The only difference is that Google also gives me links to Canda and Québec govs links (where I live) while DDG is all American links.
DDG is absolutely not better at giving me a chemistry lesson than Google is in this instance, they're both all about poisoning, and to be honest it makes ample sense.
With the following text just bellow the search box.
> Carbon monoxide (chemical formula CO) is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, flammable gas that is slightly less dense than air. Carbon monoxide consists of one carbon atom and one oxygen atom. It is the simplest molecule of the oxocarbon family.
the fact other search engines get this right, even if not nearly as well as Google would have in 2008, tells me the problem is not advertising or a contentless web as much as Google specifically and deliberately preventing you from searching about what you mean.
Google serves you an entire page about carbon monoxide poisoning, and recent news stories about carbon monoxide poisoning. You have to scroll through a lot of junk to get to Wikipedia's entry on "carbon monoxide". Bing and DuckDuckGo do a serviceable job telling you about the substance CO.
You cannot search "carbon monoxide" to learn about carbon monoxide, and that is the issue.