I stopped using Google years ago. I started using Bing but had to stop that as it would divert me to MSN to sign in when clicking a link for a news article. Like a news article for The Independent or The Times or any other.
I then started using DuckDuckGo which is powered by Bing, but found it wasn’t great at many searches.
I now use Arc Search most of the time and click browse for me to get the information I want without the bullshit. Search is essentially dead due to greed.
Interesting concept, but it's a bit expensive IMO, considering the huge amount of "free" options.
The pricing is only in USD without taxes. Listing the price excluding tax is illegal here (Denmark and I think the rest of EU), so apparently not a service meant for use outside USA.
Ad free is not a problem for me, i use Firefox with µBlock Origin.
Startpage uses outside search results, but should be very secure like DuckDuckGo, and better certified.
Qwant is AFAIK more independent, and I like the layout better.
Both give pretty good search results IMO, but are somewhat lacking in map/geographic searches. For instance searching "Angola" could result in a restaurant in London. Just as a hypothetical example.
So I do use Google maps too.
qwant = 95% bing results, startpage = 98% google results. They are slimmer. They don't keep your search history or ip address. better for privacy but not much better for search results.
qwant uses bing and is mostly a proxy for it. Startpage is a proxy for google. the only thing they really do is protect your privacy, they don't give you better search results.