This was my experience as of a year ago. Nowadays when I do a search on DDG (my default choice) the results are terrible. Then I add !g and the results are even worse. I’ve had so many recent searches for information on technical subjects result in abject failure, leaving me to throw my hands in the air in frustration.
It’s gotten so bad that I’ve installed BasiliskII and SheepShaver [1] just so I can relive the nostalgia of the days when I had my first Macintosh, before I’d even had access to the Internet for the first time. The help system and the documentation for software back then was so much more exhaustive than it is today!
After the last bout of anti-google posts on HN about a month ago, I took the comment advice and switched fully to DDG.
My experience was horrible. I don't tend to search 'popular' subjects, only technical ones, and hobbyist stuff. DDG was just plain useless for this, I had to switch back to google after about a week as I was using the !g prefix almost all the time.
> while there certainly was a time when I felt DDG actually respected my queries [1] that time is now gone.
I sometimes wonder if they've hired some ex-googlers lately because yes, this is my experience as well ;-)
[1] I seem to have thought so in last December: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18665232