I agree, the whole package is the difference. I'm trying to use DDG as much as possible, but I live in Italy and for local stuff Google services are still unbeatable. E.g. Apple Maps used by DDG are a no go where a live for all but plain directions. OSM data used by many map apps is good, non commercial data sometimes even better than GMaps, but businesses data is only on GMaps, there's no way around that.