"One of the reasons I got fed up with Google was the constant link spam in it from the content mills like Demand Media."
Exactly. Half of the results for most Google searches I do are mostly garbage. DDG consistently returns far higher quality results than Google for me.
The litany of pro-Google posts in this thread really make me wonder if there are conflicts of interest the posters aren't disclosing (ie. how many of them work at Google?)
(Since I brought it up - in the interest of disclosure I'll say that I have no financial interest in or association with any search engine or web site.. or any company whatsoever, to be honest)