The answer is 2.

Cling to known humans who write their own code.

Snake oil salesmen always encourage the public to bet against the experts, with predictable results.

Someday ethically sourced AI can be used responsibly by trustworthy coders.

But the key is choosing to collaborate with trustworthy coders.

Does anyone have any clue?

My best guess would be some relatively passive notification stealing focus.

As reddeadhead mentioned, there’s specific “don’t steal focus” settings. I’ve had good luck with them.

• Have you also experienced this worsening of DuckDuckGo?

Yes.

• Which other more privacy-respecting alternatives do you recommend?

I’m in the same boat. I’ll be trying out these answers.

Altair Basic was released in 1978 for hardware that sold around 25,000 units..

I’m sure glad computing remained exactly equally complex since then, with exactly the same number of users, and same minimal diversity of use cases. (This is sarcasm.)

Everything should still take 10 days. Anyone who tells me it takes longer probably believes all that crap about the Internet being more than a passing fad. (Still sarcasm.)