This is a categorically false premise. The kind of statement that only makes sense when you're in a deep bubble and entirely removed from the average person's use of the internet.
Deliberately removing yourself from Google is fine for the author who is more concerned about taking an ideological stance than they are about being discoverable, but removing yourself from Google is terribly bad advice for anyone who wants to help people find their content.
Many people do use Google to find content and people, even if you don't.
People who are not good with tech with certainly use Google especially if they grew up with it.
Yes, search results are bad, but are you using duckduckgo instead? No, you are still using a Google search to get somewhere even if it's just to use it to find a another site with better pages. Maybe you are using Bing though I know some folks were liked Bing...
Now if you want to argue people are using TikTok as a main search engine now that's a bit different (that's of course not accurate as it has terrible search just like reddit)
But yeah even Google knows people are only using it to find Reddit pages now (which is Reddit started the whole API issue) and why Google and Reddit are fighting a little.