I'd argue that Kagi serves a niche of power users who knows what they want from their search engine and RTFM to get they want the way they want.

Google works like an automatic black-box which tries to deduce your intention from 4-5 words you typed in hastily.

I believe any ordinary user is still pretty happy about Google search in its current iteration. My mom doesn't get a YouTube premium account because she says she likes the ads, for example.

So, from our bubble, Google might be regressing, but the picture might be very different for the majority of Google users.

Mostly driven by time horizons. The short time horizon of shareholders.