There was a similar post recently, which I found Kagi through.
What Kagi has taught me is that it is unlikely-to-impossible for there to be a successful, good search engine — i.e. you can have good, or economically viable, pick one.
If it's good, it'll cost what they're asking for (currently $10 pm), because that's how much they have to charge to stay in business. Not enough people will pay that though, so paradoxically, they'll go out of business charging what they need to.
If it's an acceptable price, it'll either be backed by FAANG, or be looking to sell fast (so ultimately be owned by FAANG anyway). If it's backed by FAANG, you've sacrificed the "good" part, because that's not part of their business model (they're here to sell ads, which means breaking good search in many ways).
