That's bizarre. I am also on Windows 10 and use Firefox as my primary browser, largely because I can stream DRM'd video sites (Netflix etc) to my friends on discord.
Sounds dumb, but have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling? I might suggest also removing or disabling all extensions to see if that does anything.
Not so much, maybe towards the last month of that period defaulting to Bing. I think it was still being constantly rebranded then. It was still pretty new, so I never really trusted it for anything and just went to the sites in the results.
I used Bing by default for several months just because that's what my work laptop's browser had for default.
I never directly compared those results to DDG, but 9/10 times I would get frustrated by the lack of relevant results and go back to Google, where I'd find something useful on the first page of results.
DDG is just Bing. At least as far as the core search algorithm goes.
Unfortunately, my experience is the opposite. I tried to use DDG for about a month and consistently found myself giving up, Googling instead, and finding a relevant stack overflow page or reddit thread or whatever on the first page of results.
It's unfortunately still far more useful than other search engines, in my experience anyway. I haven't yet tried the paid search engine someone pointed out to me recently, Kagi, I think.
But given the cost of Kagi's tiers based on number of searches, it would have to be MUCH more useful to me than Google to really make it feel worth it.
I know Google search has gone down the shitter... but it's still far and away the most useful search engine I use. Every now and then I try to use bing or ddg or whatever, and they waste so much of my goddamn time I just run the same search in Google and get something usable on the first page of results, even with all the kludge.
At this point I'd rather pay for a search engine if it meant better searching and no ads.
Cash has an identifier on it, but unlike a check that identifier doesn't identify you.
Bling Bang Bang Born by Creepy Nuts Spain by Chick Corea
I feel the same about Krita. I used it for about a year of hobbyist drawing, and I just never could get comfortable using it.
Clip Studio Paint came out with 3.0, and after some deliberation I decided to pay for the update. Felt like coming home. I've done more art in two weeks than I've done in nearly a year of using Krita.
"what's the Judge Rotenburg Center?" looks it up "Jesus"
Once Firefox on mobile got extension support, I switched over immediately to use a decent adblocker. Made sure every app that opens a browser opens in Firefox. Has made my mobile browsing experience so much better, of my goodness.