And we don't have ads, so there is that too.
We want to make search better. Not out of the goodness of our heart, but because we figure if we do a good job someone will buy us, and then we will get paid, and the bad guys at Google or Bing will at least offer you better results when they are being creepy. That's what it is all about right?
We are about 1% the size of DDG.
I've visited your search engine. Looks like you call Bing's API to get the result. The catch is: you don't get the images back since Bing does not have them either.
So why shall I just use Bing instead? Perhaps you are stronger in the "News" search?
I just thought personalized results are better for users. Does that make me a bad person?
PS: I work at Google though not in search.
... but I don't agree with your point of view. Personalised results are obviously better for Google because they're an advertising company. But they're not necessarily better for users, particularly the HN crowd. Beyond a certain level of computer savvy, I suspect the user prefers to have control of the output via keywords and regex, rather than have an algorithm decide for them, no matter how smart that algorithm is.