In Firefox and its derivatives, you can add the non-AI version of DuckDuckGo as a search engine by going into Settings > Search > Search Shortcuts > Add and then giving it a name of your choice with https://noai.duckduckgo.com/?q=%25s being put in the “URL with %s in place of search term” part. You have to remove the 25 part from the URL though, that seems to be a Lemmy quirk with posting a link.
I don’t know when they made this available, but I’m learning about this now and it’s super useful if you hate LLMs and also use a browser that clears cookies on close (such as Mullvad or LibreWolf).
No that doesn’t matter at all, but it might matter to you if they get all the addresses you type just up to the point before you type .com, i.e. pornhub before you add the dot com or maybe some health related stuff, or every bank & insurance company you do business with, adult websites, etc.