Yes, as a paid service who directly sells their primary product rather than a data mining, anti-privacy homunculus whose most famous product is merely a means to an end, an account and payment is required. This is strictly better than Google.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/24/ddg-microsoft-tracking-blo...
Their founder is also on record as "down ranking misinformation", which is not a judgment call I want my search engine making. Relevance and truth are two different things.
https://mashable.com/article/duckduckgo-search-engine-russia...
The sketchy and indirect way they engage with this criticism put me off of ever trusting DDG.
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