They do. The $10/month search plan is unlimited.

The only LLM stuff in their search product is the quick answers which can be turned off and page summaries which you have to explicitly click on in a submenu in any case.

As someone aware of how limited LLMs are, I’ve found both of these features to be useful at times for gauging whether a site is worth visiting or not which is part of the core feature set of a search engine IMHO.

A good while back they claimed that Google search index fees make up the vast majority of their costs, so I doubt any of your money is going towards LLM BS unless you actually pay for their assistant product.

I’d expect the development of all of their product to be mostly funded by VC. If they can get VC idiots who fell for the “”“AI”“” hype to subsidise building an actually useful thing (the search product), that’s a win in my book, even if they also have to build the AI crap on the side to keep said VC idiots happy.