HexPat

But what if, now hear me out, we tow the entire thing OUTSIDE the environment?

As an American not really in any of the groups (retired, living abroad) this is spot on.

Aw shucks

This may be a helpful graphic when deciding on a search engine

https://www.searchenginemap.com/

You get a list of results that looks a bit like Google without the AI answer up top and without any ads. There is a “quick answer” button you can click towards the top of the results that WILL generate an AI response but it isn’t visible by default

I signed up for 3 free months of Kagi recently. I don’t think I do enough searching to justify paying for a search engine but I have been pleased with search results for what I asked and nothing more.