I used to be a part of the DuckDuckGo hype train until I found out they did actually track data (not an issue to me personally, but it betrayed their key marketing point), as used to be demonstrable if you had a slow internet and hovered your cursor over a link (it would show the tracking data loading). It was the one thing separating them from Ecosia, and I decided to join the Ecosia hype train, even if their own promises are themselves highly exaggerated. Every effort to do what Ecosia promises, even failed efforts, are appreciable.

What about metasearch engines/ search aggregators?

I run a whoogle instance personally

You want a free search, Brave. Don't like brave, then qwant. I use Kagi. It costs money but it is great.

I am generally switching between Google and duck duck go on Firefox. When Google gives shitty results (which is frequently) I switch over to ddg.

I've been using qwant for a few weeks and it gives me quite satisfying and accurate results. Before I had been using ecosia for years but the results can be lackluster sometimes. Especially when you search very specific "niche" things (like obscure Linux problems troubleshooting). But I'm still looking for a browser which let's you pick multiple languages for results.

You can absolutely configure the default search engine on your browser to a custom one in some cases. I use startpage and it isn’t in the default options, but it can be added.

Kagi if you're willing to pay. Otherwise tryaS Searx instance.

How would you go about setting searxng for search suggestions? I'm not sure i understand the documentation.

Brave search is also really good now

I use startpage.com on desktop. They provide Google results (sort of like DDG uses Bing results) so it’s not some autonomous magic privacy thing but it’s what I want from a search engine.

It reminds me of Google pre-enshittification.