Work stuff: I still just run queries on Google. If I know it's a stackexchange site I'll just go directly to the site in question. Other [everyday] stuff: It depends. Sometimes I Google it, sometimes I do Google / Reddit search. In short, Google ain't that broken for me. Sure, I hate that the top results are usually ads but it's not that bad to motivate me to change. I'm just not logged on to Google when I search for…
I'm guessing this is mostly in jest but I doubt most people, even privacy conscious people, really search anything that interesting, it's more about the idea of being able to build a long-term profile of someone based on search history. And anyway, the less "normie" you are, the more shameless you are, I'd argue.
Heck, there's a lot of reasons to temporarily want some degree of privacy or at least a little isolation. If I was going to search about a medical issue, I'd at least use private browsing, because I don't want advertisements about it to flood me.