How will you fight the inevitable slide that happens if you ever got on top? I’m convinced Google started with the absolute best of intentions before the money and greed turned them into a horror movie villain.

Maybe another company will take over at time. Why does one company have to stay perfect and on top of game for eternity?

Since they are subscription based and not ad based, their incentives are inherently aligned with customer preferences. This doesn't mean that they are immune from getting worse, or just becoming complacent, but it does at least make it less likely. Ad-supported companies succumbing to enshittification is virtually guaranteed thanks to the misalignment of basic incentives between the company and users (note: not customers).

Observationally, Google search and Kagi are fundamentally different business models.

Google followed/trailblazed the "enshitification" arc of providing a free service that sees widespread adoption by the public, and then financially exploiting the widespread adoption by leveraging usage of the service to serve ads like in the screenshot.

Kagi is a subscription service you pay for and they generate their best effort at an ideal service for you using the money you gave them.

The Google model of providing a free service sort of requires that it be enshitified in order to close the circle on the business case. Reliance on VC money in this model is likely a further aggravating factor to aggressively exploit usage of the service once widespread adoption is achieved.

The Kagi model has an opposite pressure, where if it tries to exploit adoption of the service in a way that users don't appreciate, users will simply abandon their subscription, putting a core revenue stream the business has built itself around at risk.

Is it possible for Kagi or a business like that to become shitty? Sure, a new manager that misunderstands core realities can show up anywhere and ruin the business, or sagging business financials could require VC injection which then pressures further financial extractions from uses. But the structural pressures on a Kagi-style model certainly seem to steer it in the right direction when Google's structural model invariably steered it into something that becomes less pleasant than we all initially knew.

It's really us who have to change our mindset about companies. It's foolish to expect them to retain the quality or purported ideology they claimed to have when they were trying to win customers, after they reach a point where they can exploit and extract money and suppress choice and competition. A CEO will say anything now and might even mean it, but it's empty words really, and not even their choice in the long run.

We have to not get attached to companies, and not get the idea that they care or have feelings of good or evil. They are tools, like a hammer, or a stapler. A stapler isn't evil if it mashes up all the staples into a tangled mess. It's just broken. You don't mourn a broken stapler, eventually tools just wear out. You throw it out and get a new one. Corporations are the same, McKinsification / enshitification / etc are a part of their natural lifecycle, you should expect that and just switch to a different tool that actually works.

Kagi is unlikely to ever be as popular as Google. Free is always more popular.

"How will you fight the inevitable slide that happens if you ever got on top?".

Don't get too greedy. There must be examples... 37Signals?