Been using DDG for quite some time now (2 years or something) and i've never noticed any performance issues. Sure, it might be slower than google, but it has to be below the 1 sec difference mark, and I dont really pay attention to such things. In my opinion both google and DDG respond quick enough to feel responsive. The only thing that is kind of noticable when it comes to speed is DDGs "redirect" (if enabled), but thats a feature, right? ;]
In terms of features, DDG beats google anytime for me. google has this "search as you type"-thingy, sure, but it ended up annoying me more often than it helped. DDGs search results are very reliable (can tell someone to search for a term and "3rd or 4th link is what will help you" - try the same with google), the !bangs save a huge ammount of time and effort setting up keywords/shortcuts for different search types and the customization options can be very helpful to adjust it to your liking or workflow. There are these very seldom times when I feel like google returns more results (mostly when looking up some random error messages coming from some rare soft/hardware), but thats what !g/!b and "Try google/bing"-links are for. Other than that, I like the approach, the attitude and the changes very much so far. And if that didnt help - I'm a perl programmer myself. Not supporting a project written in perl would be like rooting for the enemy team when you home team plays against them in finals ;]
@rocky1138:
Regarding the uncertainty about DDG staying here.. Who can prevent DDG from being sold or slowly dying off like a few others did? Well, I believe I can. And so can you. As any technology, any product, any solution, search engines only "live" and "exist" as long as people use them. You manage to build up a solid "customer base" and keep them happy and content = you survive against the competition. And I think DDG is on the best way to accomplishing that. And as far as being "taken over/bought out" goes.. Sure, there is no guarantee that some day someone with a big pile of cash wont make that very tempting offer that the guys behind DDG wont be able to refuse, but so far it hasnt happened. And once again WE (the users) can help. How? Use the darn thing. Dont turn off the ads (and dont have ad-blockers on for DDG itself) and/or use Flattr. As long as the people paying the costs for all the background stuff (hosting/traffic/time invetment) can do that without having to spend their own cash, DDG will most likely stay the way it is.
Not using DDG simply because you're "affraid that it might be gone one day" is like throwing your laptop out of the window today, because it will be just an ugly paperweight in 2 years.
I'm not quite sure why you cant use GMail + GDocs AND DDG at the same time. Either your workflow is totally different from mine or I'm missing something. But I always saw all of those as separate websites, which are in separate tabs and which can be simply switched beween as required.