Whenever I use DDG I get inferior search results. If privacy is your concern with Google use Startpage. That Bing/Yahoo mashup that DDG want to sell simply doesn't cut it for me (or any of my friends/colleagues).
At this point, everybody knows that the data mining operations run by Google and Facebook are detrimental to society as a whole for a lot of reasons, but more importantly because they represent a big brother operation without having elected officials.
What is going on with Android nowadays is beyond comprehension in the privacy aspect. Unless you go really technical, it is incredible the amount of apps that will fetch your contact list, location, phone number, etc. The fact that the apps do not work if you do not consent to some of that stuff brings into question some of these business models.