@Galamadryade @ocean DuckDuckGo is probably prone to the same tendency in the fullness of time. Its results come from Bing, which has basically the same business model as Google. While Bing is not a monopoly overall, it does derive a lot of its use from being the default search engine on some Microsoft products, rather than from being in any way better than the alternatives. That means that Bing can probably also profit from degrading its results, and bring DuckDuckGo down with it.