I don't really trust DuckDuckGo, but I use their search service because I trust Google less... I still trust Firefox more for a browser although it won't take much at this point to make me switch.
Go here and turn your "web and app activity", your "location history" and "ad personalisation" off, if they aren't already:
https://myaccount.google.com/data-and-personalization
If you do that, there's no evidence that Google is more privacy invading than DuckDuckGo, since you're left with taking their word for it. And frankly I trust a big, bureaucratic company more than I trust a startup. The ideal would be to trust technology (e.g. end to end encryption, open source) but that's not the case here.
Note that I also use DuckDuckGo in my Private Mode, as Firefox allows setting different search engine for Private Mode. I do that because it's better to compartmentalize your online personas, plus I keep my "web and app activity" in Google on, with deletion after 3 months.
What does Google have to gain from it? Google has pretty aggressive anti-scraping protections to protect against this exact behavior, so why would they allow Startpage to get away with it?
What does Startpage have to gain from it? Unlike DDG, they don't seem to have any core product, so they fully depend on Google's goodwill which is very shaky grounds when it comes to a long-term business.
"You can’t beat Google when it comes to online search. So we’re paying them to use their brilliant search results in order to remove all trackers and logs."
Isn't that exactly like DDG but Google instead of Bing?
https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so...
> We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we also source from multiple partners, though most commonly from Bing (and none from Google).
So basically it's all Bing and I see no effort to reduce that dependency as you claim.
Mojeek [1] is also a good privacy option that doesn't get talked about as much as DDG. They distinguish themselves by having their own search index.
[0] https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=python+unit+testing