Aaaaand the DDG enshitification begins... continues? continues.
- Why do you call this enshitification, if it won't affect the normal searching and is entirely optional?
  
  Have they said that or are you just implying that? It's beta right now but I'd put money on them following in Google's footsteps and integrating right into the main search.
  It's enshitification because instead of simply fixing their crappy SEO laden results, they're pushing this new thing.
  I'm also willing to bet that once it's out of beta there will be either a limit on free searches or it'll just be straight up subscription model.
  And just like that, normal search is dead, and the only viable option is to pay for their new thing
  
  Right now, they're offering the ai chat as a separate product, with separate terms of service and a privacy policy you have to manually agree to use. I hope they don't mess with the standard search function.
- I still use DDG (for search, none of the other bs they’ve been adding) because they are definitely better than Google or Bing. Is there a better alternative?
  
  Currently using and testing SearXNG
  https://github.com/searxng/searxng
  --//--
  The list of public instances to connect to and use is here
  https://searx.space/
  
  Startpage is pretty good.
  
  wasn't it bought by an advertising company?
  
  Considering DDG's privacy claims cannot be independently verified (and their MS tracking fiasco 2 years ago) they should be treated with the same level of caution that Startpage gets.
  
  but the difference between DDG and startpage is that DDG allows connections through Tor and VPN, while startpage doesn't. isn't it suspicious ?
  
  I used to use startpage but just recently switched back to ddg. for some reason on my browser the search would return errors or sometimes I'd type my search query and it would just load the homepage of the site. Sometimes it just feels like there is no winning. :/
  
  https://www.qwant.com/
  
  Shares your IP and search query (according to them separately) with Microsoft.
  
  So does DDG
  
  For searches, Kagi.
  Edit: I guess Kagi sucks. But I still prefer their search results over DDG.
  
  https://d-shoot.net/kagi.html
  
  Funny how the bare HTML makes this feel weirdly personal. Maybe I should get around to making the shitty personal website I always wanted to make fifteen years ago.
  
  You really should. https://indieweb.org has a lot of resources.

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