I've been using FF for a while now and I like the privacy side of it. When I made the switch, I also tried to ditch Google for DDG, but I haven't been able to make it work. The results in DDG always seem to be pumped by SEO and are more often affiliate marketing blogs. Google often manages to bring me the right results right away.

I've been using this for a couple months and it's amazing:

https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search

My own free, private search engine with Google results.