When I first started using DDG, I had a similar experience but every time I went back I'd read some tech news that showed that I really needed to take privacy more seriously. So I'd be back on DDG again. Then I'd use the google bang for stuff that didn't seem privacy sensitive and where I was getting results that didn't seem all that great.

Ultimately though I'm a lazy person and once I figured out how to get DDG to return the results I was really looking for (e.g. the wiki bang and weather thing) I eventually quit using google for almost everything.

DDG is fine for me, even if it's not perfect and even if occasionally I have futz with search parameters or very occasionally fall back to a google bang. I guess I'll take good enough with better privacy than occasionally better with privacy baggage on the scale that I can only guess about.