We've been reading epi0Bauqu's posts about DDG here for... what is it now? Over 3 years? At first it seemed like a wonderfully quixotic project - a new, home-grown search engine? Yeah right!
But then a year passed, then another, and traffic was up, and then it was up some more, and it seemed like he would never give up... at some point it stopped looking quixotic, and started to be a joy to watch. Will love to see what the future will bring.
Traffic is easy. Profit is harder - especially if you make it clear from the outset that you're anti-advertising (See Reddit).
Whilst the growth is fun to watch, it's still only 37 direct queries a second, which is nothing.
Also, I know it's been mentioned a million times before, but the name is an artificial ceiling to growth. A large % of people have no clue what duck duck goose is. A large % of people see the name as amateur, childish and stupid.
You are right about that...but years ago I had a service which shall remain nameless that got 10 million hits a month just by removing the tracking links on Google search results.
I didnt make a dime, but I did get calls from spooky people out of the blue who wouldnt identify themselves asking questions.
I admire anyone who pursues this goal, and yet I will never go there again.
But then a year passed, then another, and traffic was up, and then it was up some more, and it seemed like he would never give up... at some point it stopped looking quixotic, and started to be a joy to watch. Will love to see what the future will bring.