DDG has ads based on your search query, that's how they make money. The difference is that they don't profile you, at least that's what they say. You can spam and respect people privacy, just by not looking who you are spamming.
And yes, "privacy" is a marketing ploy for anyone who is not Google. As for general purpose search engines, there are only two: Google and Bing, most others (including DDG) are just a front for Bing. There are other, more specialized crawlers including Marginalia whose author often posts on HN, and there is Yandex for Russia and Baidu for China, but the general idea is that if it is not Google, it is Bing.
DDG has ads based on your search query, that's how they make money. The difference is that they don't profile you, at least that's what they say. You can spam and respect people privacy, just by not looking who you are spamming.
And yes, "privacy" is a marketing ploy for anyone who is not Google. As for general purpose search engines, there are only two: Google and Bing, most others (including DDG) are just a front for Bing. There are other, more specialized crawlers including Marginalia whose author often posts on HN, and there is Yandex for Russia and Baidu for China, but the general idea is that if it is not Google, it is Bing.