I’m not going to argue that Roku’s software is better, it’s definitely worse, but honestly, it’s not that much worse and doesn’t really impact day to day usage.
The voice recognition in the remote is slightly worse, the OS is less pretty and a little slower to navigate, but when 90% of its time being used is either playing something or displaying a screensaver, none of that really matters. It still opens instantly when I turn the Xbox on, it still lets me open whatever app I need and select a show, and it has one feature that Google TV doesn’t have that’s genuinely great which is private listening, where the audio will play from the Roku app on your phone so you can use headphones and not wake anyone.
Honestly, I would buy the best picture quality TV I could and not worry about Google OS or Roku OS at this point. And if you do get a Roku TV, I definitely don’t think it’s worth giving Google more money on top of that.
And you’re someone who cares enough about privacy to subscribe to this community.
Which is why the only actual viable solution is legislation and privacy protection laws.