Kagi seems to use both Google and bing results and will cost a minimum of $10 a month. Seems like the worst of all worlds to me. It’s a good option I suppose for those who want to pay.
I've recently seen queries answered on Kagi that returns utter rubbish when I paste the exact same queries into Google or DDG.
I’m skeptical of their privacy policy as well, given that you need an account and have to pay, it’s unlikely they don’t know your searches.
That being said, even if they did pay if they have any traction at all they’d still be blocked. Why would their competitors help them?
In any case I doubt it will take off, people who are poor aren’t going to pay 10 bucks a month just to search when there are dozens of free competitors.
Happy to be proven wrong.
That's the part I want to avoid. Build your own crawlers and stop relying on Google. Google already has enough control over the internet, I do not want a search engine that's just downstream of them.
I can however use a search engine that doesn't mock me and second guess me all the time and that tries to anonymize me.
But I agree very much with you.
If someone launches a search engine that works as well as Kagi and doesn't use either Google or Bing I'll happily pay a premium for that on top of of what I have already said I am willing to pay for Kagi.
Edit: In fact I already support a search engine with an independent index.