Also, i would love to try other payed search as wel. Its just that the Google problem to me seems to comes from the fact that the need to earn money on things I don’t want them to. So out of principle, paying for search (as long as I can afford it) seems to me the right thing.

Als kagi is better then DDG, brave and bing on the axis where Google is stil best so basically almost as good. And on the points of OP it is much better than today’s Google So all in all my experience is that contrary to ddg I never needed to go back to Google since I started using kagi. That’s quite an achievement.

Just try The free version is not enough in the long term but should be fine to evaluate.

What bothers me is that using it in incognito is cumbersome at best and almost impossible sometimes.

Sorry I lurk mostly

If you want to pay for search (and some other stuff) you might consider Kagi. Check out discussions on Hackernews, the consensus is quite good for Hackernews Standards. I personally use it since it matches my view about privacy and I like to pay for that since that’s seem a logical way to enable me not to be the product. The results are good and you can prioritize sites easily.

If you are not paying for it you are not the customer but the product.