Google is pretty trash now and has been for a while to be honest. The removal of features such as using quotation marks for an exact search was part of the downfall. Now Google will basically only show you what it thinks you want and you have minimal (if any) ways around it.

That’s not to say I don’t also agree with you about DDG. The results are leveraged from Bing, which are pretty lacking for some standard searches. You have to search a little differently than you would with Google for better results and filter through more junk websites.

If I had to grade the quality of both, Google would probably be a C+ and DDG a C.

That being said I always use DDG first since I don’t think it’s far off from Google’s quality, it is privacy preserving and still has some features that were nixed from Google. It also has the option to use ‘!g’ in a search to immediately search for the same terms but on Google which helps when their results aren’t working for me.

Ultimately, to each their own but I thought I’d throw in my experiences.

Yeah. I added an addendum although I clearly did not format it properly.

They claim to be about privacy and seem to consider it a first class concern or however you want to put it.

I weighed the risks and the inconvenience of using a degoogled phone severely outweighs its utility for me.

In an ideal world I could be using GrapheneOS but a lot of OSS still has some ways to go in terms of design and functionality.

Also before the “HA GOTCHA GO SUPPORT THEM YOURSELF” etc etc, I financially support many open source projects and foundations and am working on sharpening my dev skills to contribute more.

There are plenty of reasons.

A robust ecosystem Privacy protection features and measures that are given first rate support - at least as far as you can say about a closed source platform Simplicity

I have years of experience with iPhones and flagship Galaxy phones since the 5.

I’m settled on the iPhone for now because those blue bubbles make keeping in contact with family easy. Sure you could use WhatsApp but if it’s not already being used, most people won’t want to download another app just to communicate. They’d rather use the built in texting app.

It also syncs well with my watch that I use for fitness tracking, and my Mac Studio that I use for professional work.