I think it looks better than the original, though. That giant red bar at the top, with a yellow box underneath always reminded me of the original ask jeeves search page, with its giant blue bar up top http://i.imgur.com/7LYUXre.jpg
You're not the only one, but I think this look will work better with people who are not me (people like me are already a pretty captive group for DDG), and who currently use other search engines. It's very trendy. I prefer growth for the search engine over the old look.
1. Old DDG: http://s388.photobucket.com/user/cubancigar11/media/snapshot...
2. New DDG: http://s388.photobucket.com/user/cubancigar11/media/snapshot...
There are so many problems here:
1. Poor contrast of font-colors.
2. Poor choice of font - bold doesn't really standout as much as it should.
3. Font spacing has increased which forces me to scroll down thus breaking my thought process.
4. Icons now take vertical space instead of horizontal.
5. Mouse-hover color change has poor contrast. On my desktop I can only see it through a specific unnatural angle.