DDG has an entrypoint with AI features disabled at https://noai.duckduckgo.com/
the direction they want to go is clear for me, similar to proton
These are still a thing for people who don't like JavaScript, so I'd give them some credit.
And it's not like these don't cost anything to run and maintain. Quite the contrary: bots love to use them, and it screws with their ads-driven business model. And yet they are still keeping these around.
I think that "noai", too, will keep going for a long time.
very google-y to me, or valley-y is probably more accurate, par for the course across so many products these days (in your face)
DDG pulls stunts too
I'm moving to API based search options, using multiple, and rendering them as markdown for myself or my agent