If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?

The truth is that normal people like abusive software. Using software that gives them freedom also gives them the responsibility to understand the behavior of the machine which is something they do not want. No amount of evangelism or possibly even education will fix this. IMO for their own good people who behave this way should not be allowed to use computers and should delegate the task to people who are willing to think through the consequences of using a particular piece of software.

Allowing normal people to use computers is cruel in the same way making a dog order its food over the telephone is.

Because Microsoft sucks too? Because browsers default to connecting to it?

Give it time.

Maybe you could write a Greasemonkey extension to redirect requests from Googles page to DuckDuckGo

Just use Startpage, its Google without the tracking.

DuckDuckGo is ok too.

TL;DR there's no reason to default to direct Google.