Well, I switched to DDG after last time someone said it's doing a much better job then Google's now. So I've switched all my defaults to DDG. On the contrary, users don't mind which search engine, as long as they give proper results efficiently.
I've switched to paid search with Kagi. Best standard feature is I can tell Kagi to block w3schools, mediumDOTcom and stackoverflow from my search results.
I use Startpage. It's anonymous like DDG, but uses Google on the back-end. Results feel more like old Google than the modern overly-personalized Google results