The US government suffered a setback in its search monopoly case against Google on Tuesday, as a federal judge rejected demands to force the tech giant to divest its Chrome web browser and Android mobile operating system.

Judge Amit Mehta wrote in a 230-page ruling that the government had “overreached in seeking forced divesture of these key assets, which Google did not use to effect any illegal restraints.”

At the same time, he prohibited the company from entering into exclusive agreements for the distribution of its key services, including web search, Chrome, and the AI software Gemini.

The ruling still allows Google to pay companies such as Apple or Mozilla, the developer of Firefox, to pre-install its services.

Trial documents show that Apple received billions of dollars for having Google Search pre-installed as the default on iPhones. For Mozilla, the pre-installation of Google Search in Firefox is a key source of revenue.

In the European Union, users are now explicitly asked which search engine they want to use, but the judge rejected such a mandatory choice for the United States.

Google will also be required to share certain search engine data with competitors. This includes parts of the search index Google builds while crawling the web, as well as some information about user interactions.

The data is intended to help rival search engines such as Microsoft’s Bing or DuckDuckGo, as well as AI companies like ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, in developing competing products.

The case stems from a court finding last year that Google holds a monopoly on web search and has defended its position against competitors by unfair means. The trial in Washington, which began on Monday, focused on the consequences of that ruling.

Google has announced it will appeal the decision, meaning Tuesday’s ruling could represent just one step in a longer legal battle.

The ruling was welcomed by investors. Shares in Google’s parent company Alphabet rose 7% in after-hours trading, while Apple’s shares increased by 3%.

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DuckDuckGo is the independent Internet privacy company for anyone who’s tired of being tracked online and wants an easy solution. Unlike Chrome and other browsers, our free, go-to browser comes with over a dozen powerful privacy protections built-in, including our search engine that replaces Google and doesn’t track your search history.

The DuckDuckGo browser’s uniquely comprehensive privacy protections are used by tens of millions of people to protect their everyday online activities, from searching to browsing, emailing, and more.

DuckDuckGo is an independent Internet privacy company that aims to make getting privacy simple and accessible for everyone. Our free web browser for iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows lets you search and browse the web, but — unlike Google Search and Chrome — we don’t track your searches or browsing history, and we block other companies from trying to track you, all by default.

Does DuckDuckGo block all trackers on websites I visit?
DuckDuckGo never tracks you. And when you leave our search engine and use our browsers or extensions to visit other sites, we aim to protect your privacy as much as possible. No service can eliminate all hidden tracking or all profiling online because trackers are always trying to evade specific protections. To be effective, our protections continually evolve to mitigate this while avoiding website breakage. That’s also why we offer multiple types of web tracking protections.

Other browsers offer some of these by default, like cookie and fingerprinting protections, but we also provide many other protections that most browsers do not offer by default, like 3rd-Party Tracker Loading Protection, Global Privacy Control, Link Tracking Protection, CNAME Cloaking Protection, Google AMP Protection, and more, which all help cover different tracking angles. Our list of trackers is open source, along with the list of exceptions we make to preserve usability.

How many people use DuckDuckGo?
Our best guess — over 100 million people! We don’t track our users, so it’s impossible for us to know how many people in total actually use our product. However, we can make an estimate based on the number of searches we get each month. Thanks to all these users, DuckDuckGo holds the #2 position in mobile search market share in the US, and 20 other markets including the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Poland, Italy, and Spain.

Why use DuckDuckGo instead of Google?
Use DuckDuckGo to get more privacy online. Ever see ads so creepy it feels like your phone is listening to you? Or notice ads following you around for something you searched for once? If you’re wondering who to blame, it’s probably Google. For decades, Google has been tracking your searches, embedding trackers in the Chrome browser, and hiding even more trackers on the most-popular websites.

In contrast, our browser lets you search and browse like you’re used to, but (unlike Google) we never track you and our browser helps block Google’s trackers and those from other companies that operate other online tracking networks like TikTok and Meta (Facebook).

Use DuckDuckGo to get a better online experience. Have you noticed Google search results getting worse? You’re not alone. For many Google searches, most of the results on the first page are either ads or Google pushing their own services. It can be even worse on mobile.

On DuckDuckGo, we keep ads to a minimum and our search ads are private, only based on the search results page you’re viewing, and not on you as a person. The tracker blocking that’s built-in to our browser also blocks a large number of tracker-dependent ads from loading by default. Coupled with other browser features like automatically blocking cookie pop-ups, our default web tracking protections give you a cleaner online experience overall with DuckDuckGo.

Use DuckDuckGo to send a message to Big Tech companies like Google who are taking away user choice online and profiting by stealing your personal information. Google is the epitome of Big Tech, with their tentacles in everything, compiling detailed profiles about everyone, and making billions of dollars auctioning off access to your attention, for what? Creepy ads that follow you around? By comparison, DuckDuckGo is a small, independent company, based in Paoli, Pennsylvania, with a vision to offer a choice to be more private online without sacrifice to anyone who wants it.

Use DuckDuckGo because it’s fast and secure, because it’s a free Google alternative that lets you search and browse the way you want, and because it puts you back in control of your personal data.

Is DuckDuckGo owned by Google or any other entity?
No, we are not and have never been owned by Google or any other entity. We have been an independent company since our founding in 2008. We also do not source any of our search results from Google. You may notice that we offer a Google Chrome extension and a Google Android app, but these are also not in partnership with Google and actually aim to protect you from Google’s online trackers.

Currently being advertised on TV, DuckDuckGo might well be way forward for the future of search. We would encourage you to have look and then make up your mind. It’s private and free!

Download DuckDuckGo today!

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Throughout every technological change, the one constant always seems to be people calling for the death of SEO and search engines. While pundits have been quick to call for the death of SEO, SEO itself has been all too reluctant to die. This article will look at how SEO evolves and why that makes it even more important.

Sure we could just spout some random facts about how most online purchases begin with a search and how a majority of online sessions include search – but there is a much bigger case to be made.

SEO: Important to SEO
The online SEO journal, the Search Engine Journal, is reporting that to fully grasp the importance of SEO and search, we first need to go back and understand both user intent (why people search) and how search engines have changed.

The “SEO is dead” articles always seem to follow a change to search that makes information easier to access for consumers. We saw it with featured snippets, we saw it with instant answers, and we’re seeing it again with AI.

We’ve also seen the “death of SEO” articles pop up around new and emerging social media sites like Meta, TikTok, X, etc – but the fact remains that overall web searches on search engines have continued to increase every year for the last decade plus.

Search isn’t dying, and new social networks or technology like AI aren’t cutting into search – they’re just making people search more. Search is becoming ingrained in (if not defining) our everyday online behavior.

While often associated, SEO is more than just building links or tricking search engines with spammy tactics. That stuff can work – temporarily – but not long-term for a real business or a brand. Sustained SEO growth needs to focus on more than keywords and tricks.

From Keywords to Intent
There’s a great quote from Bill Gates back in 2009 where he said “the future of search is verbs.” This quote really summarizes the heart of “why” people search. People are searching to accomplish a task or do something.

It’s important that we consider this search intent when evaluating SEO and search. Not all searchers want websites. In the early days of search, links to websites were the best thing we had.

Today, however, search engines and AI are getting better at answering common questions.

For a search like [how old is taylor swift] or [when is the NHL trade deadline?] users just want an answer – without having to click over to a website, accept the cookie consent notice, close the alert popup, decline to subscribe to the newsletter, stop the auto-play video ad, and scroll past three irrelevant paragraphs to get the answer.

If creating thin ad-rich pages to answer public domain questions was your idea of SEO, then yes SEO is dead, however, SEO is much more than that now.

SEO Is Marketing
When many say search and SEO are dying, those factoid searches are the SEO they’re talking about – but there’s an entire section of search that’s thriving: The verbs!

This shift makes SEO even more important because search is no longer about the word the user typed and is all about doing actual marketing.

SEOs can help understand user intents and personas.

A good SEO professional can help you understand not only what users are searching for but “why” they’re searching – and then help marketers build something that meets the users needs.

Just as search engines have evolved, so, too, has SEO. The days of keyword density and meta tags are gone. Search engines don’t really work like that anymore. They’ve moved on to a semantic model that uses vectors to try to understand meaning – and marketers would do well to make the same moves by understanding their user’s intent.

Technical SEO Still Matters
Despite many platforms and frameworks claiming to be SEO-friendly, technical SEO issues and opportunities still remain abundant.

Most of today’s most popular website frameworks aren’t very SEO-friendly out of the box and still require customisation and tweaking to really drive results.

There still isn’t a one size fits all solution and I’m not sure there ever will be.

A good SEO will help you ensure that there aren’t confusing duplicate versions of pages, that the pages you want to be seen are all easily understood by search engines, and that your re-design or re-platform won’t hurt your existing traffic.

Search is important because users are important. Sure, users are going to different platforms or using apps/AI – but those things are still technically a search and we still need to make sure that they’re surfacing our brands/products.

It doesn’t matter if the user is typing into a web form, talking to a device, asking an AI, using their camera, or even talking into a smart pin – they’re still trying to “do” something – and as long as users have tasks to accomplish, SEO pros will be there to influence them.

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