I made the same decision about using DDG several years ago.
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DuckDuckGo stinks for anything even a tiny bit complex. I’m using Qwant, which I find far superior, and is still totally private.
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Google is better, but I still use DuckDuckGo
Yes Google almost always gives better results, especially for technical or academic key words.
The main reason I use DDG is the bangs. They save me a few clicks every time I use them.
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I’ve used DuckDuckGo, and Bing, and Yahoo, and numerous others going back to AltaVista (which, back in those days, I installed on our file servers for local search). IMO, if you want excellent results use Google. Nothing else comes close.
There is very little an individual can do to protect their privacy on line. Don’t search while logged into Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. and don’t use Google Chrome. Clear your browser after every session. And use a VPN if you’re worried about someone finding out you’re visiting webmd, or the sports illustrated swimsuit site. 
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I love DDG for its !bang scripts.
The searches are more than sufficient for what I need and if I truly need something more robust, I just !g
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I love Qwant, it’s become a really useful DDG alternative
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I use DuckDuckGo as my default search engine, but if I don’t get the answer I’m looking for in the first page or two I’ll hit / and then prefix my search with !g and see if Google is any better. Most of the time it’s not.
I prefer DDG because I don’t see the need to participate in the privacy invasive ad economy any more than necessary.
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I use DDG but I’m not familiar with !g. How do you use it and what does it do?
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If you prefix your DDG search with !g it kicks you over to google and does the search there.
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I have setup a Raspberry Pi running “Pi Hole” as a DNS filter to block most of the tracking and all Google adds on our entire network.
Also using DNS over HTTPS to Cloudflare avoids that your ISP and Google see all the websites you visit.
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Thanks, learned something new!
I use DDG as my default and mostly it does the job, but sometimes it gets completely the wrong results and Google understands me better.
Anecdotally I think DDG is suffering from something Google used to be bad at. Returning reviews ahead of technical content. So you search for “broken widget” and you get lots of people reviewing widgets.
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I use DDG as the default. I have found recently that I have to go to Google for items.
I’m finding a load of “top 10 x for 2021” results on the DDG recently that’s made it a pain to use so I’ve had to go to Google (which seems to be the same issue as @zkarj has mentioned above). Google is then filled with adverts.
I tend to use either DDG in normal mode, or with the !g bang.
And lately switching to www.startpage.com
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Qwant apparently doesn’t care for Safari on iOS since it redirects you to a “lite” version and suggests upgrading your browser. What’s weird about that is the same does not happen if you use, say, Chrome in iOS — even though all iOS browsers are built on WebKit. 
I find that funny because both DuckDuckGo and Qwant get their search results from Bing.
Seeing Apple launch their own search engine would be great. 
Qwant apparently doesn’t care for Safari on iOS since it redirects you to a “lite” version and suggests upgrading your browser.
Where in the world have you seen this? Just used Qwant as a start page and/or bookmark, no such issues.
(I since switched to Brave anyway because of the extensions and there I have Qwant as a default option.)
Saw it this morning on my iPad when I tried the Qwant link from above. It auto-redirected to https://lite.qwant.com.
When I go to Qwant.com from Safari on my phone, I get the full experience. I wasn’t even aware of that lite thing until now.
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Just tried it from your link and it was fine in Safari. Guess it was a temporary glitch.
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