Yeah I have some friends who say ddg is unusable for them. I really wonder what kind of exotic things they search for, I have been using DDG for a couple of years now and rarely need Google.
I've repeatedly tried to use DDG for technical searches and it's often missing the results I can google. That would be fine except that it's often the only result with the answer and not duplicated in another result. Maybe adding !stackoverflow (or somesuch) might work but not if the result was a blog.
I wouldn't call my searches exotic but merely specific.
I feel this often enough to notice, but I think it comes from mostly having used google for so long. After learning the little tricks (even unconsciously) moving to any new search engine will leave you missing them.
I think this is exactly it. As someone who has been using solely DuckDuckGo for a couple years, including for technical searches (I'm a software developer), I find using Google noticeably frustrating
because Google doesn't give me the results I'm looking for but DDG does.
I think I'm just used to the nuances of DDG where others (who currently use Google) are used to the nuances of Google. You get used to crafting search queries in a specific way, and having to change it is noticeable.
(!gi for their images I use sometimes)