How will you fight the inevitable slide that happens if you ever got on top? I’m convinced Google started with the absolute best of intentions before the money and greed turned them into a horror movie villain.
Kagi is great though, for now! :D
We have to not get attached to companies, and not get the idea that they care or have feelings of good or evil. They are tools, like a hammer, or a stapler. A stapler isn't evil if it mashes up all the staples into a tangled mess. It's just broken. You don't mourn a broken stapler, eventually tools just wear out. You throw it out and get a new one. Corporations are the same, McKinsification / enshitification / etc are a part of their natural lifecycle, you should expect that and just switch to a different tool that actually works.
Google followed/trailblazed the "enshitification" arc of providing a free service that sees widespread adoption by the public, and then financially exploiting the widespread adoption by leveraging usage of the service to serve ads like in the screenshot.
Kagi is a subscription service you pay for and they generate their best effort at an ideal service for you using the money you gave them.
The Google model of providing a free service sort of requires that it be enshitified in order to close the circle on the business case. Reliance on VC money in this model is likely a further aggravating factor to aggressively exploit usage of the service once widespread adoption is achieved.
The Kagi model has an opposite pressure, where if it tries to exploit adoption of the service in a way that users don't appreciate, users will simply abandon their subscription, putting a core revenue stream the business has built itself around at risk.
Is it possible for Kagi or a business like that to become shitty? Sure, a new manager that misunderstands core realities can show up anywhere and ruin the business, or sagging business financials could require VC injection which then pressures further financial extractions from uses. But the structural pressures on a Kagi-style model certainly seem to steer it in the right direction when Google's structural model invariably steered it into something that becomes less pleasant than we all initially knew.
It's even worse for niches where there's some way to lock people in. E.g. look at streaming providers - everyone has either rolled out ads on paid plans or is planning to do so. Why? Because if you happen to have X as an exclusive in your catalog, then people who want to see X either have to suck it up or else figure out how to pirate it without getting caught.
Don't get too greedy. There must be examples... 37Signals?
This is, of course, an exaggeration. Not all shareholders value profits above all else, but many big ones do. Ignoring what incentives (and disincentives) are put on a business drive it's behavior. If you want something contrary to those incentives, you need to change those pressures or you're doomed to be disappointed.
Yet, their ANZ branch is certified since 2022: https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us/find-a-b-corp/company/uni...
B Corp enshitified itself, trying to get bigger, instead of staying true to its (supposed) mission
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unilever#Trade_in_Russia_amid_...