Would you say Kagi has escaped the Google SEO deterioration? Google has essentially gotten so bad for me that DuckDuckGo, without noticeable improvement, is now on par with Google.
In my experience it's at least marginally better, but one of the really nice features that Kagi has (and probably the main reason I subscribe) is you can extremely easily block domains. So whenever I hit a SEO garbage site, I just go back, block it, and I never worry about it again. In the areas you regularly search, this quickly gets you to a result page that is substantially higher quality than google.
I just use ublacklist [1] for that.
I like Kagi by the way, but my problem with it is:
1. major: I value privacy. I would not connect my identity to a search engine (we've learned from recent news events that promises/privacy policies mean nothing.)
2. minor: The subscription cost is a little too high for my usage volume.
You do not need to. You can register with an anonymous email (like SImpleLogin) and use anonymous payments (like PrivacyHQ) if remaining anonymous is imperative to you.
Kagi is 100% privacy respecting though, with the data you choose to trust us with (we are in the business of search, not the business of monetizing data).
As such, it can still be used to link a person to their Kagi account which means it's not private or anonymous in any meaningful sense. Additionally the service is only available to US citizens. I would strongly urge Kagi to consider adding cryptocurrency payments - ideally Monero.
This is coming from a paying Kagi customer. I like to put my money where my mouth is but I'm not a fan of the current payment options. I understand that Kagi is a small company in early stages, but I would expect cryptocurrency payments to be available 12 months from now.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-21/crypto-tr...
Why not Monero, the clearly top choice for anonymous payments?
Well, that would be an improvement, but all searches will still be linked to 1 account, whereas i can search on other search engines without this privacy issue.
On top of that, privacy laws in the US are... quite bad (even compared to Europe.)
> "we are in the business of search, not the business of monetizing data"
I appreciate your effort, i might reconsider at some point. Thank you for your reply!
We do not log searches or associate them with an account (check our privacy policy). This is because this would only be a liability for us, with no benefit. We are in the business of selling search results, not user data.