Ah well - supporting the dev isn’t the worst possible outcome. It sure does make me happy to not see the Google ads regardless.

I just got Projectivy Launcher. You need to get premium (one-time 7.25 cost) to set it as the default but it has some nice customizations. Works great on my Shield and a Google TV.

It went up like four bucks this month for me this past month. I feel like I am in a no-win situation. I want to support the authors of the videos and music I like, make the platform sustainable, and I hate ads and data harvesting. There doesn’t seem to be reasonable way to satisfy all three objectives (or even two).