A new privacy-focused search engine by Verizon, ‘OneSearch‘ has entered the market to rival the likes of DuckDuckGo and Brave. The latest DuckDuckGo competitor claims to offer heightened privacy and deals with online tracking issues.
The new search engine will serve results powered by Bing and display contextual ads (based on keywords) instead of behaviorally targeted ads that are based on cookies.
OneSearch says it will not track, store, or share personal or search data with advertisers, making it a direct DuckDuckGo competitor. Even though OneSearch doesn’t sell data to advertisers, it does rely on advertising to provide the service for free.
The search engine will not track cookies, store user search history or perform retargeting, or personal profiling activities but it claims to offer unbiased and unfiltered search results.
There is one aspect where Verizon’s OneSearch differs from DuckDuckGo: its ability for businesses to integrate it with their existing privacy and security products.
In an announcement post, the company wrote:
“Businesses with an interest in security can partner with Verizon Media to integrate OneSearch into their privacy and security products, giving their customers another measure of control.”
Another unique feature of OneSearch is its advanced privacy mode. On activating this mode, OneSearch’s encrypted search results link will expire within an hour.
Privacy-concerned users can utilize this feature in situations where multiple people are using the same device, or in case search results link is being shared with a friend.
OneSearch is currently available on desktop and mobile web browsers. It will be rolled out in other countries soon. Also, a mobile app for Android and iOS is to be released later this month.
