I'm sorry but why do you post an example of an href, saying it's "horrible", when you don't know what it is doing?
Huh? Ive just checked with multiple links, it’s quite fast. I don’t think that user experience that can be measured in fractions of second can be referred as “terribly slow”.
How’s the latency of ddg redirects depends on the region?
> given the number of times I use ddg in a day
What’s you estimation? A hundred? It’s something like a minute or two of accumulated time. It’s not even worth mentioning.
Also I doubt that the redirect delay should be taken in account at all. The workflow may vary (obviously) but I normally open a link in a separate tab. By the time you click on this tab all the redirect work has finished. What’s your workflow and how does the redirect delay impact it?