It depends where you want to go. Knowledge is always bigger than power, power gives money but knowledge gives depression and suicide thoughts. The fast escape path is obvious.
Most countries don't have fossil fuels and 28% of oil is offshore. Also heavy industry is very mineral dependent. Let's be honest, if there will be WW3 most of people will starve to death and start killing and eating each other. Most people don't know how to get clean water without water pipe. Look how much aid is coming to little country like Palestine to keep them alive. Given that I think it will decrease
I am asking my local searxng. As long as websites produce content there will be search robot that will crawl them, doesn't matter if it's google or common crawl dump. The content will be scrapped and indexed and you will be able to chose from where to find it. Google just relies on users that are locked in their freemium services. If they can force users to pay the users will pay for search. Fortunately for me I am not one of them. Good luck.
Have you tried liquidsoap ?