the problem with DuckduckGo and Qwant (i don't know about Brave's search) is they're all so heavily reliant on Bing results, and they're not really new engines but privacy respecting engines hitting the Bing API and then supplementing with "answers" from other sources like weather services, wolfram alpha, etc..
There no real alternative to the big players. It's google or bing, basically.
Just be aware that just like mainstream media (and alternative media) it probably has a pretty huge bias.
The reason I mention this is that just like with mainstream media and unlike alternative medias and newsletters it seems easier to forget the bias of search engines.
There no real alternative to the big players. It's google or bing, basically.