> I'd gladly pay a subscription to a good search engine to remove the need for ads and align the business model to the privacy goals, however I'm probably in a small minority here.
I think you're correct about it being a small minority, but I'm definitely there with you.
Even with their affiliate and advertising model (someone else linked it), I'd rather pay money to just have the site ignore all ad determination, affiliate linking, etc if it sees me logged in and my account paid up.
Of course, most people seem to be heavily trained to look for "free" and chastise anything subscription based, no matter how cheap/fair.
What _is_ their business model?
I'm not too worried about acquisition. Per the article:
> ...there was little need for the company to raise more money. DuckDuckGo, which had a last known raise of $3 million in 2011, has been profitable since 2014.
>Side note, if they get bought out by a big player, I will feel like my use of them for the last year has been for naught.
I completely agree and at this point it's my main issue with DDG. I don't think their business model is sustainable, if they ever make it big the pressure to make more money will eventually corrupt their noble goals. After all Do No Evil used to be a thing at Google too and we see how that turned out.
I'd gladly pay a subscription to a good search engine to remove the need for ads and align the business model to the privacy goals, however I'm probably in a small minority here.