Further to this, Duck Duck Go is targeting people who don't want to be bubbled and tracked, which is completely different to the other search engines.
Having said that, I tried Duck Duck Go for a few weeks and found it wasn't giving me the results I wanted (there's a !bang for Google but that seems a little silly).
Duck Duck Go doesn't have as much data as Google, and probably don't crawl as deeply. This is another factor that hinders their competitiveness.
If they want to compete they should look to more nascent data sources; rather than going down the path of destructive competition.
2. Easy for Google to copy.
3.This is terrible, pushing brand helps destroy verity on the open web.
2. Fine
3. I'm sure that many people find this useful, but it is very subjective. What results should be higher than an exact match to a search term?
The world at large, though, hates having to use those kinds of tricks to find what they're looking for. Doing away with the need to learn and use that kind of stuff is exactly how Google managed to torpedo all their competition without batting an eyelash in the first place.
I like the feature as well. Beats Google's "site:" operator!
3. The exact match domain should be top in most cases. But smearing brand all over the page like horse manure stifles smaller companies.
"Bing Is Not Google" used to be a joke of mine. Now it's actually a useful trait.
I disagree. Here are three things that make DDG 10x better for my use case:
1. Providing a common interface for searching API docs. For example, "!jquery live", or "!rails validate".
2. The 0-click box, which frequently gives me the answer I need without having to go any further.
3. Privileging of official sites. This is especially helpful for sites whose domain one couldn't easily guess.