I feel like there are probably some ad based search engines which are privacy and service oriented, but in general even for those there remains a misalignment problem. Hence if I don’t want to be a product now or in the future, what good search engines are there that I can pay for?
I use Kagi. It’s not especially like the Internet at some long-ago date, other than maybe than in that they run a search engine for Usenet archives.
I use Kagi for privacy reasons. They run a no-log, no-profile, no-ads setup, which is what I’d been wanting for some time.
If you’re looking for some kind of retro Internet experience, maybe grab a gopher client and look at gopher servers, or an IRC client, telnet to a MUD, use an FTP client to connect to an FTP server. All of those still have active servers and haven’t changed much, so it’ll still give a comparable feel.