I read the opening paragraph and thought 'wow, this guy has clearly just taken the release statement from Duckduckgo's privacy app announcement (or possibly their much-upvoted AMA) and just copied and pasted some statistics.'
Then I saw the author.
Then I saw the author.
Speaking of which, I recently moved to DDG and couldn't be happier.
Frankly the only thing I don't like about DDG is the name.
Next time, don't go to Google, but go to Startpage. They have the same results as Google but they strip all the Google crap for more privacy.
You can search Startpage.com from within duckduckgo by "searching" in Duckduckgo for:
!sp hackernews