Sorry, I’m confused here, why do you need to make a Google account?

I wouldn’t have minded using their app instead, but I don’t have the Play Store on my phone (I’m on GOS)

Any reason why you aren’t just using the Aurora store?

I’ve been using Qwant for about a year now, they and Ecosia built their own EU based index a while ago. I’ve been pretty happy with it

They did introduce an AI overview thing a few months back, but it can be permanently turned off with two clicks

This version of it has existed for years. Earliest uses of the “upscaled” (but probably redrawn/traced version) go back to 2019 when the original blurry version was causing issues on Twitter and Reddit being marked as NSFW for some reason