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Your assertion is not falsifiable, but I would otherwise take the other side of that bet.

Sure it is. We can ask @yegg about their methodology

Its exactly what happened to Qwant so it's not far fetched.

I kinda doubt the US govt cares about DDG.

Also, the US/UK gov is not an entirely unreasonable starting point for a list. There are also lots of academic researchers, media, etc. Better to apply some standards than none at all. I'm sure whatever list they have is not perfect, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't have one.

That is most likely what happened and the naivety around it is annoying.

It seems more naive to think search algorithms are ever "unbiased". The whole point is to find something by ranking them and applying a bias.