DuckDuckGo Adds Driving and Walking Directions

DuckDuckGo announced today that its Internet search engine now provides privacy-focused driving and walking directions that are powered by Apple’s MapKit JS framework.

“We’ve been providing users with mapping features within DuckDuckGo Search for many years, along the way improving them with greater accuracy, dark mode, local re-querying and more,” the DuckDuckGo announcement notes. “Now we’re excited to announce a big step forward with the introduction of directions – private, as always, and like our embedded maps.”

Now, when you search for a location on DuckDuckGo, you’ll see plan trips—with a route overview, distance and travel time—alongside the normal location and map search results. A new Directions button in the sidebar will let you enter a starting point and a destination, with the starting point defaulting to your current location (which, yes, is anonymous). As with dedicated maps apps, DuckDuckGo with then display the best routes and their estimated durations on a map.

Well known for its privacy principles, DuckDuckGo points out that it will protect your privacy when you use this new functionality.

“As with all our search features, your privacy is still protected when using these directions thanks to our strict privacy policy of not collecting or sharing any personal information,” the firm explains. “In the case of location-related searches, your browser sends location information which we isolate from any personal information the browser sends, and which we discard after use, enabling us to provide anonymous localized results and features.”

You can learn more about these policies here.