I use DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine. It is good enough. But their algorithm is different. It took me some time to adjust for that so my searches works like they did with Google.
Which point out that at this point not only Google has a good search algorithm, but users are trained to help it do better. A search startup has to overcome that as well.
Can you give some tips about how you adjusted your search queries? Whenever I tried to use DDG I wouldn't be able to get results from it that were as good as Google's.
This is very subjective and I am not sure that it even matches the reality (it could be that within the last 6 months the search engines changed), but with DuckDuckGo I stopped to use verbs at all. Another thing is that at least for searches about IT Google prioritise recently posted/changed pages more so with DuckDuckGo I often added 2017 to get the latest hype (soon to be changed to 2018 :) ).
Whatever it was at the beginning of the switch I used to use Google on a daily basis when DDG results were not good. Then in few months it pretty much stopped.
I remember being a little creeped out when Google first started automatically localising queries, but when I tried switching to DDG earlier this year I realised that I've become utterly dependent on it. I constantly had to think about whether to append my city or state to the query and even after doing so would often get American results. (For example, searching for anything relating to the WA government still turns up information about Washington, even when the country is set to Australia.)
> For example, searching for anything relating to the WA government still turns up information about Washington, even when the country is set to Australia.
This is so annoying; I don't understand what the country toggle is actually for, since it doesn't seem to correct this?
I use DDG from Norway. In DDG there is a prominent checkbox to localize for searches there. Checking it gives the necessary localization even for queries in English.
Which point out that at this point not only Google has a good search algorithm, but users are trained to help it do better. A search startup has to overcome that as well.