[roflharrison]

1. There are bang's for lots of sites, http://duckduckgo.com/bang.html (e.g. !amazon bags isn't really for developers). You can now refute this with your "easy for [insert competition] to copy" argument.

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?

[bunderbunder]

OK, so !amazon isn't strictly for developers. There probably is some appeal there for close cousins, such as sysadmins and web designers.

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.

[oscar-the-horse]

+1 bunderbunder

[oscar-the-horse]

1. Well it is. Which is kind of the point.

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.