This DuckDuckGo audit by @purism is a sobering read:
https://source.puri.sm/toolauditor/CEAP/-/blob/master/audits/ddg.md
Remember that DuckDuckGo is venture capital-funded which means that they must exit—either become a publicly-traded multi-billion-dollar company (sell to the public) or sell to one of the incumbents.
(What we need is a publicly-funded but independently run search engine. The EU could create such a thing… if they didn’t have they heads firmly entrenched up Silicon Valley’s bumhole.)