With all the talk about privacy, people seem to be forgetting that censorship is also a major problem for today's internet.
Many "alternative" search engines are better for privacy, but they are still vulnerable to censorship, because they rely on g**gle and m*crosoft's indices for their search results. This isn't a deep-hidden secret either, many of them disclose what search index they use on the "about" page, for example:
I'm finding Copilot better than any search and better than buying by itself and world's better than Google search, but it's totally not private... So anything you seem sensitive or private you just can't use it for
LLM powered search is so great, if it can't find the information you're looking for it will just make up random bullshit for you! And all it costs is Microsoft looming over your shoulder to datamine and sell everything you ever do!
In part, yes. Here's a document explaining it all. In short, they use many different source, of which Bing is one. However when they query for data on those services, there's no personally identifiable information shared, so they can't create profiles about you.
Unfortunately, this map isn't accurate anymore. For example it says that Startpage only uses Google search results but that's outdated. Now Startpage uses Bing and Google search results.
https://www.startpage.com/privacy-please/startpage-articles/enhanced-search-results-on-startpage
'In working with Microsoft, Startpage is now incorporating Microsoft Bing search results and ads within some results pages, using a custom-built private search solution. Google search results will continue to broadly be used, but incorporating additional high-quality sources will have ongoing returns for our users'