OK, but tomorrow when I've forgotten that I've done this and I do a quick search, if the very first thing that comes up isn't what I want, I bet I switch right back.
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Making DDG my default search is the best thing I've done for improving my browser search capabilities. Coming from Opera, I'm already in the habit of using a great many custom search engines, which is nice if you're in Opera, but then Chrome feels very empty. Making DDG the default search gives me just about all of my custom search engines (and more), with pretty intuitive keywords, without having to configure and sync every browser on my system.
ever since ~2-3 years ago, Google is only very rarely my first stop in searching, I so much prefer to go directly where I want.
biggest part of the reason was their second-guessing my query and their results deviating more and more from a simple AND-query over my keywords. it felt like someone replaced my filet knife with a butter knife. (the other part was their instant search result updating and other "enhancements" were super distracting to me).
the only times when I go straight to Google (by which I mean prefix !g to my query), is for a few typical "local/Dutch" or "commercial/consumer" searches, you get a feel for what Google would answer better. Those types of queries are exactly what Google has been optimizing for the past few years, at the great cost of their general and precise web searching quality.
(PS, tip for the Dutch HNers: '!wnl' searches the Dutch Wikipedia. No you don't need it often but when you do, it's nice to have it quickly. I couldn't find it first because I always had it keyed to 'wn' myself, which sends DDG to a weather search site or something)