I think everyone in the thread knows about "search engines" in Chrome and bookmark keywords in Firefox. The crux of the issue is that there are more than 10,000 bang commands in DDG. Setting up even a popular subset in any given browser is a significant investment. It's fine if it's the browser you use 99% of the time, but for those spanning multiple computers, phones, and other devices, simply using bang commands is a strict win.
99% of the time you use <0.1% of the bangs, so setting those up isn't a significant investment. Then there are also the downsides mentioned above (less convenient, no preview, not portable across search engines), so no, it's not a strict win, but an inferior alternative which is superior only in those cases where you can't setup something better
Something this doesn't do that DDG bangs do, is let me append it, or even stick it in the middle of a search. I can just type it wherever my cursor happens to be, other than in the middle of a term. This comes up when I search something in DDG then change my mind and want to use a bang.
