I believe DuckDuckGo largely exists due to its anonymous search features, rather than being an inherently better search engine. If you’re anonymous, you “don’t exist” as a searcher, so the search engine would not know where you are, how to market to you, what you’ve done in the past, and so on. Since it’s not interested in those add-ons, the results are naturally less local and less geared towards the user. Is that useful? Maybe to some people, but Google isn’t plowing ahead with its local-oriented search capabilities amid massive opposition – most people are quite pleased that they’re more easily finding local results. I mean, we have stuff like SquareMarket (which seems like it would be popular among a number of BoingBoing readers) which explores even more of the local internet.
If anything, I think the localizing of the internet is great. The international elements are still there, but what about something right outside my door? Now there’s meetups and apps that are based on “within 100ft of me,” and their popularity shows that people are willing to give up some privacy in order to achieve something interesting and useful to them.
If you’re so concerned about your IP address giving away your general location, you should be using a TOR browser anyway, rather than specialized anonymous-oriented websites.
