BTTT
Thanks, Steven. In the months since I posted this, I have been using this Google/Duckduckgo homepage.
What I have discovered is that Duckduckgo is a far inferior search engine to Google. And one reason for that is Duckduckgo needs to make money and so they are much less likely to send you to the best sites because they need to send you to a money making site for them.
The other aspect of this is being able to ask questions in the search bar is a Google strong point. Duckduckgo is a poor replacement for that.