They’re primarily a search engine, so yes, you definitely have to trust that they won’t misuse information about what search terms you are querying for.

That’s pretty shaky ground. Trusting a site for X has nothing to do with being comfortable to trusting them with X + Y when Y is unnecessary.

I suppose that's valid. This is the first time I had heard that DDG has a browser too, and I was just assuming that anyone who would use the browser probably also uses the search engine, which they obviously have to trust when they send search queries to it.

AND being so reluctant to remove this pinging mechanism adds more doubts about the real purpose.

> You really can't use "we promise we won't misuse the information" as an argument

Sure they can. Doesn’t mean you have to believe them.

When people say "you can't do" something that is already being done, it means they can't justifiably do it. Context matters for what words mean.

By the way how DDG spend money on the ads like at bus stop, I already starting to NOT trust them. Spend the money on development of development of products.

Seems like time to get SearX a try now: https://searx.me

FWIW I got higher quality results with Searx.