[adgar]

I've never seen someone describe a middleman so enthusiastically.

Not that there isn't enormous added value in presentation or that duckduckgo has a poor offering at all - but your search result quality will always be limited to that of your partner-competitors' (Bing index in this case). And the more you succeed, the more expensive your partnership grows: see Netflix.

Wait a minute. I just remembered the other added value: privacy. Now that I think about it, I know a few middlemen/middlewomen that I'd describe enthusiastically myself!

[duckduckgouser]

I think middleman is a bit harsh. DuckDuckGo is providing a service. It isn't something that someone else can easily do themselves.

[tferris]

Which service?

Taking the Bing API, building a frontend, a parser for few shortcuts and get some VCs to blog about me?

Sounds like a project from a 48h hackathon.

[boyter]

It does, but Gabriel (the guy behind it) described the issue with that approach quite well here, http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/11/code-icebergs.ht...

Keep in mind quite a few people have done this before, bitcircle, 4hoursearch etc... spring to mind but DDG has actually done some innovations in the space and is still around. The fact that people know it will still be around next year encourages you to at least play with it.