Best food in the world? 3 star Michelin? Ok, I'll pay the $10. But if it's only a little better, probably the free one. And if I'm going to be doing this every day.. I'd probably still do the free one most of the time.
I'll argue that Kagi is the best search engine in the world. If there's any better out there, I'll switch to that. For $10 per month it's a bargain. But "free" does things with people's reasoning. As you admit, you'd choose free over the best food in the world most of the time, even if the best food was dirt cheap. I'd choose the best food in the world over free every time, if it was that cheap.
Yes, free messes everything up. If Google was $1 or $2/mo and Kagi was/is significantly better, that drastically changes the equation.