Maybe for others, but I find them a huge annoyance, to the point that I am willingly paying Neeva, and looking for a new paid search engine.
I did not ask for ads, and I can pay, so why should I suffer them? If I want to buy something, I will search for it. I would not welcome a salesman who interrupted my dinner with a voucher for my next meal; I'd give him a wedgie.
Most people who are annoyed by ads just use an ad blocker. I know there are people with ethical qualms about it, but "hates ads but has ethical aversion to blocking them" isn't a large enough market to support a VC-funded startup.
Ad blocking is a constant, annoying cat and mouse game. Also, it's inconsistent across devices. I can block ads much more easily on a PC than on my Android.
I'll happily subscribe to whatever service I find that's closest to what I've had with Neeva.
It clearly depends on your perspective. I found the quantity of ads on Google to be a genuine impediment and happily switched to being a paying user of Neeva. For the vast majority of searches, Neeva was better for me. Most pointedly, Neeva was even better when I searched for things that I intended to purchase, because the results were not simply paid advertisements.
I did not ask for ads, and I can pay, so why should I suffer them? If I want to buy something, I will search for it. I would not welcome a salesman who interrupted my dinner with a voucher for my next meal; I'd give him a wedgie.