Enough is enough—I dumped Google’s worsening search for Kagi

I like how the search engine is the product instead of <em>me</em>.

See full article...

 

[jwbaker]

This author clearly has different use cases for search than I have. The things that keep me from switching to Kagi are the lack of personalized search ranking features, and the resulting poor rankings for simple searches. For example if I search "is [local restaurant] open" I get, on Google, the answer to my question, while on Kagi I get unrelated information about a neighborhood in Mexico City. Similarly if I search "LPC agenda" on Google I get the Landmarks Preservation Commission agenda in the city where I live, while on Kagi I get the results for dozens of other cities and things that are coincidentally called "LPC". It just doesn't seem useful for what I actually do with search engines.

 

[nondescriptusername]

Another happy Kagi user here. Switched over about 18 months ago, and couldn’t be happier.

 

[MahmudNaqi]

How does the experience compare to a self hosted SearXNG? I’ve been using that as an alternative to Google for a while, but since SearXNG aggregates results from search engines I find it slow (I think I get throttled by DuckDuckGo) & it still pulls in a ton of slop from Google. As much as I love self hosting, this sounds pretty good.

 

[pokrface]

If you're careful (most people are not), you can avoid Google from clearly identifying everything about the real you. It is not easy or convenient, but it can be done.

You are wildly incorrect. No one's opsec is perfect.

Perhaps if you are starting fresh, with unique browser fingerprinting, using Tor, and making sure to block all scripting or active page elements on every site you visit, and never visiting a page with a service worker embedded in it, and ensuring you've blackholed every ASN that Google operates in, and ensuring that your browser never sends a POST request ever under any circumstances, and every time you browse a new session you do it from a new fresh device.....you can probably get somewhere approximating a truly anonymous google experience and avoid having your activity tied to a profile.

But you're dead-ass wrong if you think what you're describing is actually possible, in a practical real-world not-a-nation-state-APT-actor-with-unlimited-tools kind of way.

 

[huskcummerbund]

You can always append -pinterest.com in your search (also on ddg, etc)

Yeah, I only ever remember to do that after I'm already annoyed by the default search results. And I don't do it enough to have memorized how to do it, so I end up having to google how to do it, which just annoys me even more.

 

[Emon]

But giving a search engine your full name, address, e-mail, phone, and billing information does not seem smarter either.

That's how everything in the history of the world has worked.

Even in incognito Google is NOT private. They have allll sorts of tricks for tracking you without tracking you. I use reddit in incognito mode and I still see targeted ads.

"Don't pay for cool stuff with your personal information. Pay for it with money. You know, like how every other service in the world works?"

 

[randomuser42]

While you're logged into their paid service, I have no doubt they're building a profile on you, regardless of how you paid

You can use it logged out.

 

[Notabee]

Kagi has been so nice and utilitarian, not much different than google a decade+ ago, but that's a good thing. Google used to be a good thing. It is frankly jarring, after using Kagi for a few months, to go back to Google or some other search engine. This has happened to me when trying to show someone else something on their computer, and we duly loaded up Google to try to find a web page I wanted to show them. Just shockingly gross to be confronted with nothing but hallucinating AI slop and ads filling up the initial results screen, and poor quality search results. We've been frogs boiling in the enshittification pot for a while, and it sucks to have to pay for something that used to be free and good, but maybe that's the only way to keep something being good and accountable.

 

[Abulia]

You can do it on ios+safari with a little helper doodad.

Wow, I’m dumb. It’d been a minute but Arc now has an iOS browser that is amazing so far (just installed it) and it has native support for a few search engines, including Kagi and DDG. So I can have a unified browsing AND search experience on all my devices.

The future is now!

 

[randomuser42]

I am pretty sure if they see a bunch of random IP's they're going to flag your account. Provides like this don't want people sharing their services, and are likely to still track you.

You couldn't share it that way because the tokens will be tied to the device you got them from. Please stop rapidly posting for like 3 minutes and go read up on the privacy pass implementation.

 

[crmarvin42]

Almost every week I compare Google with Bing/Yandex/Baidu - none of them is even remotely close.

WTF metrics are you comparing on? How are you doing these comparisons? This reads more like BS than a true statement of your behavior every week.

I'm not going to pretend there are no metrics that put google in the lead vs Kagi, but are they metrics that matter to anyone IRL?

I want to find what I'm looking for, quickly. Ideally, in the first link at the top of the first page of responses. That is the key metric for most users. Another metric that is of value to a lot in this audience is being able to get those results without the digital equivalent of a colonoscopy in exchange for those results.

Google makes more money of I find what I'm looking for Eventually. They can have the most robust index possible, and 1:1 picture of the entirety of the internet, but that doesn't matter if their engine is designed to make it difficult to find what I'm looking for on the first search, because they want to sell me more ads. That makes them inferior, for me at least, in the metric that matters most. That I can also satisfy priority 2 by switching to Kagi is just icing on the cake.

 

[herko]

Yet Another Happy Paying User Here™. Kagi's approach to AI is good in my view. It's there if you want it, it's not there if you don't, and it's off by default. I also like the ability to try AI chatbots that comes with their top plan, and the AI chatbots are capable of using Kagi to search, providing references to their work. It's a pretty neat experience.

For example, here's Grok 4, standalone, providing a reasonable referenced summary of opinions on Kagi vs. Google after searching the web. The first reference is this very article. The list of models is impressive, and includes pretty much the state of the art for every major player, included with your Kagi membership.

You can also define your own assistants, base them on different models, set their tone, and give them focus areas. I don't use that feature yet, but it's interesting.

 

[randomuser42]

And I don't do it enough to have memorized how to do it, so I end up having to google how to do it, which just annoys me even more.

Not to defend google (I mean, it's a kind of universal token anyways, not just them) but it's a minus sign. The easy mnemonic would be that you want to subtract some search results. It would be nice to do it permanently. I actually bet you could with a custom search engine in your browser that appends "-pinterest.com" to every search.

 

[Zorba]

I'm fairly happy with Bing, and every time I think about switching I remember that Microsoft is paying me to use it (via Microsoft Rewards).

 

[neil_w]

I wholeheartedly endorse the rant-like tone of this article. Google's search results have certainly been rant-worthy as of late.

I've done the free trial of Kagi and liked it, but haven't yet been able to get over the hump of paying $100/yr or whatever for it, as I am suffering greatly from subscription fatigue. But the way things are going I can definitely see myself taking the plunge sooner rather than later.

 

[randomuser42]

Having it tied to your hardware is even worse.

Right now, I am using a PC without any hard drive. Everything is load into ram, and upon rebooting my system, everything is gone. I also get a new IP address (I do have two paid IPs that I use for various things). If I want to take it further, I can also use Tor. Lastly, I do not have a Google Account. My phone is using Linux, and not Android. I don't have any Google apps (or many of the usual apps you'd use). It helps that I don't use Google, but Qwant (France, Europe) for my search too.

I think I'll stick to my privacy policy, then yours.

I don't understand how rambling about your own set up makes the false things you said earlier true? Nobody here is impressed, if that's what you were hoping for.

 

[mssymrvn]

And for those of you who hate yourselves and still insist on using Google, there is also uBlacklist, which allows you to block domains from which you no longer wish to see results. It has been great at blocking Amazon results for me (for instance) when I do deign to use Google. But I've been using Kagi for over a year and I consider it money well spent.

 

[ranthog]

There are browser plugins in Firefox to remove AI search results. Then there are ones to block the ads... that way you don't need to scroll down to find any of the actual search results.

It is sad that we need to do that. Google used to have what was a breath of fresh air on how they handled ads. Now it is just hard to find the search results.

 

[SraCet]

Google started pushing their own browser EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN TIME YOU DO A SEARCH. I use Safari on my iPhone and every time I do a search with Google, I have to dismiss modal UI asking me if I want to see the results in their browser app. No, I didn't want to do that the last 10,000 searches I did, and I still don't, Google.

I'm surprised this didn't get a mention in the article. It was the straw that broke my back and got me to finally switch to DDG.

 

[crmarvin42]

And I am sure if they see too many random IP's they're going to flag your account. While you're logged into their paid service, I have no doubt they're building a profile on you, regardless of how you paid.

We need to you ask a simple question here, which is "Why?" Why would they build a profile on you?

Building a profile costs money. Therefore the behavior needs to be justified in some way, ideally in some way that brings in more revenue than the costs...profit. Google et al do this by having an advertising business, which monetizes your profile by delivering ads in your search results.

Kagi does not do this. They have no ad business, and so have no financial incentive to build a profile on you that goes any further than verifying you can pay your monthly subscription.

I also suspect most people are not paying using crypto. And services like this will dump crypto once they've grown and feel most people have accepted paying for search. -- This is not something I would want to see normalized.

Most people probably are not, because most people have no knowledge, understanding, or assets in crypto. I pay with a credit card that has my real name and address. I don't care if they do or do not accept crypto.

But the fact is, that they do. Which means, for those who want to create more degrees of separation between themselves and their search activity, they do have this option from Kagi, and not from any alternative of which I am aware. I don't value this, and maybe you don't either, but you cannot complain about the lack of privacy protections offered by Kagi, and then poo poo the very real attempts that they make to offer heightened privacy. Not and be taken seriously by this forum.

Your posts read like you have made an emotional decision to reject Kagi, and all your argumentation is post-hoc justification for a decision you made without rational consideration first. No one here is claiming Kagi to be perfect, only better to a degree than the 800-lb gorilla that is Google. Not a very high bar, but one you seem to think they are somehow limboing under, instead of clearing with room to spare.

Kagi could be lying. They could. And if they are, then we are all suckers. But google isn't even bothering to pretend they respect your privacy. They keep your searches as long as they wish, and monetize violating your privacy as much as they wish, and actively lobby to legalize further invasions of your privacy every year. I find it hard to believe that you actually believe anyone is worse that google for your privacy. Kagi may not be for you, but that does not make them equivalent to google. You can choose free-to-use, without having to pretend that alternatives are unviable.

 

[KevinM1]

Just looked at Qwant. Clicked the about us link on the bottom. The second thing on that page? "Sign up for Qwant+ to get access to AI features!"

Fuck. You.

I don't want ANY AI. Not even as an option. I don't want to use a product that supports fascist techbros and the social and environmental rot they create.

 

[Gillian Seed]

I started using ixquick.com back in, well, a log time ago. Ixquick.com became Startpage.com in 2016.

Ixquick, and Startpage's, big selling point is Google results without the tracking. I didn't quite a bit of compartive searching. Occasionally I couldn't find what I wanted with ixquick, but a Google search proved more useful so it didn't seem quite as simple as "Google results without the tracking," something else was going on here.

I was recently informed that Startpage.com was bought by SYstem 1, an advertising company. I should have known that already but, whatever. So I went looking for another option.

I happened upon SearXNG. A free, open source, meta search engine and I've been using it on a couple of instances for about six months now and it seems perfectly cromulent. You can turn on and off the engines it uses to give you results and I've been pretty happy with it.

I'm not affiliated with them in anyway, I've just had a good non-Google experience. You can find an instance here if you're interested. https://searx.space/

 

[randomuser42]

And for those of you who hate yourselves and still insist on using Google, there is also uBlacklist, which allows you to block domains from which you no longer wish to see results. It has been great at blocking Amazon results for me (for instance) when I do deign to use Google. But I've been using Kagi for over a year and I consider it money well spent.

I see a lot of people here who don't seem familiar with the potential power of the custom search "engines" you can make in the browser.

You could make a custom search engine, call it "Clean Google" and append "-amazon.com -pinterest.com -facebook.com" etc to the end of the query. That may be all the extension does, which is fine, but this way you have explicit control and visibility.

Or make a "good Reddit" search engine that appends "site:reddit.com"

I use the custom search engines for any site I find myself frequently searching my way "to" via google. Wiktionary (with #Latin so it pops me right to the Latin entry which I'm learning), tvtropes, etc. and since most search engines take various tokens for refinining and filtering results you can build that in if you're always doing that.

 

[huskcummerbund]

Not to defend google (I mean, it's a kind of universal token anyways, not just them) but it's a minus sign. The easy mnemonic would be that you want to subtract some search results. It would be nice to do it permanently. I actually bet you could with a custom search engine in your browser that appends "-pinterest.com" to every search.

Yeah, I've done that a few times but not enough to memorize it

 

[Zeppos]

Yeah to be fair that is also the case with DuckDuckGo. Even Firefox has their own built in LLM chatbot integration now.

I would love to see usage statistics on those. From what I hear, most people do not use those. But I can imagine the young ones may.

 

[pingechoreply]

No to all.

Information wants to be free.

I didn't down vote this, as I assume that the author implied a "/s". By this point in time, those of us old enough to remember the utopian hope, hype and promise of the early days of the internet, are now disillusioned enough with the reality of how it has all turned out. I know I didn't think the internet would evolve into either Nazi echo-chambers, snake-oil sales and bat-shit-crazy conspiracy amplification. Never thought we would get the cold steel rail. Going back and reading the writings of the time is a deeply embarrassing exercise, and I only read this. I'm sure MacBrave (with 22 years of posting) members when Google was all that and a bag of chips compared to Alta Vista, and when information seemed to want to be free, rather than your information being free to mega-corporations.

Back on topic, I've been using DuckDuckGo for about two years. It's fine (in the sense that my wife uses the term). Will definitely give this a go. Hadn't realized how much farther Google has gone down the user hostile route since I last looked. Thanks for the article, Lee!

 

[ranthog]

Yeah to be fair that is also the case with DuckDuckGo. Even Firefox has their own built in LLM chatbot integration now.

It doesn't surprise me that Firefox has an integration, for the same reason why Firefox has a dedicated search integrations. The difference here is that Firefox doesn't ram this stuff down your throat. It is an option with Firefox that you just don't have to use. Some people who use Firefox will want this.

It isn't necessarily Mozilla's role on the internet to tell its users to do something or not to do something. It is there to give you choice. Just like you can disable DRM on Firefox still if you don't want DRM.

 

[ispshadow]

My main reservation in signing up for Kagi has been their revenue sharing agreement with Yandex. In addition to gradually building their own index and search, Kagi also uses a number of existing search backends, including Bing, Google, and Yandex. And they pay these companies for access, so a portion of your fee is supporting Yandex. I don't want them to censor or exclude Russian content but I don't want to be financially supporting a Russian company either, especially one that has ties to the government.

A caveat to this is that at the time the controversy about Kagi supporting Yandex broke out there were actually two Yandexes. The founder of Yandex, Arkady Volozh, left Russia in 2014 when they invaded Crimea, and had started working on making Yandex NV, a Dutch Holding company, more independent of Russia. This accelerated after Russia invaded Ukraine and by July 2024 he had relocated all Russian employees that wished to leave the country, sold off all Russian assets, severed ties with Russia and Yandex LLC, and renamed the remaining company the Nebius Group. The complaints about Kagi supporting Yandex occurred between these two events and it was never clear whether their deal was with Yandex NV or Yandex LLC, and whether Kagi continues to have a revenue sharing deal with Yandex LLC, or if it is now with Nebius. Instead they scrubbed most of the information about what backends they use from their website.

I'm glad I saw your comment. I had seen a bit of Kagi before and had been interested, with this article making me even more so, but that revenue sharing agreement for anything Russian is a hard barrier for me.

I'll keep managing with my current tools until this changes.

 

[Zeppos]

And for those of you who hate yourselves and still insist on using Google, there is also uBlacklist, which allows you to block domains from which you no longer wish to see results. It has been great at blocking Amazon results for me (for instance) when I do deign to use Google. But I've been using Kagi for over a year and I consider it money well spent.

Do you even hear yourself, portraying the 50k users of Kagi as the master race while the other 8.1425 billion humans are self-loathing? Nobody has ever needed to get over themselves more than you.

I think you missed the implicit (/s), or better the tongue in cheek. Do not take the self hate line too serious.

Thanks for the ublacklist tip.

 

[mrkite77]

Being able to block pinterest might be the best feature ever made.