You're not missing anything. Google is far better than DDG and I'm shocked people claim otherwise because it's so fairly self evident.

That said I try to use DDG when I can but I don't lie to myself that I'm using it because it has better results -- it doesn't. It has better approach to privacy and thats why I use it. The fact that they know less about the searcher intrinsitcally means the results of searches will be worse.

I sometimes feel that we are in this echo chamber.

These threads always follow the same patterns, someone asks if they know of an alternative search engine and a HNer quickly mentions they have gone to DDG and haven't looked back.

DDG is decent but not even close to the search quality of Google. I know the folks here want to see Google dethroned but DDG won't do it.

I find a big reason to use DDG is because it has "!bangs" that allow you to redirect your search to other site's native search engines by appending/prepending them to your query. I can use "!pac" to search for Arch Linux packages, "!aw" to search the Arch Wiki, "!gh" to search Github, etc. So the quality of DDG's search may be lacking but I generally know the site I want to search and can use their native searches. Any way, if you want to get away from Google but can't get by with DDG, consider Qwant.

Firefox has it built in, no redirect necessary, and you don't even need the bang: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-search-from-address...

You are not alone. It highly depends on what you search for even if it's programming related.

Google provides great results for common old-ish and repeated questions but you will notice less diversity - which can be pretty frustrating when you aren't looking for a definite answer.

You will find that it will give you old results from w3schools, codeacademy, SO, etc. Some of which shouldn't go into production...

Just set your default to DDG and, when you can't find something, search again with "!g". DDG also lets you jump to specific sites ("!w for the pedia, !yt for the Youboobs, !imdb, !rt, etc).

Google is better. Bug DDG is good enough for 98% of what I need. Searching is mostly finding the right website, or an explanation of a specific problem. Sometimes I have a search query that doesn't give any usable results with DDG, and then Google comes to rescue. That happens about once a month.