[pavs]

I like Duck Duck Go. Mostly because, there is someone out there who is courageous enough to give it a go, single-handedly, into the search engine market. So props to him, I can support someone like him.

Having said that. There can be too much of a good thing. I feel that HN is being used as an advertising platform to promote DDG, which in itself is not such a bad thing when there are major developments and exiting features and news about it once in a while. So can we try to go easy on this promotional bandwagon?

[jacquesm]

I'd rather see 10 more articles about DDG than one more about the ipad or fakestevejobs.

[timr]

"I'd rather see 10 more articles about DDG than one more about the ipad or fakestevejobs."

...because clearly, those are the only choices.

As long as we're throwing around false dichotomies, I'd rather see 10 more articles about the internals of a search engine than one more rah-rah post about DDG.

[epi0Bauqu]

What would you like to know? For starters: http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2009/03/duck-duck-go-arc...

[ntoshev]

Do you maintain full text indices for parts of the web and which parts, or does it all fall back to external services like Wikipedia search, Yahoo BOSS, etc?

If you have some indices on your servers, how do you build and search them? Is it your own technology, or open source (Xapian, Lucene-based, etc)? In what percent of searches do you display results from your own indices?

[jacquesm]

That's really good, when will you post one?

Gabriel could do one too if he feels like it.

Of course those are not the only two choices (there were three of them, buy hey, who is counting), but since they seem to be the most prevalent posts that irritate me I figured I'd put my personal preference out there. If you want a longer list I can provide one but I don't think it will make the point much clearer.

[timr]

"That's really good, when will you post one?"

Now you're just being petty. There are plenty of technical articles that languish in "new" every day -- I've submitted more than than a few, and I vote for many others.

An argument against other types of fanboy spam is not an argument for DDG fanboy spam.

[jacquesm]

I don't think the DDG articles are 'fanboy spam', they constitute an indepth look at one of the more promising start-ups and it is happening here on HN as it unfolds.

Just like patio11's stuff is a case study in how it is done, so is this, with one huge difference, I can't see myself ever buying a set of bingo cards but I can definitely see myself using a search engine, if only for comparison purposes.

I could say with just as much justification that I'd not like to ever hear a word about bingo cards again, but I don't think that is right because the bingo cards serve as an illustration on how to run a successful startup.

The other stuff is the fanboy stuff. And that I could do without, hence my preference for DDG articles.

But I promise I will write an article about the guts of a search engine, I built a small one about 5 years ago and maybe there are some interesting bits that warrant dissection.

[silkodyssey]

I would like to know what was the motivation for starting the project. I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea for David to tackle Goliath but there has to be a unique value proposition.

Based on the information I have found about the project the only area I can see this competing is in the user experience (scrolling results, encrypted search etc). Maybe someone who knows more about the project can enlighten us.

[epi0Bauqu]

The original motivation was getting fed up with spam in Google. Here's an interview where I explained: http://www.snugd.com/2009/04/24/3361/