Lord of the Rings made a prequel series.

No, they did not. Some braindead company made an abomination. Tolkien is still turning in his grave.

Don’t use Google, use Startpage.com instead, and add “lemmy” to your search terms.

Use old.reddit and uBlock Origin and you see none of that. Alternatively, use Stealth: https://gitlab.com/cosmosapps/stealth on Android.

I do feel morally bad about using Reddit, so I try to wean myself off it, and fill my browsing time with Feddit/Lemmy and Mastodon.

I found that Mastodon has a lot more international content. Tho that could also be a function of who you choose to follow there.

I would say no. With the recent debacle the writing is on the wall. Mozilla is not taking our privacy seriously. So, I have switched away from vanilla Firefox.

I would recommend using a fork instead: LibreWolf, or Floorp, or Zen; and Ironfox on Android. Mullvad Browser is another option.

• Just like Google it has an app and a web interface. Seeing that OP is looking to replace Google and didn’t mention self-hosting, this seems a good fit.
• Proton does provide e2e encryption.
• What does US citizens using it have to do with anything? Proton is not based in the US.
• Your last point is a maybe and remains to be tested in practice. If this is a concern, then take it into account.

For me personally it is more important that my data doesn’t get mined by a big company, and that I use European services as much as possible, and preferably open source. Proton is a good fit for me, and may be for OP.

I like Proton. It’s secure, with end-to-end encryption. It is web-based, just like Google, so accessible anywhere. It has an eye-pleasing design. And it’s based in Europe.