I concur. And would add that on Safari and iOS, it suits Google and Microsoft too keep others out; noting all options are Google, Bing or Bing sydnicates). And it suits Apple nicely; $15 bn from Google, pure margin. How much do they get from Microsft/syndicates? Meanwhile all search listed options in Chrome are Google or Microsoft (Bing and Bing syndicates). And, to complete all Edge options are Bing, Bing syndicates or Google. Disclosure: also alternative search engine CEO.
Presumably you count DuckDuckGo as a "Bing syndicate". I think that doesn't do it justice - many of the things I like about DDG are specific to DDG, and I could not care less whether the underlying crawl was run by Bing or not.
Yes, but I'm biased. Your perspective is as valid and I respect it. DDG does have some great features and we stand with them in fighting for user privacy. What benefits us all is a variety of different search engines and search services. It is the search engines that subtly determine our informational pathways, so variety is healthy. For one independent review of search engines and syndicates, including DDG see:
https://seirdy.one/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexe...
100% agree. The more people working on this and building different features and trying different approaches the better. The more new search engines, the more everyone innovates, the better for the whole world. It is deeply unhealthy to have a single monopoly with its mono-search have 90%+ of the market. There are billions of search users with many different needs, and there is room for different approaches.
