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To your point if we look at the last 5 years:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&ge...

I will say though that the "final straw" dropped interest by half overnight.... so it certainly was detrimental but they certainly where losing interest over time.

or it stopped growing through google discovery, but its core base had it bookmarked, visited it through autocomplete, or used the app. google search results going down doesnt necessarily mean active users went down.

App store bans and country bans should be better indicators.

It had been slowly declining for some time, sure. Then it suddenly dropped by well over 50% in a month and stayed there. That seems clear enough.