Duckduckgo. Not for the privacy concerns, I believe that about as far as I can spit, but becaues I really like their bangs system. A lot of them have become very second nature for me at this point.
Also ducks are cute.
If I am searching something in Chinese I try to use baidu, but my actual chinese level is not that great. Working on it.
Those all get blocked at my office (any unusual TLD are just automatically blocked) so I will probably end up sticking to DDG. I could use them at home but it's nice just to have a fairly consistent experience.
you can mimic that functionality in Firefox-based browsers by adding bookmarks with search keywords (e.g. if you create a bookmark with the URL https://piped.video/results?search_query=%s and the keyword yt, submitting yt some video in the URL/search bar will search for "some video" on piped.video)
I'd like to use SearXNG instances but they don't seem to be reliable enough, so I use Yandex to annoy the libs (bonus that they don't block Lemmygrad results from naturally appearing)
various SearXNG instances (I don't trust them all to be private, but some will be) and occasionally DuckDuckGo (because it's the default in Tor Browser)
At one point, gpo.zugaina.org was censored due to a change in Bing's web crawler (I think), which was the last straw that led me not use DDG as my primary search engine anymore.
I have been trying multiple at this point, though I am not sure I found one I am happy with. I tend to use SearXNG, but I tend to make too many searches too quickly and it causes various search engines to block me for a bit.
I thought I should share another search engine if it helps:
Marginalia Search - A search engine that favors text-heavy sites and punishes modern web design - I just tried this one, and it's very handy. Definitely recommend, though the results may not be relevant depending on your search, but sometimes you may find another similar site you would want to bookmark for later.
wiby - A search engine of curated websites, useful for finding small blogs
MWMBL - A free, open-source, and non-profit search engine
At this point, I have been unsatisfied with search engines because the internet it just filled with SEO optimized crap. I made a habit of bookmarking every interesting or useful thing I find. I rely on sites like Lemmy/Lemmygrad, Reddit, Hacker News, etc. to find interesting links. I also look for awesome list git repositories (such as this, this, this, and this) (and this and this to search for more) and Reddit/Lemmy wikis to find useful resources. If I find (semi-)trustworthy news sites like Grayzone, AntiWar, etc., I will keep a tab open to use that as my news feed instead of Reddit. If I want to look up a news story or opinion on a search engine, I tend to add the word "Marxist" or "socialist" and it sometimes gives me results I want. If I want to find help online, I either find the documentation web page or I will just add the word "reddit" since I still rely on reddit question posts to find answers.
One thing I would wish if we reach a socialist society is for everyone to be provided the option to make their own website (multiple options available for various levels of tech savviness, from self-hosting on one's own dedicated server to "simplified web designing tools with presets" for the least tech savvy) subsidized by the government. Then a search engine can be built to prioritize those sites, especially those that people used to make important informational resources.
I also like browsing Gemini websites, which requires a browser add-on or an entirely different browser. You may learn about it here: https://geminiprotocol.net/
I wish there were more Marxist Gemini capsules, though I hope to make Gemini equivalent mirrors of important Marxist websites someday.
I also wish there to be an org-mode protocol to make websites as org documents for emacs. There's this person's blog post that mentioned a similar idea, which I found from this discussion on Reddit.
I find that visiting niche communities on niche platforms helps with finding quality content and resources, thus I tend to enjoy looking through old/new protocols and small websites/platforms before they are flooded with commercialized crap and are abused by users that don't respect the sites' rules/etiquette/culture.
Sidenote: If you like to sail the seven seas, you can self-host Jackett to use as a proxy server to query torrents.
I tried to mention other search engines, protocols, and tactics that no one else mentioned yet. I am glad you found one you are happy with. :) I know I made a wiki-like comment at this point, lol.
Do you find Gemini to be very reactionary as of late? I've been browsing Gemini for at least 2 years now, it has become full of fash and like 2 anarchists, at least in aggregators such as Antenna and Cosmos.
I store bookmarks in a text file and have over 300 at this point in less than one year.
Yeah, I do find it the same, but I still find some helpful and interesting computer-related blog posts.
I have been storing my bookmarks in Firefox and Buran for Gemini on my android phone, but I eventually want to transfer all of them to a text file and launch links via a menu launcher like dmenu, bemenu, etc.
When you self host you can add whatever you like as a search engine. I'm sure someone has already shared the couple config lines required to add Yandex.
DuckDuckGo because Google is now complete trash, but also because it specifically allows for searching within specific countries, whereas Google likes sending me to captcha hell if I do too many searches in different languages or dare to use a VPN. There are other neat features too, but that was the biggest reason to just drop google completely.