If you're confused about how the hell AI is going to make the kind of money needed to turn a profit, I'll illustrate

[Hugin]

14. Some amateur answers...

I am not familiar with Ecosia.

1. DDG allows users to opt out of AI searches. Check your settings to see if it’s set.

2. The best answer to this I can come up with is that they anticipate making money. Your eyeballs are their commodity. The problem up until now is that the volume of data is overwhelming. Truly targeted ads remain elusive. They see AI as a means to cut through this. The current problem for them is consumers are fickle with their tastes and needs. Which AI doesn’t handle well. An example would be, once you have found the refrigerator of your dreams, you are not likely to search for one again soon. So now that they have an expert system trained up on your precise refrigerator metrics. You have moved on to duvets. They believe that the solution to this paradox is to know everything about you in granular detail. Unfortunately for them, human behavior is a fractal or labyrinth for a system (AI) which relies on a steady context. The AI system predicts that you will be needing a new refrigerator soon, but you have opted for a day at the spa.

3. There have been some articles on studies which indicate that an AI search (due to the training of the LLMs) generates several thousand times as much carbon as a regular search. I think that the AI search was around four GRAMS of carbon at the time of the study. Reading up higher on this thread with the construction of data centers happening now it’s probably much higher.