What are !bangs?

Bangs let people search other websites directly from DuckDuckGo. For example, “!amazon shoes” would take people to Amazon’s results page for “shoes”. There is a misconception that DuckDuckGo offers some kind of privacy protection, but it doesn’t when you use !bangs.

DuckDuckGo is a self-proclaimed private search engine. It advocates for internet privacy. So why then does its first “!bang” feature suggest going to Google, the company with the most tracking on the internet.

Google Searches are Tracked

It’s easy to assume that because you are still searching through a private search engine your searches would be private. Your searches are just sent through Google as if you would have gone to www.google.com and searched there.

Searching on Google is not private, even if you use DuckDuckGo. DuckDuckGo is failing its users if it is conveying that searches are private using !Bangs.

DuckDuckGo’s Image !Bang Goes to Google