Genuine question: if Google is a last resort, what are your more preferred alternatives? I've tried many search engines and haven't really succeeded in finding a better alternative. Wondering if I'm missing something.
I never really liked DDG or Bing. They both suffer from the same SEO gaming that Google does.
There are also a number of smaller search engines that have been posted to HN that are kind of interesting for certain niches.
I think what will happen over the next five years is that instead of Google being the one-stop shop for search, it will be a number of smaller players + the different chatbot engines like ChatGPT and Bard and others.