You should know:

https://noai.duckduckgo.com/

I would like to direct the reader to Yacy. It's a free-software, self-hosted search-engine. Users have the option to peer with other users, creating a larger decentralised search engine.

Build it. Use it. Promote it. Finance it. Bupf it, for short. Build the future you want or piss and moan endlessly.

Ddg:

Ran https://voteyesornoai.com/ Where of 175k people, 90% said No AI

Offers noai.duckduckgo.com, presumably to cater to this 90% who don't want it.

Has AI first features in main product. Does not advertise noai much.

So...

1. It's primary product goes against it's market research
2. It's pushing AI, not promoting the alternative
3. People keep promoting ddg for (2) despite (1)

Just seems weird.

Part of the problem is that most of these privacy-protecting search engines are just the big search engines re-packaged; DuckDuckGo is Bing, and Startpage is Google. SearchXNG is just an aggregator, and so is Kagi. What we really need are some alternative engines that function as well as Google used to. I would be willing to pay for that, as relying on ads clearly doesn't work.

I’ve been using kagi for quite some time and still happy with it.

Obviously not everyone will be willing to pay for search. But at least my data isn’t getting harvested.

I found Quant and DDG kinda sucky to be honest. I am experimenting with just having Tor open on my second screen with google. Might try Kagi at some point

Ironic since DuckDuckGo has AI too

Been pretty happy with Qwant for the past month now. I do not really miss google. I set it as default on all my devises so I wouldn't forget to use it. Now I prefer it. So nice to not having the entire screen filled with AI, sponsored irrelevant links and 99% SEO spam. I feel qwant has more nuanced results.

DDG is almost all AI slop results now. Even worse than google.

I use mostly EU search engines without AI (Startpage, Metager, Mojeek......)

It’d be great if DDG’s search was actually better rather than just an alternative. I’ve been using DDG for years and I’m still having to use other search engines because DDG’s results aren’t good or it pulls a google and gives you the same results no matter how many different ways you query.

I switched because every time I tried to google something on my phone I got literally 10-15 captchas in a row and it was taking so long.

I think people just don’t want every search to have AI included, it’s too much for some. Even though it’s useful sometimes, they are forcing it for almost every query, which is too much.

I don't mind Google. I've been using it to figure out how to build a home made mobility scooter, and it's working quite well.

If DuckDuckGo had better context recognition so when I search five terms I get results with all five in a somewhat correct order, I would never have to use any other search for any reason.

Hopefully this new success enables those changes and they dont blow it on AI.