I think you're on the right track. Unfortunately, the toxic "free" model with ads has trained everybody to expect all content for free. This is completely unsustainable; there will be a correction of some sort, and it's my opinion that we've already entered that stage. It's going to be painful, but I'm hopeful that the end state is that people consider ad-laden "free" content to be not worth their time. I'm already there.

I signed up for Kagi search recently (I'm not affiliated with them in any way, just a satisfied customer), and aside from searching reddit, I consider their results to be superior to Google's. One of their main signals for downranking is how heavily ad/tracker-laden a page is.

Why do you believe that youtube and facebook aren't sustainable? They seem sustainable to me.

I'm also a Kagi user! I'm leaning towards using products that I pay for that promise me a dignified experience. I worry though, that we're heading to future where there's a class of people that do not see ads and have some degree of privacy and a class of people that do see ads and have no privacy and I fear for their minds and that culture, as I do not think that system lends itself to narrowing any inequality gaps. I worry for increasingly ad supported hardware. I worry. ;)

I think people would pay. Ads offer more money then people are willing to pay. Alot of content is expensive for what it offers.

I agree, and I think part of the correction would be because of your latter point.