Best alternative search engine option that actually works?

The reason why probably varies from person to person, but for me personally this boils down to not wanting to feed my search queries directly into google (privacy concerns), wanting to support diversity in search engines (not wanting to have a single point of failure.) I view the web browser engine debate through a similar lens.

Further while the “independent search engines” here may not be “as good” as Google, they have generally served my needs well enough, so I have found no need to abandon use of them.