Continuing the discussion from Add Ecosia:
@dumpster No, the same does not apply to DuckDuckGo:
When we send a request to a partner for information used in search results, the transfer of information is proxied through our servers so it stays anonymous. That means our partners see those requests as though they came from us instead of our users, and no unique identifiers are passed in that process (e.g., your IP address).
Why not duckduckgo use its own index like brave.
You likely won’t get a definitive answer from anyone other than someone who works at DuckDuckGo. However, one could assume that doing this takes more resources, and DuckDuckGo has been doing what they do long enough and with enough success that they’ve decided it’s unnecessary to support their current business.
Another answer is that Brave is using the Google crawler (meaning it pretends to be Google) to index the web. Not sure an etablished player could do the same without getting sued.