I recently switched from opera GX with Google to brave with his own search engine, kinda hated it, especially the search of images. What search engine do you recommend? I’m at half between going back to Google or using DuckDuckGo. Is using brave with Google kinda pointless speaking of privacy?
I use DuckDuckGo for privacy reasons, but I’ve never been very happy with the results.
I am running my own SearXNG instant and it gives me general answers from a mixture of bing, duckduckgo, brave, and google. Combines all rankings.
I’ve been using startpage
Google, Kagi, Startpage.
I personally use Kagi, Google as my backup in those very rare occasion i need it. Kagi covers 99% of search results i need.
Otherwise Startpage gives great results, but its trustworthiness is compromised.
In my area (Canada), Google used to be the best but since about a year, it have became terribly innefficient. The same seach I used to do before don’t show anything revent anymore. I don’t know what happenned, seems to be the same with everyone I talk with locally here.
Brave seach, not as good as what Google used to be before, but it’s the most useful I find. DuckduckGo and Bing are okay too. I tried Qwant and searX but it’s not very good for my use.
Mojeek or Brave Search
If you’re asking for image search, I use Yandex. You can search photos not only by size but also by orientation. This is very useful and many search engines don’t have this feature. DuckDuckGo also has this feature.
Google gives me the best search results overall as it’s the most popular search engine in my country. Bing is slowly becoming second most favorable to me. All other search engine are not good enough.
Switch over to SearXNG also i recommend using librewolf over brave tbh
ever since I switched to Brave Search , i can never go back to google or ddg hahaha. i sometimes use the startpage but yah, i am very satisfied with brave search for about 2 years now.
I just can’t with google anymore. 
Their AI is the worst and I can’t get rid of it when I search. Always with the sponsored ads for the first page of results… it’s not what it was.
I’ve tried brave and DDG but honestly… there has to be something better than what I’m finding.
In a world where things change at the speed of light, why is Google going backwards…
There really is no best. They all have their advantages and disadvantages. What matters is what you choose. I use my own which uses a few APIs like Google PSE for example.
Google and Bing have been proven to give bad results to keep you searching longer for more advertising results. It’s worked incredibly well for them money wise but the word is starting to get out.
I just checked yep.com and kagi.com for an image “Image of fairy wallpaper” which would require landscape view. Yep failed me. There were many vertical images but no options to filter them. Kagi, however, now allows me to select aspect ratio, image type, color theme, size, time, etc. I was pleasantly surprised. Yandex has been mentioned, but Kagi is a private search option for you.
https://digdeeper.neocities.org/articles/search
Missing independent search sites (the rest are all using google or bing, unless stated otherwise in the above links): Stract, Greppr & Alexandria.
People is against Google Search Engine for the the reasons you want, but whatever you’re looking for, gives you the most accurate and comprehensive response in the 98% of all the cases, in a better way than anyone of the others. That’s my experience.
I like Bing the best for images
I enjoy Edge w/Bing and the DDG browser for less public activities one engages in🫢
Bing for image search.
DuckDuckGo otherwise.