Linux Mint as been in development for over 15 years. Its good for them to get some press coverage and positive attention.
As far as I can tell most people switching to Linux Mint are fairly happy with the experience beside some minor Linux quarks.
Linux Mint is great, but is outdated. In my opinion the Mint team should definitely separate itself from Ubuntu and stop making duplicate applications... They spend too much time and resources to separate servers to avoid Snap. LMDE is a good distro. With a little more attention it can become something bigger.
I've used DDG for years but I'm worried that Microsoft has some power with them. Also that its headquarters is in the US, where there are hardly any laws that protect the user. I used Qwant for a season, based in France, but he asked me to remove the browser's ad blocker. Since then, I use a SearXNG instance, waiting to mount my own. Very happy.