The author tried using DuckDuckGo as their default search engine for a month and found it to be good enough for regular use. They compared DuckDuckGo's results to Google's and found that while Google excels at low-intent searches and provides more structured information, DuckDuckGo's results are often simpler and more relaxed. The author appreciates DuckDuckGo's privacy features and found that they rarely needed to use the !g operator to search Google. However, they noted that DuckDuckGo struggles with local searches and product comparisons.