All of them do this to some degree unless you quotation mark the shit out of search terms but in my experience Qwant is better than others at this. If they didn’t do it at all many common search terms would be very hit or miss. This is my obviously just my opinion and your mileage might vary.

The biggest downsides you need to prepare yourself for in every other search engine are lack of Google Maps integrations (they’re so far ahead of everyone :/) and no Reddit results. The first one is offset by just how shit Google is now. The other is more tricky but I believe Reddit is so astroturfed that it’s no longer useful except for some niche communities. I do Reddit searches via Redlib so that spez gets none of my data.

It wouldn’t fly anywhere but I’d laugh my ass off if some tech giant did it and then got bailed out by the state in return for controlling stake.

Take a look at what Epic is doing and why - companies that are rich and salty enough are great allies against even bigger tech giants. Whatever remains of Google would still be able to afford lawyers and argue that the same should happen to Amazon, Meta, Apple and Microsoft :)

There’s plenty of good, free and non-invasive search engines. Give Qwant a try!

There’s so much to chop off there. They’re an ad monopolist, cut that. Their YouTube business is self sufficient, cut that. Android and Play Store? Chop chop chop. Cloud Services? Chainsaw goes wrrr. Google, Chrome and assorted services could stay with Google for brand recognition. All of them would be still very big and dangerously influential.

Pretty much most of the big tech needs it.

Apple TV doesn’t try to do much other than being a very technically capable passthrough. You get pretty much every streaming service, multiple Plex clients etc. And no ads.

My 1st Gen ATV4K is 7 years old now and was buttery smooth until last tvOS update, now it’s only slightly smoother than most high end TVs. That’s quite a good run.

Just disconnect your TV from the Internet and get an Apple TV.

Google is big enough to be considered a monopoly in mobile phone operating systems. Play Store is technically a separate service / business which enjoys unfair advantage of being installed by default. I think this approach might be good because it’s better for user experience (unlike EU web browser thing for example) and has a good shot at postiviely affecting power balance between app developers and platform owner.

I’m curious how this will play out. Apple should be next obviously.