Startpage has changed ownership recently. I would look into the new owners...
financed mostly by Google
Did you find one that isn’t paid mostly by google?
Edge used to be an alternative on Windows at least, but now it's also based on Chromium. :-( I'd always prefer Firefox, but if you want to avoid Google money, you're basically up to Microsoft or Apple. The latter tying you to a hardware monopoly.
At least they have a good manifesto. If they reach independence, it would be of course best. Donations could help in theory...
Mozilla, at least, has shown they're not married to Google - they had Yahoo als the default search engine for a couple of years because Yahoo was the highest bidder.