So, Google killing off google search, is probably the number #1 reason for DuckDuckGo growing - that and how AI ruins everything now.

Unfortunately, whenever I used DuckDuckGo, the search results were also crap - and the User Interface was crap too. For some reason these web-searches suck, from A to Z, starting at the UI, but more importantly showing search "results" that are really qualitatively not good or inclusive. We already HAD good results - Google search used to be usable, then Google killed it off deliberately. Some inspiration Google appears to have taken from youtube, where you can search for "xyz", and it shows you "abc" instead after a while, which is horrible but not totally horrible as you may just watch another video. But for exact text search, copying that was stupid. Google ruined its search engine deliberately over several years, hoping that people will never notice it. And now we should use this crap AI garbage "search"? That is a privatized web. I refuse to help transition to private actors controlling the www. For similar reasons I do not use AMP and recommend everyone to not fall for the trap Google puts at you.

Either way, someone can hopefully tell the DuckDuckGo team to offer alternatives that do not suck in their search engine. (Qwant also sucks, by the way - they just copy/pasted Google's search UI; perhaps some people want it, I don't. I want oldschool search. Simple. Stay simple. Don't clutter the UI. Don't add garbage. Don't lie to the user. And so forth.)