This works in my experience only good if you live in a English speaking country where Google is also big (oh the irony). I've tried to use DuckDuckGo but is bad, really bad for local searches in smaller and non English speaking countries.

This is basically my exact experience. Once a long time ago I made DDG my default browser and it stuck. I really like using “!g” to switch quickly to google.

If my search bar DDG search doesn’t return satisfactory results, I hit my address/search bar key (cmd+l for me), press left arrow/start-of-line key, type “!g “ and hit return. That gives me a google result page quicker than the time it would take to reach the mouse. It’s become a good workflow.

I’m having to use it less and less. DuckDuckGo is getting really good.

Tip: while in your case you still have to type something to get rid of the selection, you don't have to put !g at the beginning, anywhere in the query will do. I mostly put it at the end.

Instead of clicking you can use / or h to focus on the search field, press [right] arrow key and your preferred bang (!g) to open in google, no need to add any space to the last word (as you said).

https://duck.co/help/features/keyboard-shortcuts

I used to do just that, but then I found myself always appending !g to the queries.

that's been my experience too, sometimes I need the power of Google to infer the tenuous relationships my mind is able to regurgitate on a subject I can't recall precise terminology for. I cast a loose net of terms fumbling for something feeble I can hook on to dredge up from my mind to unveil the whole glorious thing I'm chasing.