I have to admit I was skeptical about DDG chances but hard work and being in right place at the right time with privacy has given it the success it deserves. (and it's written in perl of all things) ps. bonus points for deleting eHow from results
I didn't realise they had done that to ehow. I wonder if they could kill some of the region specific crap. If you search for a company here in Auckland you get these junk sites (localist, hot frog, finda) that have out of data that's been scraped an age ago and for some reason ranks high. This would probably be a deciding factor in browser choice for me.
Looks like that was in early 2011, before Panda came and nearly wiped eHow out, and over a year before I started. After that, they made a concerted effort to fix their algorithms and focus on providing good, non-automated content. Are they still considered a content farm to be avoided these days?