For me ddg and brave search have been fine with an occasional dose of chatgpt . I don’t miss google. I used Kagi for a few months and it was great but I got tired of them aggressively logging me out because I use a VPN that often changes IPs all over the US to find the speediest server. I understand why they do it, but I could not tolerate it forcing me to log back in every couple of days across devices. I was using 2FA so it was obviously me and not someone else using my account.
I use private mode on safari as my primary browser experience- so I’m never logged into anything. Kagi has a ‘Session Link’ feature where the URL itself logs you in. It’s pretty easy to get setup and then you never have to log in again unless you want to make account changes. I agree with you that it wouldn’t be worth it if I was constantly having to log in. Anyways, just something to consider, there is a solution.