I use google almost exclusively to improve search on other websites or for special syntax based searches that are far easier to implement than good general purpose search.

Site:reddit.com , site:stackoverflow.com are my most common search queries. Otherwise, it use it to open Maps, YT, HN as a landing page. Research and news both are usually acquired from a curated list of sources I visit directly, with no involvement from google. If it is something specific then I will use "quotes" to find that exact thing. Outside that, google scholar and maps are amazing, but I don't think DDG is trying to compete there.

The idea of searching for something with only a vague sense of what it is, has almost completely stopped. For generic searches the 1st page results of medium pages and single pager MSM articles are both useless and shallow. It isn't Google's fault that popularity and quality are orthogonal to each other.

If I genuinely cared about my privacy, I would seriously consider trying DDG out. However, I have surrendered all my data to corporate overlords and don't think there is much point in struggling anymore.