Whether this claim is true nor not, Google is able to pull such a move due to its monopoly. Most of us are against monopolies but don’t care about Google’s central position on our precious Internet. We should act up though. One day, it could be too late.

I’ve been using DDG for around a year now after numerous failed attempts in the past. I, too, had been frustrated with some search results, but I don’t miss Google anymore at all thanks to the bangs feature.

It is not obvious but DDG has a learning curve. You should re-learn the practice of “Googling skill” that we had to have years ago. I could even guess which queries DDG would fail to bring meaningful results before hitting enter now. In these cases I add a “!s” bang for https://startpage.com — a privacy conscious Google proxy.

DDG bangs are especially useful on iOS, where you could type a query from any page and only have 3 options: Search in the Web/App Store/Maps. If the search engine is DDG though, you could search your query in any website you know its bang with just a single step.