Brave's owners are assholes but their search is good.

Kagi is the best, especially for pruning AI slop, but $$.

You can also roll your own SearXNG if you're savvy.

Ecosia

Kagi if you're willing to pay (to an American company) for really high quality search results, e.g. for deep technical or scientific work

Startpage gives a good search experience; it uses Google's index. I've read that they're owned by an ad company though, casting doubt on their privacy claims

Qwant is also liked by a decent number of people, but I think there are issues about the behavior of the company behind it

Kagi has been my go to for a while now.
DDG is among the best in my opinion.

I’m not anti-AI, but I’m against it in everything all the time even when I didn’t want or need it.