Re: Grumpy old man icon needed…
I guess YMMV, as with anything. For me, DuckDuckGo results usually adequate (not stellar, but good enough) for most normal usage. So I recommend it when the main goal is to walk away from Google.
But I'll agree 100% on the US focus: searchs in other languages (Spanish for example), or searchs for stuff in a specific country other than US are dismal.
Never tried StartPage... will take it for a spin this week.