I suspect that maybe you were exposed to a certain post over on lemmy.ml @ local link: https://lemmy.one/post/657560

I'd invite you to read through my comment deconstructing the silliness of that entire post...the accusations and links are highly flimsy and poorly support the assertions being made. https://lemmy.one/comment/708741

I won't deny that it's likely that DDG isn't as privacy focused today as it may have been when it was initially founded; but I haven't seen anything on the fediverse compile enough reasons today that would support the panic I'm seeing over it if you just look into what few sources are quoted and being used and assess critically what might be going on.

That being said...

I do recommend SearXNG. Highly.

The metasearch engine that SearXNG offers usually works well and allows you to pick, choose, and sift through the various search engines and even define and create new ones you can use for yourself so that you can easily search whatever you need.

Searx instances in general are kinda like email providers too; just find a good one for yourself and start using it; no real account is required...just find one that works for you and set up your preferences and all.

I do not recommend Kagi! Kagi is a paid search engine. In general I do not consider their paid service to be better than Searx and would not recommend using them. Usage of a paid service requires creating an account...and we all know where that garden path lies.

Care to elaborate about DDG? If this is about the Bing thing from last year, that was almost entirely FUD.

Kagi, searxng

Startpage (basically a proxy for Google afaik), Murena Spot, SearX, Qwant, SwissCows

I use Qwant and Startpage for most things, but tend towards Qwant due to speed.

I primarily use Startpage for image search, though, because you can specify exact resolutions.

In my phone Murena Spot was always the default search engine and it's fine. I switch between it and Qwant Lite.

When I want someone to search more privately without getting different results, I always recommend Startpage.

SearXNG, there's nothing much else to say.

Primarily Brave, on the odd occassion I might have to check Startpage, but Startpge seems to have a suspicious deal with Google, also Startpage requires a verification process if it detects a VPN or Tor.

SearX can be nice, but being an open search platform, the results can be wildly random bases on which instance of SearX you search on.

I switch public instances from SearXNG and if I really want google results, I go to Whoogle.

I would prefer a search engine that not only respects my privacy but also doesn’t hide or shadow ban content it doesn’t like.

The biggest search engine with its own index that cares about your privacy is Mojeek. A lot of "search engines" are actually proxies for other search engines, as Mojeek explains here: https://blog.mojeek.com/2013/10/crawler-based-search-engine.html

This is important, because if the main search provider for these proxies refuses to show results in its index, then every proxy is also affected.

Mojeek was actually the first search engine to have a no-tracking privacy policy, going as far back as 2006: https://www.mojeek.com/about/privacy/

Startpage (basically a proxy for Google afaik), Murena Spot, SearX, Qwant, SwissCows

I primarily use the first two but the rest works great, too

I use Brave Browser's search engine, however the results are less than ideal compared to a big company like Google and I don't care for the AI generated information paragraph when looking up a topic as the first result. The only real private search engine is searx afaik.

https://Qwant.com

You can use LibRedirect extension which switches you instance of searxng on every search, this maximizes your privacy.