[samdk]

For me, there are a couple of benefits of having the functionality built into my search engine rather than my browser.

First, all I have to do is set up DDG as the default search engine in my browser, and then I get tons of search shortcuts working without any more effort on my part. I don't have to worry about syncing between different computers, browsers (I use Chrome and Firefox at different times), and operating systems.

Second, there are many more shortcuts than I'd ever think to maintain myself, and somebody else has already put the work into defining them. I can do !{relatively popular site} and even if I'm guessing, it almost always works. (In fact, I can't remember the last time it didn't.)

[pbhjpbhj]

So, if there was an addon that bundled all these !bang pass throughs as search keywords and worked cross browser would you still use ddg for this?

I'm going to guess "yes" but perhaps for others it would be no?

I'm not saying this just to be argumentative (honest!). Just that when I tried DDG as my search provider before (which was a while back now) I found that !bang looked like a great idea but just made searches slower for me. But then I've got quite a few years of established search keywords.

[pessimizer]

The bangs are especially good for dodging the really heavy homepages of some sites. For example, !bgg.