It was great! A simple and beautiful UI, packed to the brim with features for the hardcore user but yet still very easy to use for noobs. It made navigating Reddit a joy and it was constantly updated. You could clearly see it was a labor of love from the developer.

Basically outside of Youtube I don’t use any Google service. Started by migrating to Kagi search, and while it requires a subscription, its a price I am willing to pay for a search engine that actually work good.

Everything else I use a mix of FOSS and subscription services.

As an alternative you can self host wefwef so that should alleviate some of the concerns