I think the author makes that clear early and repeatedly and it isn't ever framed as anything else than a walk through their thought process. I'm surprised you even felt this comment necessary. The article anchors heavily on privacy as a focus, and if you don't care about that so much then all you have to worry about is a company that spends a couple hundred k of their startup money on t-shirts.
So...even if their search is perfect, and you don't care that they really just want to charge you for search while they use you to train their AI, it is a paid service, so criticism of their ability to manage money is valid as an overall product review too though.