[protimewaster]

I don't think it's necessarily the case that interests are aligned just because users are the direct source of revenue. Many services that rely on users as a direct source of revenue still have interest alignment issues for various reasons.

For example, I don't want to log into or provide payment information to my search provider, because I don't want to voluntarily provide personal information. Compared to Kagi, I can use traditional ad-based search in a relatively anonymous way.

[recursive]

It's not sufficient, but I'd argue it's necessary.