DuckDuckGo’s privacy-focused browser is now available for Windows

DuckDuckGo’s browser is finally available for Windows users. Nearly nine months after launching its browser for Mac, the privacy-focused search engine company is bringing a similar product to Windows users. It’s available now, and its pitch is the same as before: DuckDuckGo is a browser and a search engine that doesn’t collect your data and doesn’t track you across the web.

The DuckDuckGo browser looks and works a lot like Chrome or Edge, with a row of tabs across the top and a large text box for searching and typing in URLs. (DuckDuckGo’s search engine is the default when you install the browser, but if for some reason you care a lot about browser privacy but not search privacy, you can change it.) Offers features, such as what YouTube viewing company Duck Player calls, that removes all ad targeting, tracking, and recommendations from the YouTube page.

The team at DuckDuckGo has been working on a Windows app for a few years, Peter Dolanjski, the company’s product director, told me. This took longer than other platforms because Windows was new to the development team, but also because the Windows ecosystem is uniquely complex. “There’s a lot of variation in hardware and software, touchscreens and screen resolutions,” he says. “It takes a lot of work to make sure it’s all working well.” The app itself is built on Windows’ WebView2 technology and uses the same Blink rendering engine used by Chrome and most other browsers.

Adding Windows to the mix means that DuckDuckGo now has a solid cross-platform browser that can really keep pace with the Chrome and Edge of the world. The browser works on Android, iOS, Windows and Mac, giving DuckDuckGo the chance to keep your data secure everywhere you browse. The Windows app is still in beta, and is missing some features — notably extension support — but Dolanjski says it will be rapidly upgraded.

DuckDuckGo is still mostly known as a search engine, but CEO Gabriel Weinberg says the company’s vision is much bigger than that. He likes to refer to DuckDuckGo as “the easy button for privacy.” “Search alone doesn’t really address people’s privacy concerns,” he says. “Like ads following you, annoying targeting, or people grabbing your personal information. Search is part of that, but there are a lot of trackers hidden behind websites.”

The most complete way to help people browse the web more privately is to build a web browser — and the company has found that it’s actually easier to make users switch from Chrome entirely than it is to install a Chrome extension.

In addition, Weinberg says he sees the distinction between browser and search engine disappearing. Do you want the best Bing? Use Edge. Google? Chrome. Brave? Brave. Browser makers are tying their services more closely to their apps and making it harder to switch. DuckDuckGo’s hope is that this can inspire people to download one to get into the browser, and then the company can provide all kinds of services.

Both Weinberg and Dolanjsky say there’s a lot more DuckDuckGo could do to build a browser that’s not only simpler and more private, but also more feature-rich. Weinberg cites DuckDuckGo’s email security as an example; Dolanjski says the company could make several other Duck Player-style instruments. “Ideally,” says Weinberg, “these are the features that protect you, which we can also make more visible.”

But the first step was to build a good browser and make it available everywhere. Dolanjski says it’s close: The Windows version may be a bit behind while it’s in beta, but “the goal is to get to parity as quickly as possible.” Once everything is in motion, DuckDuckGo can start dreaming big.