Stellantis is mostly European, it's FIAT and Peugot with their other brands. I'm fairly certain they get enough subsidies and tax breaks. That this Italian/American/French company is registered in the Netherlands shows that some tax-dodging is involved as well. I think it's a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
(Also, Volkswagen Group is the bigger European car manufacturer.)
I have the idea DDG (or Bing which powers it) is getting worse, if you search for items, you first get a load of webstores selling that item and a Wikipedia article might show up on page 2 at best.
In a way Japan is both innovative and conservative when it comes to technology and business. There are still business practices going on there which have been phased out in "the west". If you look at the Japanese music industry for example it's both 21st century and stuck in the 1990s for some reason.
And are there even industry standard equivalent programs available for graphic designers on Linux?
Most FOSS alternatives tend to be a significant step back for folks used to their closed source industry counterparts like for example Adobe. The available video editing software is either a step back or closed source (DaVinci Resolve).
It's probably the proverbial chicken-and-egg situation.
I've seen some stuff about ads when installing Windows (about personalisation of ads), but other than suggested apps after a fresh install (certain games and apps). I've never seen any ads in windows itself.
Granted, I do offline installs without Microsoft accounts and do use stuff like ShutUp10 and Windows debloater.
I miss Beam/Mixer...