DuckDuckGo vs Google Maps

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".

DuckDuckGo results page is an infinite scrolling page, so you don't need to be clicking through pages.

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.

The search engine allows freely disabling ads.

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.

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.

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.

Duckduckgo lets you watch videos right from their site, so you can have more privacy than watching on youtube.com.

Only accessible from Tor.

Sometimes the search results are better. Most of the times, they're at least as good as.

For example, if you search "Color Picker" , you see a color picker.

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.

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

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.

This is the biggest private search engine there is

You can go to the Wikipedia page for pigs by doing !w pig.

You can download offline data per city or parts of cities if you live in an especially large city, but not for states or countries. Points of Interests are generally more relevant & current than the typical stand alone GPS unit.

Recent updates have made it so you can label a place instead of being stuck with some address or GPS coordinate and forgetting what it represents. Saved places show as stars and are all on one layer as long as you're logged in. There is also the ability to create maps (parallel to groups) for things you might not want to see or have show up all the time whenever you're using google maps from day to day.

This feature is highly helpful for planning, even if you're a person who likes to wing it.

You save the location of your car and easily find it again

Nearby my house, there is major road construction in progress. Apple maps didn’t show this at all, but google maps did. There was also a new, small road that was finished around 3 days ago. Google maps shows this road. Apple maps still hasn’t shown the major construction.

Asides from the stock Apple Maps app, Google Maps is the most commonly supported 3rd party map. 3rd party apps often have links for directions, Google Maps is usually an option whereas other 3rd party GPS apps are not.

This is great for night driving or even when going through tunnels as the map will be more visible for low light situations.

Google Maps can now search for and add a route for a second location on the way to the primary location that you are going to and have already routed. Note that it cannot do a third or true multi routing like the desktop webapp can.