I see this kind of comment pop up every time DuckDuckGo is brought up. It makes me wonder what the disconnect is.

My speculation is that it's all in how you search. When I first started using Google, I learned how to craft my search precisely to get the exact results I needed. More keywords, filtering based on the site(s) that I might want, etc. Years later, this influences how I search considerably.

In contrast, most people I know who use Google tend to use much looser terminology and Google gets it roughly correct regardless. When searching for more obscure information I can generally outperform them but otherwise they're getting 90% of the way there

As a result my searches on DuckDuckGo haven't given me any worse results than Google would give me. If anything, they've gotten better (even setting aside bangs)