You can turn it off in the settings. Or, just use a VPN or SOCKS5 proxy. with it and you'd be good, while still having the benefits of Google's engine.
With a browser addon LibRedirect you can redirect all kind of sites to their privacy friendly alternatives. Google have 5 alternative backends (searx, searxng, whoogle, librey, 4get).
Alternatively you could try some of the new AI engines like perplexity.ai , but they will likely soon track you as much as google..
Kagi is pretty good, even if it is on the expensive side. The results are pretty good, and there are many useful features. The results are lacking for more local or if you speak multiple languages and you wish to have local results, you will need to set it manually to your area.
I prefere to use metasearch engines that get results from other engines, i used to use SearXNG but currently im using 4get you can host your own instance or use a public one.
I tried them and it gives me a captcha every single time. I have no idea what a 'fumo plushie' is so picking four of them to get my results makes it a non starter
Never heard of Greppr, (t y) did a test search with best private search engine showing this at hit number 10 : https://lemmy.ml/comment/121842 which echoes your comment about a blog post in this thread :-)