If they really want to show that they're building something that protects user privacy, they'd open source their backend server, and make it possible and easy to self-host it and point the modified firmware[0] at your own instance.

[0] They didn't write their own firmware; they hacked the stock firmware to redirect traffic from Google's servers to their own.

Edit: looks like they plan to open source the backend and enable self-hosting "soon". Hopefully that comes to pass!