I have spoken to a huge range of socioeconomic classes and the people that knew what DDG was explicitly said they could not care less. Obviously my sample size is minuscule but in EU generally people are perfectly aware of the spying yet don't really care (which I disagree with but that's how it is).
This just goes to show how suspicious DDG is acting which isn't surprising considering Mr. Weinbergs previous business.
Also I kind of trust huge companies like Google more than smaller ones. Yes, I know Google is collection lots of info on me, and I know they will show me ads and try to sell me something or get me to use more of their services, but I don't feel like it's such a big issue, and I don't think it's in their self interest to abuse this data or that anyone there cares about me personally. What is some smaller company going to do with my data and who are they going to sell it to? Who knows. Can I really trust they are not collecting any data? Who knows.
I'm personally alternating between DDG and Ecosia. I do use Google Images, once in a while, in a private tab.