Tbh using DDG is more like using old (and I mean old) Google. Googling things used to be a skill people had. You googled things for other people because they had no idea how to get good results. That's exactly how DDG is. It takes rewiring your brain to use it, and I've been using it for a year now.

I do go to Google sometimes. Specifically for opening hours in stores, and when I'm trying to look for products from smaller online stores I do not yet know of, which takes me to page 3-4 of Google but would've taken me far longer on DDG.

The country switch on DDG is a godsend because you can manipulate searches with it and get some really specific results if you know what you're doing. It's the learning curve that makes DDG worse if you just want to find something without having to teach yourself to search. Which is definitely a point to Google, but if you want a very specific result it's better to battle that learning curve.

I should also add that I'm not really anti Google in any way. I just stopped finding what I was looking for about 70% of the time, and instead found products and shit to consume. It's very useful for that stuff, but I never find obscure tech solutions with Google.

I find that DDG is terrible at finding anything regionally specific, probably because I'm not in the US. I always get a shitload of US hits and usually some German hits if I try to specify location...neither are useful to me.