Ddg is worse than Google and Firefox is maybe a little bit worse than Chrome. But it's bearable 90% of the time and that matters a lot.
I have noticed that too :-). That's one problem with Google: On the one hand I think they should be restricted but on the other hand their products are just very good.
Nothing beats searx.me - Google's results are good (but slipping), but when you combine Google, DDG and Bing, it doesn't get any better
Never heard of this before but will give it a try.
sadly that's also my go-to query when using startpage