In my ongoing efforts to distance myself from Google I started using
[DuckDuckGo][duck] as my default search engine. I tried the DDG Safari
extension but didn't really like it, especially
since it needed to add an entire new toolbar to the browser. Other
suggestions for adding DDG to Safari involved [hacking the binary][hack]
or other extensions, which I wasn't interested in.

[duck]: http://duckduckgo.com/
[hack]: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20030514035516436

**Update 2018:** Safari and most other browsers now support DuckDuckGo
in their default search engine list. 🎉

**Update 2012:** There an easier way to achive what I describe below: Just
add a hosts file entry for search.yahoo.com that points at DuckDuckGo's
IP address and set you search engine to Yahoo! in Safari. [See DuckDuckGo
for the full instructions][hosts].

[hosts]: http://help.duckduckgo.com/customer/portal/articles/255650

My solution to the problem was to hijack the Bing option in the default
search box for use with DDG. **Note:** This solution assumes you will
never want to go to the `www.bing.com` domain, not a problem for me. The
steps to implement it are:

Add an entry for `www.bing.com` to `/etc/hosts` that points the domain to
your local machine:

    127.0.0.1    www.bing.com

Next configure an Apache virtual machine to respond to the `www.bing.com`
domain and redirect the request to Duck Duck Go (or your search engine
of choice). This works because DDG accepts the search query in the same
query string parameter, `q`, as Bing and ignores the other Bing related
params.

`/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf`:

    <VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerName www.bing.com
        RewriteEngine On
        RewriteRule ^/search(.*)$ http://duckduckgo.com/$1 [redirect,last]
    </VirtualHost>

For this to work you will need to have "Web Sharing" enabled in the Sharing
preferences pane and have the the following line included in
`/etc/apache2/httpd.conf`:

    Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

Restart Apache (`sudo apachectl graceful`) and set your search engine
to Bing in Safari. Do a search and you should end up at the DDG
results. One of the neat features of DDG is its [!bang syntax][bang],
which allows you to search to 100s of sites directly. One of which is
`!g` for those times when you need to fall back on Google.

[bang]: http://duckduckgo.com/bang.html