I remember DDG did side-by-side comparisons, but did they ever just query Google themselves and then do their own stuff on top? Anyway I'm not sure Google can be beaten at all by any particular newcomer, instead they might suffer death by a thousand cuts as more niche engines like Shodan show up and bring in context-specific searches that are orders of magnitude better than Google's more complicated all-web-they-approve-of-and-find-relevant-to-your-account search.