If I understand Kagi's blog post correctly, then here's what happened, chronologically:

Kagi makes deals with many search engines so they can have raw search results in exchange for money.

Google says: no, you can't have raw search results because only whales can get those. Only thing we can offer you is search results riddled with ads and we won't allow you to reorder or filter them.

Kagi thinks Google's offer is unacceptable, so Kagi goes to a third party SERP API, which scrapes Google at scale and sells the raw search results to Kagi and others.

August 2024: Court says Google is breaking the law by selling raw search results only to whales.

December 2025: Court orders that for the next six years, 1. Google must no longer exclude non-whales from buying raw search results, 2. Google must offer the raw search results for a reasonable price, and 3. Google can no longer force partners to bundle the results with ads.

December 2025: Google sues the third-party scraping companies.

January 2026: Google says "hey, the old search offering is going to go away, there's going to be a new API by 2027, stay tuned."

I don't really see any mentioning of a new API, beyond their Vertex AI thing, and I don't know how comparable that might be. Also it is capped at 50 domains (by default).

It is perhaps a clever legal workaround. They must sell access to their index, but the verdict didn't state how much of it you can buy access to at any one time. So they put a limit of 50 domains, because that accommodates everyone who's not a search engine, but effectively blocks Kagi and Ecosia, while not exactly refusing to sell to them.