Hated what g! was becoming, so I started using ddg, liked it at first but had to often modify my queries with a g! but I still used it, the experiance was't great, but it somehow worked, then the controversies around ddg started to come out. At the end of the day you gotta keep the lights on, if your users are not your customers then someone else is going to have to help you pay the bills.
Used kagi since it was recommended here on hn. Used it for a week(-ish) and instantly fell in love with it, the lenses feature, the ability to rank search results meant I could block out websites I hated seeing on my search results and boosting the ones I cared about. Now I am a paying customer.
Oh yeh, one more thing, for the past few months I don't remember a single instance of me modifying my queries with !g. Now I promote them every chance I get, I even got called a paid shill on reddit a few weeks back :D .