It is tainted because the entire premise of "web search" is flawed. IMHO. Sure, one can provide "free web search", and this existed before search engine advertising was a thing, but over time one can see that the concept is flawed. The database being searched is public information. Every web user should have access to it. However, access to a database of public www content is generally not free. An single exception is Common Crawl. In practice one is more likely to pay for access to a web index. I would bet even the alternative search engine mentioned is paying for access.

An analogous situation is DNS. It is public information. Generally some of the database is made available for free, e.g., https://czds.icann.org/home. In practice many people get the information piecemeal via lookups from a third party via a shared DNS cache, e.g., an ISP DNS cache. However there are other ways to get the information. It is public information. There should not be a restriction, real or imagined, that one has to go through a third party to get it.

A further analogous situation is scans of www ports that check for httpds. If one runs a server that listens for connections on a public network, one should expect that the public may try to connect to it. This again is public information. No one should have to pay for access to it. However, often we see that bulk access is restricted to "security researchers". For example, censys.io will allow the public to search for free, with limits.

The trend I am seeing is that the public is being trained to view the web as something opaque. People pay ISP's to access the web yet they are led to believe there is no way to view what it contains. At least, not for free. The public is led to believe the only way to see what the web contains is to do naive searches through third party that is Hoovering up the data and trying to sell advertising services.

Imagine person A has a list of public information. Person B asks, "May I see the list." Person A says, "Sorry, but I compiled the list and therefore access to it requires a subscription. However I will let you search the list for free." The problem is that Person B will never know what is on the list, even though it is public information. Person B cannot even copy a small portion of the ordered list. IMHO, coupled with the perverse motivation of Person A to collect data and sell advertising services, this makes the concept of "search" flawed. If Person A said, "Sure, have a look at the list. If you need help searching through it, I can provide that service for a fee," then I would not see search as flawed.

In other words, I want to see more work like Common Crawl to share public information. Seeing the list, so to speak, can influence how one chooses to search it, so I want to see the list first. One of the flaws of today's "web search" is that it hides list entries that are not "popular" because non-popular entries have no value to advertisers.

The web seems to be becoming more and more opaque to its users. Like a Yellow Pages where no one can see past the first page. The competition to reach the first page is controlled by a third party "search provider" who can manipulate it to collect data and sell advertising services. However I want to be able to see the first page, the last page and all the pages in between. I want to be able to copy portions of the full list. I want to search a subset of the list without the use of a third party.

It is a strange business to commercialise access to public information.