I had gotten tired of the constant ads, click bait content and tracking.

I missed the old days of the Web where you could find, largely accurate, quirky information from blogs, podcasts, etc.

The search engine I use is Kagi. It's clean, the team works really hard to surface high-quality links, my searches aren't tracked and studied and I genuinely enjoy the experience.

They've also integrated AI into search in really smart ways to augment the search engine, but it does not get in your way if you just want to find some information.

Paying for search is unusual, but I'm better for it.