I experienced the same situation a month or two ago. One of my friends sent me this article that was illuminating. https://sleepingrobots.com/dreams/stop-using-ollama/

Ollama is not recommended to be used. Use llama.cpp.

> I thought the whole POINT of ollama was not-cloud?

It was at first, then the developers realized they had a massive userbase they could monetize. A tale as old as open source...

The larger models are available on Ollama's cloud as most folks don't have the hardware to run 500B-1T parameter models.

Yes, you've nailed it. Ollama are desperately trying to pull a Cursor - like 3791 other projects in this space.