I'd say DickDuckGo has gotten SIGNIFICANTLY better in the past two years. I'd consider the results I get on there to be mostly equivalent these days, and in some cases better, though still sometimes worse. It's finally gotten good enough for me to be willing to switch though.
My job involves scanning damaged codes of both types on a regular basis. QR codes are way more reliable than you'd expect, and will often scan even with partial codes, on damaged labels. Barcodes meanwhile always need a complete code to work.