on one hand, as a dedicated user of !g on DDG for many years, my urge/need to use !g has gone down almost exponentially (despite being firmly in muscle memory)
on the other hand, when I do turn !g, I find more and more that I still don't find what I'm looking for
this is either down to:
(a) Google's results getting worse over time
(b) my searches getting more obscure over time
(c) selection bias due to DDG solving for my less obscure searches
As a frequent user of google, I think a is not to be underestimated. Google has gotten more aggressive with stemming and other forced "corrections" to your search. This (I assume) helps in general but can frequently result in undesirable search results if you are attempting to search for words like in spelling but unrelated to common words or uncommon senses of common words, both of which seem to occur somewhat frequently in technical jargon.
There's something to be said also, I think, for the ever expanding mountain (of 90% shit) that is user-generated webcontent that must be sifted through by any search engine: The problem of searching the internet is itself getting harder and harder by the day.
on one hand, as a dedicated user of !g on DDG for many years, my urge/need to use !g has gone down almost exponentially (despite being firmly in muscle memory)
on the other hand, when I do turn !g, I find more and more that I still don't find what I'm looking for
this is either down to:
(a) Google's results getting worse over time
(b) my searches getting more obscure over time
(c) selection bias due to DDG solving for my less obscure searches
I suspect (c)