I have used DDG for years, before switching to Kagi a year ago. Really happy with Kagi. I am happy to pay to show that there is a market for paid services.
Have a play with mojeek.com. Also heard good things about kagi, that is paid, though, I believe.
I use DDG exclusively and have done for years.
DuckDuckGo is just a proxy for Bing, the results are the same. Kagi and Brave are actual competitors.
We're talking about competitors to Google. Why doesn't DDG count as a competitor to Google?