I spent a winter weekend in Portland, Oregon and was surprised by thousands if crows in the sky in the evening.
The top result in a Google search for [crows in portland] is a snippet that answers my question with zero additional clicks required. If I want more info, I can click through the top result to a perfect, in-depth explanation.
It's the Audubon Society, a source I consider authoritative on this topic.
I'd have to click multiple DDG links to find what Google presented as the top result, and summarized nicely so I probably don't even need to click through.
To be fair, the perfect google result was the #2 result in DDG. If the worst impact of using DDG is that you might have to look over and select from the first 5 results to get the same answer google gives as the first result I'm perfectly fine with that. I'm pretty used to scanning over a list of results to pick the best sources before clicking anything.
I was using a "Duck" device today for the first time, and I wanted to look up some information about it online. I typed the first words that came to mind ("duck rope pro") on Google.com, and the #1 hit is an Amazon.com page that lets me buy it. Now I know the manufacturer and full name and basics specs, and it's now easy to find the manufacturer's webpage and user manual.
I typed the same terms on DDG, and clicked "more results" and scrolled down. The first relevant hit is #84, which is a link to a generic product listing page on an Australian online store. So DDG found 83 incorrect interpretations of "duck" before the rope fall protection one that I intended. The one it did find is pretty obscure. It's located neither in the country I live in, nor the country the device is made in.
Curiously, hit #80 is for google.com itself, so it seems even DDG gave up and pointed me to Google before finding a directly useful answer.
I like DDG's principles, but as a search engine, it's just not practical for me.
>I was using a "Duck" device today for the first time, and I wanted to look up some information about it online. I typed the first words that came to mind ("duck rope pro") on Google.com, and the #1 hit is an Amazon.com page that lets me buy it.
That is a good example. However, if I may...
You used a device and wanted to learn more about it, you searched using some general terms, as you say Google's top result was the product...but it was the Amazon page that "lets you buy it." Now you could have skipped the Google middleman if you wanted to buy the product and just gone to Amazon (you will find their search isn't much better than DDG based on your search term). All in all you didn't say you wanted to buy it you wanted to learn more, and yet we see Google's biased results is: 1) pushing the sale of the product; 2) their #1 result is Amazon which is loaded with fake results about the product (and honestly would you really trust buying your climbing equipment from Amazon)? All in all they got you a relevant result as the #1 result, but beyond that IMO its a terrible result.
Example?