[1123581321]

The simplest explanation is that you don’t know how good Google is anymore.

I use DDG because I think it’s important and have family members doing it too, but it costs us time when we search because the search completion is poor and the results aren’t as intelligent as I expect. Perhaps maintaining those expectations is my problem to solve, but that does not make the product’s deficiencies go away.

[macintux]

Is Google that effective if you’re not logged in?

I try not to give them any more hooks into my privacy than I need to, so I never search while logged in.

[IfOnlyYouKnew]

The amount of user-specific customisation Google does is generally overrated. For the vast majority of searches, I see only minor shifts in ranking when comparing logged-in to anonymous. Case in Point: [crystal] currently gives me meth and stones before programming, even though I have done quite a few programming-related (and even crystal-lang specific) searches.

[1123581321]

Yes, because their search completion is very good, they still have great local data if you give them a city or a zip, and they’re better at inferring what you meant to search for when you make a mistake.

[jlarocco]

That could be. Unless I'm actually using it, I block all requests to Google servers. I have good enough results with DDG and Bing that it's not worth enabling Google's spyware.