Privacy

I know you mentioned having tried it but my experience with DDG has been pretty good and it's what I use (edit to add that I'm not doubting your experience with it has been poor and this isn't intended to sound flippant).

I see Kagi come up a lot. I don't trust engines like Kagi not to link my payment data with my search history, personally. They're a US company, so consider what that means in the current state of the world and privacy. I haven't deeply investigated the validity of it, but the Kagi CEO allegedly harassed a journalist (minor edit, a blogger) who had a critical take on their service, and supposedly they were founded as - you guessed it - an AI company.

And sure, DDG is a US company, too. But they don't really have anything personally identifying to link my searches back to me. I can accept the ads (though I have uBlock), which are only contextually targeted based on search keywords. I don't think I'd use their browser or extensions, which would have a much more privileged place in my "tech stack", but for search it does well enough.