Lycos.com came before AV and it's still there. No idea if it's a white label or not.

OMG Lycos and Alta Vista! That takes me back... I remember back in the day hearing about this new search engine called "Google" and thinking, "Pshaw! That's a stupid name. I'm sticking with Alta Vista!"

Clearly, that stuck.

All major web search engines are based on boolean search.

Boolean is bad ... the most inefficient way...people in the knowledgebased industry already knew that before The Web.

But Google was supported by big money and a lot Young People who Love Google because it Does No Evil and has nifty graphics every day on its home page.

So the Web Search Industry produced Billionaires and the knowledgebased AI industry withered and died.

Who needs engineering when you have Young People?

I've been using Duck Duck Go for several weeks now, and overall I'm pretty happy with it. Be warned, though, that it doesn't stop the site you end up on from putting cookies on your machine. You need to deal with that issue separately.

I've been doing DDG for nine months as well, no reason to look back.

I'm using DDG for 80% of my online searches. There's also ixquick.com, "the world's most private search engine."

DuckDuckGo is awesome, Startpage is another privacy-friendly search engine that works pretty well

https://startpage.com/eng/

I just wrap tin foil around my ethernet cable.

I like DDG, and have had increasing problems with Google. But overall I think all search engines are getting worse, not better. I tend to use Google as my extra brain, remembering things I can't remember myself, and increasingly things I saw recently that, two weeks later, I want to see again aren't turning up in any search. Even when I search using exact phrases from the thing I'm looking for. I've tested this out, and I've found a ton of stuff that Google just ain't picking up at all -- not obscure stuff, either.

In addition, I increasingly seek things I saw on Facebook, which no search engine captures. And Facebook's own search is completely useless. Twitter, Tumblr, even Google's own blogs -- lots of things are outside the orbit.

There's a market for something better. Today's search is essentially the same as it was a decade or more ago, but the nature of the web is very different.

My main issue with DuckDuckGo is that dates are not highlighted or stuck first in the results summary. I end up clicking through more results than I want. But yes, it generally does a decent job.

No search engine will ever overtake Google, at least not in the next decade or so. For most people (who aren't paranoid, or who just don't know any better) Google is the status quo and the go-to search spot (sorry Bing!). Changing a habit like which search engine to use is a huge task that Google spent years perfecting, and they've mastered it. It's ubiquitous, and Americans like ubiquitous things.

DDG is awesome. If you can't find what you want, the ! Syntax means you can use another search engine easily. I use it for news, maps, images all the time.

Agree with Fnarf about Twitter & Facebook trying to make search irrelevant, but no idea where to go from here. No one dares disobey the "no index" flag, because that bit of courtesy is deep rooted in the history of the net.