This post made me finally create an account here. I do admit that personalized searches improve result quality a lot, at least for some topics. But after using DDG as my main search engine for about a year, > especially for its lack of features just sounds wrong. On the contrary, I tend to feel really helpless when using Google because of the lack of DDG bang syntax. For me, DDG is like my perfectly customized search engine with all the features I need - without actually customizing anything. This enables me to have the same, good search experience wherever I am (notebook, desktop PC, tablet, some else's machine...)

So to conclude this: Not relying on the search engine to guess your intention based on personalization takes some time to get used to, but for me it definitely payed off.