I can't add research but perspective: I search in English, German, French and sometimes other languages. For EN DDG is hit and miss, I'd say 1/2 times it gives me the result that I'm looking for. For DE and FR the result quality is often much lower.
This means at least about half the time I end up with a !g I'm my DDG search.
I don't think bing will be a useful competitor in the long term, but a company that focuses on non-English national/linguistic markets, especially those with own character sets can compete in that area, innovate and hopefully also branch out on the EN market (see Yandex - RU; Yahoo - JP; various CN players).
This means at least about half the time I end up with a !g I'm my DDG search.
I don't think bing will be a useful competitor in the long term, but a company that focuses on non-English national/linguistic markets, especially those with own character sets can compete in that area, innovate and hopefully also branch out on the EN market (see Yandex - RU; Yahoo - JP; various CN players).