Thanks for the tip! I use startpage already, it's pretty good. From what I understand, it uses Google's search index under the hood.
There's also Brave search which (claims to be) privacy friendly and (claims to) have their own independent search index, so you could give that a try as well. I wouldn't say it's better that startpage or google tho
and (claims to) have their own independent search index
AFAIK their index is very small, so they use Bing to supplement it. Most search engines and voice assistants that aren't Google use Bing in some way, since it's the largest search index that has an official public API that anyone can use.
I’ve been using Brave search for a while as a daily driver. It’s usually pretty decent, but I fall back to google when looking for commercial stuff like local stores and products.
Damn I'd love to use it but it does not have my country as an option to select region so pretty much useless to me sadly. Stuck to DDG abd google/bing it seems.