Yes, but all we can observe for now is that we constantly send the same data to DDG as we did send to Google and for some reason we are supposed to trust DDG.

Yes, but all we can observe for now is that we constantly send the same data to DDG as we did send to Google and for some reason we are supposed to trust DDG. It isn't a too wide far-fetched that DDG could be collecting all data in silence and once they have enough of it (or are big enough to survive losing a part of their user base) start capitalising off of it. I don't trust DDG any more than I do trust Google. In fact I trust Google with their boatloads of great engineers (of which we have learned that they do have some sense of moral and ethics) more than a small company that could easily be forced to capitalise on their user-data because of their shallow pockets.