I’m not sure anyone had “Verizon creates privacy search engine” on their big board of pending future announcements, but that’s exactly what we got today. Verizon introduced a service called OneSearch that lets you search the internet the way you might use Google, only nothing is tracked.
OneSearch is available right now for free if you want to give it a try. Should you do that, OneSearch (supposedly) won’t track, store, or share personal or search data with advertisers. Verizon also hopes that companies “with an interest in security” will partner with them to implement OneSearch in their own products.
The list of features for OneSearch is as follows:
- No cookie tracking, retargeting, or personal profiling
- No sharing of personal data with advertisers
- No storing of user search history
- Unbiased, unfiltered search results
- Encrypted search terms
There’s also a toggle for “Advanced privacy mode” where the search results link will expire within an hour. That’s important for people who share a device with someone else or should you share a search results link.
At this time, OneSearch is only available on the web from desktop and mobile, but Verizon plans to release apps on Android and iOS later in the month. Also, this is an ad-supported platform, so you will see ads, they’ll just be related to the search results, not based off history.
To check it out, head over to www.onesearch.com.
// Verizon