Kagi does not use Google's search index. From their post which made the front page of HN yesterday [1]:

> Google does not offer a public search API. The only available path is an ad-syndication bundle with no changes to result presentation - the model Startpage uses. Ad syndication is a non-starter for Kagi’s ad-free subscription model.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46708678

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jsnell 3 hours ago | parent [-]

They then go on to say that they pay a 3rd party company to scrape Google results (and serve those scraped results to their users). So their search engine is indeed based on unauthorized and uncompensated use of Google's index.

But since they're not using/paying for a supported API but just taking what they want, they indeed are unlikely to be impacted by this API turndown.

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DangitBobby an hour ago | parent [-]

Congrats on saying that in the most one-sided way possible. Google makes it literally impossible for them to pay for access to search results to make the product they want (customizable subscription search with no ads), and Google also is the de-facto globally sanctioned crawler because they are the only search engine anyone gives a shit about, and also sites need to be indexed by them to survive. In short, Google owns the river and sells the boats, and the public built a wall around it. Google is in a monopoly position in search.

	▲	nova22033 9 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		>In short, Google owns the river and sells the boats, and the public built a wall around it. That would be a monopoly if there was only 1 river in the whole world.