> Meanwhile, users pay a premium to pretend they're not using Google

My searches can’t be tied to me by Google for their ad targeting: this is worth paying a premium for, and I am glad Kagi are providing this service.

You seem to have a very limited understanding of the value Kagi provides.

I have a limited understanding of the value Christianity provides. That neither means that Christianity provides no value, nor does it mean that God exists.

Uh oh you're eating your tail again

Users pay a premium to have Google's results cleaned out of spam/trash. It's effectively paying someone to cut out the newspaper ads for you and then give you the resulting ad-free paper.

With Kagi being $55-$110 a year and Google making >$200 a year per US user, it's arguably a discount.

In addition to what others are telling you, Kagi also allows you to

- filter out results from specific websites that you can choose, - show more results from specific websites that you can choose, - show fewer results from specific websites that you can choose,

and so forth. When you find your results becoming contaminated by some new slop farm, you can just eliminate them from your results. Google could also do that, but their business model seems to rely more on showing slop results with their ads in those third party pages.

Just like mobile phone providers, third parties can provide lots of value add by reselling infrastructure. Business models can be different, feature sets can differ. This is not a delusion but the reality of reselling.

users pay a premium for superior UX and no tracking, actually. Kagi has wildly better filtering and customization.