Google is the best search engine. That's still true. But for most searches — weather, recipes, local businesses, product lookups, general how-to questions — DuckDuckGo is close enough that you'll never notice the difference, and it doesn't build an advertising profile about you.
The switch is one setting: go to your browser's search engine settings and change the default to DuckDuckGo. On Chrome: Settings → Search engine. On Safari: Settings → Safari → Search Engine. On Firefox: Settings → Search.
DuckDuckGo has improved significantly in the last two years. Instant answers, maps (via Apple Maps), image search, video search, and a genuinely good !bang system: type !a before a search to search Amazon, !yt for YouTube, !w for Wikipedia. !g sends you to Google for the occasional search where you need it.
If DuckDuckGo doesn't have what you need, use Kagi (paid, $5/month) or Brave Search. Both are excellent. The point isn't to avoid Google forever — it's to not make Google your reflex for everything.