Same, I have tried DDG every once in a while but kept going back to google. Now google search doesn’t quite give me relevant results anymore and all the AI crap just takes all of their effort to work on search itself.
Been using DDG for a few weeks now for personal and work related stuff - quite happy with it.
I started thinking about how much they’d actually make with this monetization scheme, but they employ 6 software developers and have a team of 4 in the upper management. The company has been running for 10 years with this single product.
I know that long time ago this was one of the things that freaked me out. I went into google account privacy settings and there is a lot of info about you. It really creeps you out when you see info from years ago.