Kagi costs money and isn't that great to begin with

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.