so yeah, Google is Google, the very definition of SEO – to the point now they will completely ignore your query to show you “relevant” results
and Bing is Microsoft, ’nuff said – although I hear they seem to be THE choice for porn searches …
people have been claiming DuckDuckGo has become just a frontend for Bing which is why their results have been declining 🤷
ad tech company System1 owns a majority stake of Startpage – apparently they’ve mollified PrivacyTools that it would not impact Startpage’s privacy focused mission
Qwant out of France actually seems to be stepping up as a good netizen, not only focusing on privacy but also investing in privacy initiatives in EU
otherwise you’re stuck bouncing around SearX SearXNG instances – Google and Bing REALLY don’t like meta search engines and will regularly block overactive instances
EDIT: looks like SearX is pretty much dead and had been replaced by SearXNG