I had a coworker insist on using ddg for privacy reasons and he was a bit smug about it even though meetings where he was presenting while searching the web always started with a ddg search and ended with him sighing and giving up by using !g to switch to google. I think, even in it's less than ideal state, people still underestimate how much time google's tailored search can save you when you train it to figure out you want to see development/technical documentation.
I've frequently found better results by using the !g when searching for technical docs and other programming-related stuff.
But for more everyday, non-programming things, I've frequently found the regular DDG results (from Bing) actually better and less filled with SEO crap than Google's.
Often when searching with google I stick !g in front of my query without thinking, and only realize when it shows up in the search bar after the page loads.
As if to answer my own question, I just came out of a call which involved me sharing my screen while I searched the web for info on the memory consumption of classes in dotnet. I take it back!
