They very clearly track you either not at all, or at least in far fewer ways than Google, an improvement either way. Google doesn't sell your data (except they actually do) because they're also the ad agency which is what most companies find the info is useful for.

While it's all a grey area on how useful it is, I think it's actively harmful to claim there's no difference here. It does make a meaningful difference.

Moving away from Google to DDG is a serious blow to online ads and ad effectiveness, and does support pro-privacy orgs. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism, but DDG is a step up. On top of that, I find DDG to be much better than Google anyway. Though I'm not a loyal fan by any means and would love a totally open and/or uncensored search engine even more.

Google have also been subpeonad many times for all sorts of info, it's very, very common. Using a company that doesn't store that info in the first place, again, makes a difference.