DuckDuckGo is a search engine - meaning its possible to use their tool without the collection of any data, even creating a user account. Many other tools are doing nothing nefarious with data but its not possible to use their tool without collecting data.

It's neat that DuckDuckGo was able to find a business model through showing ads based on what you search into the search box. For me personally, I don't see much of a difference between being shown ads on what I searched at that moment and having a cookie stored in my browser and getting showed ads based on that later on.

None of this disproves what the article is saying anyway - Google & Amazon will be the best equipped to handle the nuances of any data laws and as bureaucracy increases, they will benefit the most, storing more data.