Tor Browser is planning to remove Google from the search engine options a user can choose: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/41835

There some say brave onion + no JS is good: https://search.brave4u7jddbv7cyviptqjc7jusxh72uik7zt6adtckl5f4nwy2v72qd.onion/

Mullvad team seems to be considering 4 possible options:

• Startpage: https://www.startpage.com/
• Mojeek: https://www.mojeek.com/
• Brave Search: https://search.brave.com/
• Metager: https://metager.org/

PS: Not disgussing ddg / ddg onion too much, basically because ddg is the long-time default search engine of TB. Most TB users assume ddg is a decent, standard, generic option, esp. its non-JS version.

What Happens if an Instance Disappears?

I may be wrong, but one potential problem in such a case might be that (not you’d totally lose your data but on the contrary) you won’t be able to delete your posts etc. even if you want to delete them, since its copy is “mirrored” by many other instances. Not sure though.