flash playback instead of HTML5, which plays smoothly and has no HW acceleration issues. There's another plugin (h264ify) that will force to use the h.264 codec video if available instead of the VP9 one which is the resource hog.
Con No reader view
Unlike most other browsers, Chrome doesn't have a reader view function.