I'm not sure about the comparison itself... I've tried DDG several times, I search for technical things in generic ways a lot. DDG almost never gives me what I want in the first page. Google almost always does.
It's not a matter of blame at all... I'd love to see some challengers. In the end, google knows a lot about me and is really good at delivering personalized results because of it.
Maybe if I used DDG more I would learn to parse the results better but the first thing I see are many results that have a "dark pattern" appearance to me.
Often I do get a good result on the first page but often results #1-#N vary from third rate to non-sequitur and then result #N+1 is the one that should be at #1, where maybe N is drawn from Uniform(3,6). I see this so much I can't imagine it is an accident. If anything it seems to be 70% more evil than Google.
I find DDG to be slightly better for technical things. It is pretty similar though.
The real difference is non-technical things. Google filters out unflattering results and one side of anything even remotely political. It's a nerfed world, kind of like a Disney theme park. I'm an adult and I don't need to be led with blinders to the googly viewpoint.
