Linked List: June 24, 2021

Thursday, 24 June 2021

DuckDuckGo Continues to Grow 

I missed this state-of-the-company update from DuckDuckGo last week:

  • DuckDuckGrowth over the last 12 months: 50M+ app downloads, 55% search traffic increase, #2 search engine on mobile in the U.S., Canada, Australia, the Netherlands & more.

  • In the coming weeks, we’re adding new free privacy protections in beta including a cross-platform email privacy solution & app tracker blocking on Android devices.

  • Later this year, we’ll release a beta of the first-ever DuckDuckGo desktop app, which can be used as a primary browser.

  • DuckDuckGo has been profitable since 2014 with revenues now $100M+/yr. In late 2020, we completed a $100M+ mainly secondary investment from new & existing investors.

#2 search engine on mobile in the U.S. is huge — that would put them ahead of Bing, which comes from a slightly larger company than DuckDuckGo. It also puts them ahead of Yahoo, which was at one time a very well-known company. (I swear that’s true.)

NTDEV: ‘How Many Layers of UI Inconsistencies Are in Windows 10?’ 

I’m sure all of this is finally getting cleaned up and modernized in Windows 11. You know, by the time it ships.

Microsoft Introduces Windows 11 

Panos Panay, on Microsoft’s Windows Experience Blog:

Windows has always existed to be a stage for the world’s innovation. It’s been the backbone of global businesses and where scrappy startups became household names. The web was born and grew up on Windows. It’s the place where many of us wrote our first email, played our first PC game and wrote our first line of code. Windows is the place people go to create, to connect, to learn and to achieve — a platform over a billion people today rely on.

Some cool-looking stuff, but the devil, as always, is in the details, not the demos. The window tiling features — “Snap Groups” and “Snap Layouts” — in particular look pretty clever. Also, Microsoft is doing something very interesting with app icons — they’re using different shapes for each of them, rather than forcing them all into the exact same roundsquare shape. That’s an idea Apple should copy.

But if you’ll allow me to be persnickety, I’m pretty sure the web wasn’t born on Windows.

CNN Has a Strong Contender for the Worst Chart You’ll Ever See 

Katelyn Gadd:

This chart is a work of art. I hope multiple people got paid well to make it and I hope they get hit by a bus.

The longer you look at it the more things you find wrong with it.

This chart is a violent crime.

Update: Andy Baio’s FTFY.