Writing them off as an American company is totally valid, but I’m happy to pay for a quality service because it keeps ads out and lets me vote with my money. It’s really not much to cling to psychologically, but it helps. When I and others completely degoogle our lives it moves no needles at GoogHQ, but paying subscriber metrics are a KPI discussed in every board room in the world.

It’s had that for a while now. It was the main reason I’d pipe up to recommend Kagi, but now there’s also their search anonymizer and tor endpoint.