The search industry continues to undergo big changes. Leta will not be able to follow and will likely become less useful over time.

None of the "Big changes" of late have improved the user experience, absolutely nobody who'd use Leta would complain that it doesn't have AI summaries or whatever other bullshit.

Does this feel like a big cop out to anyone else? How weird...

No way! Is that why it’s been timing out a lot lately? Oh man, I like Leta. I’ve been using it for several months now. Sigh, I guess it’s back to startpage (and ddg).

I hope this is a joke, because it's the most useful search engine I have ever used in the past decade.

Cannot speak for anyone else, but I have been having problems with my preferred SearXNG instances returning garbage results that have nothing to do with what I searched. Before anyone asks, no I am unable to self-host my own personal instance and don't feel like changing settings every time I close and reopen my browser.

Misread as their vpn service and had a mini heart attack.

Similar privacy can be achieved through the combination of a VPN and a privacy-focused browser. We have therefore decided to discontinue Leta and continue to advance the development of state-of-the-art of VPNs and browser privacy

I never knew this SE was even a thing.

This was unfortunately expected.

Kinda expected, I always disable leta when I setup a mullvad browser.

The biggest killer was not being able to go to the original engine. Let's search for the image of a duck, oh leta doesn't do images, ok open this search in Google... Not a option either. Adds lots of friction

I like the DDG option of having a g! Escape to Google with my query if I need it.

Man I use Mullvad's VPN and their DNS servers and I had no idea they even made this!

Seems like they didn't advertise it very well I knew about their browser but never heard of this.

So the mullvad browser uses leta as its search proxy obviously.

What will go in its place / what is recommended to be used with its browser instead?

Bummer, I use Leta

That was quick

That's a shame but also I get it. As they say themselves, "Similar privacy can be achieved through the combination of a VPN and a privacy-focused browser" so there's not really a strong need for it I guess, and I'd rather they just cut something that's not working than try to dig in and risk wasting resources that could go towards something more useful.