I recently started paying for Kagi[1] and I’ve been very pleased with the results. I haven’t felt the need to use a different search engine since switching. (No affiliation; just a happy customer)

[1]: https://kagi.com/

I do occasionally switch back to DDG for non-technical searches, but even that has been rarer and rarer as time goes on.

R.I.P.

If that were the case then search engines would differ only on how big their database is, but unless you care about the long tail you wouldn't be able to notice much of a difference.

I don't work in ranking, but considering how the web has changed since the early 2000s I'd guess that page rank's quality has gone down as spammy websites and walled gardens appeared.

It is the same spam sites I see again and again. A manual blacklist from one puny FTE would probably clean up the wast majority.

Google now has moved to model based ranking. In the current (search-hostile) web environment, PageRank or whatever simplistic algorithm doesn't work anymore.

And as the web scales, it's an increasingly expensive problem. (Servers, storage, bandwidth, etc.)

I'd wager that it's easier to launch the next SpaceX than to launch the next Google.