Counterpoint, Kagi is profitable and it achieved that milestone solely via user subscriptions, so its incentives are aligned with users, and not advertisers.

And I've found it so good that I haven't used Google, except by accident, in the past 18 months.

People just keep pitching Kagi as revolutionary, especially software engineers and people on HN.

I respect a lot of them, people I respect a lot, and I saw people like Jon Gjengset use it. so I gave it a few months of daily use. I just eventually drifted back to Google. The results weren't better for anything I search for. It felt different, but not better in any measurable way. $10/mo for a different feel is a strange value prop.

DuckDuckGo sits in the same spot for me. I want to like it, and I don't think one company should own web search, but when I need to find something Google finds it first. I wish the answer were different, but that's just how things are.