Why We Chose Next.js Over React for Our Privacy Search Engine Frontend frameworks seem interchangeable. For a privacy-focused product, the choice matters more than you'd think. The Privacy Problem with SPAs Traditional React SPAs: Execute all logic in the browser Make API calls directly to third parties Expose the user's IP to every service Require JavaScript (fingerprinting surface) For asearchz.online, this was unacceptable. Every API call a user made would expose their IP to Bing, Brave, or other search sources. Why Next.js (Server-Side Rendering) With Next.js SSR: The server makes API calls to search sources User IP stays between user and our server only Results are rendered server-side, sent as HTML JavaScript is optional (works without it) Performance Benefits SSR is actually faster for search: First contentful paint: 200-300ms No hydration delay (content is already HTML) No client-side state management complexity CDN caching of rendered pages Trade-offs Next.js SSR has costs: Server compute per…