Many “alternative” search engines are better for privacy, but they are still vulnerable to censorship, because they rely on g**gle and m*crosoft’s indices for their search results. This isn’t a deep-hidden secret either, many of them disclose what search index they use on the “about” page, for example:

• https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources/
• https://support.startpage.com/hc/en-us/articles/5138782571796-Why-isn-t-a-particular-site-appearing-in-the-results
• https://www.ecosia.org/privacy

There are still search engines that (claim to) maintain their own index. Most surprisingly, br*ve:

• https://brave.com/search-independence/