Now I use Kagi search, you have to pay for it, but results are great (often better than google) : less SEO spam, a lot of tuning possible, custom searches, small web searches, good image and map searches. And it is supposed to respect your privacy and private data.

Unfortunately though, bing results had suddenly improved a lot recently, which is surprising as I presumed the DDG also uses content from Bing, but they also now serve their own content.

I briefly also tried Qwant and the results are fairly ok ish.. The other Ecosia seems to have decided to spoil the interface design entirely and injects strange ads like the early days of google rot, so didn’t try it much.

Alternatively, I am finding Brave search more tolerable with results being relevant and less content farmy. I tried Kagi a bit and results are pretty nice but it seems to degrade a bit when I search for non-technical stuff there. But they just started and given their duration in service their results are pretty awesome.

P.S. Not affiliated with any of these search engines, just sharing my experience.

5/10/20 years from now, all that will be left of Google search is the map/product/store portions, if we even have an internet at all at that point.

Ever so often it'll serve me up some completely unrelated stuff, but there's kind of a charm in that. "Oh the thing I am looking for is really not that popular, neat". Unlike google where it'll hit you with tons of seemingly related results.