Out of curiosity/skepticism I tested their search claims and DDG actually gave me 7 pages of results. Google gave me 21 pages until the "omitted results" link,

Out of curiosity/skepticism I tested their search claims and DDG actually gave me 7 pages of results. Google gave me 21 pages until the "omitted results" link, and 427 total results (out of 694 million claimed) after clicking that. Searching for results before the same date in 2016 gets another 40 pages. Messing with the URL reveals that Google will never return more than 1000 results, pages after that give an error message stating so. Bing claims 18 million results but ends at 633, weirdly showing links for additional pages after that. I don't think it's proof of a "dead internet", rather search engines cutting corners where they can to deliver a more performant product at the cost of losing more obscure results.