"ED survivor" is a tricky term to search for. Is "ed" an acronym or the name Ed? But still the first result gives you an instagram link about eating disorders and body dysphoria. Since you were trying to figure out what this term meant, I'm assuming you could figure this out from context.

I'll give you that the results aren't great[0] and that Google's results were __MUCH__ better here, but it did get you to the answer you wanted with the first link. Maybe we search different, but at least in my experience I don't frequently have results like this. Rarely do I reach for "!g" and usually when I do the searches are so niche that Google struggles too.

[0] https://imgur.com/a/HvFTGT1

You're certainly not alone, but I've had such a wildly different experience. I switched to duckduckgo primarily because I preferred the search results. The privacy aspect was just a bonus.

The only time I ever find myself using the !g escape hatch is when I'm searching something brand new (e.g. a breaking news story). Duckduckgo has a recency filter but it seems to take them a few days to ingest the content.

Same here. I'm still using duckduckgo on my private devices (phone and home laptop), at work I'm using google. I suppose the reason this works for me is at work I need GOOD results, thus google search there. At home I just need a search now and again, so duckduckgo is good enough for this.

So, my private life stays my private life with duckduckgo. And at work — I don't really care what google does to my "js shortest path algorithm"-kind-of results history.